Amazing Babe

I wrote this piece two years ago and shared it at 2018 The Emerging Writers Festival at an event called AMAZING BABES hosted by the incredible Namila Benson. It’s still messy and was roughly dot pointed for me to read out loud. I’ve left it as it is. I like it messy and the sharing was a messy wholesome vibe. The feeling in the room that night was sacred and sweet and terrifying as I spoke something deeply personal and chest tightening-ly painful but ultimately liberating. Thank you to both my amazing babe birth children and my non birth children who continue to raise me. I could write a series of novels, one for each of my children listing the lessons they have taught me. This is only one chapter of an epic unending quest.

The amazing babe I want to speak about tonight, is a young woman who has taught me about time travel. A young woman who taught me the value of biting through the thick bitter skin to get to the sweet flesh of the fruit. She taught me of the immense strength that lives in my own softness. If you believe time is linear and moves forward, then my amazing babe is neither my elder or my peer. To explain the significance of my amazing babe I need to start by first telling you a bit about who I was before I met her…

I raised myself to be thick skinned. I learnt young how to push my yearning and desires deep down to a place where they wouldn’t be met with violence. I learnt very early how to gulp back tears, stiffen my face and make my breathe in audible. I was only small when I learnt that my boundaries and my body were not mine to reign over, that transgressions were my burden to carry and that the quiet ache of shame would live deep in my muscles and turn to a poison that years later I would try to cut out of me. I knew how to keep a still smile on my face and shake inwardly. I learnt to navigate social spaces by speaking very little truth and smiling always.

When I was 19, I became a mother and gave birth to my daughter, Flav. The experience changed me, but only a little. This poor child was part of my knee jerking back at the world, my determination to have my own family, a better, safer one. A family I could control. I trained Flav in her infancy to fit into my world. She fed like clockwork, four hour intervals no less.. She slept through the night from when she was 8 weeks old, I trained her to sleep in a separate room from me because her place was in her own room, not to burden me in mine. She needed to learn to suck it up right? Cry it out, understand that I wasn’t always going to come to her. I couldn’t spoil her by attending to her every need.. She needed to fit into my schedule.. Into my narrative of being a ‘good mum’ with a ‘good baby’.

I managed to keep this up for three exhausting years.

And then she came.. my amazing babe, my second daughter, Diddy. She grew in me, like her sister had before her, but this time it was different. She has been shaking my insides long before she was born. She pummelled at my belly until I felt like a pregnant bruise. She came 11 days late and was born nearly 10 pounds of screaming wildness.

It took 26 long hours to birth her and by the time she came out I felt like I’d been hit by a boulder. I was so exhausted and I didn’t recover from that fatigue for a long time. I got mastitis 5 times within the first 6 months of her life. For those of you who have been spared from the gore of breastfeeding.. mastitis is the inflammation and infection of milk ducts resulting in an awful flu like haze, engorged, painful breasts and cracked bleeding nipples. I would scream as Diddy latched on to me and grit my teeth as she fed, my entire body tensed. From very early on, nourishing her felt like torture. She didn’t sleep, she didn’t stick to my feeding schedule, she insisted on being on me. In ancient cultures the pendulous breasts of elder women were a sign of nobility, physical markings of the wisdom born from years of nourishing and nurturing others. Diddy grew my wisdom several inches.

I plummeted into a post natally depressed haze that lasted for her first year of life, leading to my separation from her father just before her first birthday. I was 23 with two small children and on my own. I was liberated and terrified and tired.

This might sound bleak and it was for a while. But in that bleakness, in the utter chaos of not knowing and completely losing control, of raising this child who would not be told... I learnt something extraordinary. The unwillingness of this amazing babe to fit into my delusion cracked me open wide.. enough to spill out.. to get messy… to look at my mess and grow..

I remember once as Diddy screamed murderously for a particular pair of shoes given in a particular order handed to her in a particular way.. my friend Em said. “The thing about Diddy is.. She’s exceptionally good at expressing her needs”. And she was.

Diddy was so particular and wild and certain about what needed to happen next. And she screamed, and she cried, and she was reaching for something that I couldn’t give her. That I wouldn’t give her. I remember the war zone of bedtime with her right up until she was 2 years old. She wanted me.. it was like she wanted to crawl back inside me. She wanted the warmth of my body next to hers all night every night and she would scream for it. I remember peeling her off me with this feeling of disdain. I resented her needs so much. I wanted space from her. I felt smothered. I was so uncomfortable with giving her what she needed and I reeked of this disdain and she could smell it and we were trapped in this violent cycle of need and denial. I remember screaming at her WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?? WHAT DO YOU WANT??

She wanted me. She needed me.I had spent 24 years of my life carefully controlling myself and denying that I even had needs. My own small child self had learnt so early not to have needs.. and here I was at 24 confronted with these dangerous demands from my own child. Diddy screamed her needs so loudly that they echoed back through time and shook at the reality of my own child self. It made me so angry. I was SO ANGRY… but she insisted and showed me the way.. Because on the flip side of her wild wild rage and loud loud needs was the softest, sweetest, kindest, warmest caramel of love, cuddles, snuggles, nuzzling, needing and surrender. She taught me to surrender.. to time travel.. to heal.

When she would cry for me and beg me to stay near her.. I learnt to close my eyes, take a deep breathe and tend to my own small self who had rarely cried out loud.. when I opened my arms to embrace Diddy I was opening my arms to two little ones. It was almost as if Diddy wrapped her arms around my small child self and refused to stop screaming until they had both gotten what they needed. Each time I nurtured her I was nurturing me. Each time I stopped what I was doing, changed my plans to make way for Diddy I was prioritising myself. When I held her close to my chest and rocked her lovingly, I was cradling my own self, softening the heavy armour that had kept me safe for so long. I learned.. slowly and painfully and Diddy showed me the way. She never relented. I softened. I held her. I stayed with her. I learned to stop and crouched down to her level and listen to her speak..

It felt a bit like I had lost a war to her.. that I finally surrendered. but I know now that I won a war and that Diddy was fighting for me the whole time.

I’m not even close to done with this learning. Last year in the pit of winter I had a dangerously deep breakdown during which my girls moved to their father’s house for two months. It was rough.

I would get so nervous when I went to visit them because I felt so guilty for being so unwell. And how do you explain mental illness and dis-ease to a child? It turned out I didn’t need to. One day we sat in the cold on the porch she asked me when she could come home. I said I didn’t know.. that I was really unwell.. That it was hard to explain. I asked if she understood a little.

She said “Mum, I think that something happened a long time ago and you locked your heart away in a prison.. and sometimes.. you let it out into the yard.. let it have a little more freedom.. but then something will happen and you lock it away again. And sometimes you let people visit and speak to you through those weird telephone windows… but really you only ever let Flav and I in there.”

I was floored. Here was my nine year old daughter telling me, in perfect metaphor, of my unwellness.

“what would you do.. if you were someone who had locked their heart away in prison.. How would you get free?” I asked

“I don’t know.. Maybe practice coming out sometimes?”

A few weeks ago my now 13 year old Flav stormed out of the room and slammed the door. I exhaled, looked and Diddy and asked “How am I going to deal with this for the next few years of my life”. She replied “You need to deal with THISSS first” gesturing sassily at me.

For the past 10 years this amazing babe has been walking with me, truth bombing me, shaking me up and patiently waiting as I catch up to her. I am learning about beauty and make up and femininity and softness and strength, roar-ous rage and dark sorrow.. from watching the way she moves through the world. She is so kind and caring and smart and ask the most wonderful questions, she cuts to the truth so sharply it hurts sometimes. We have a long road to walk, there is much healing to be done for the wounds between us and though this is at times a tricky and tender journey, I sleep next to her most nights.. not because I have to but because I want to.

Rumi said -

“Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are.”

Diddy crumbled me.. and continues to water my wildflowers.

I wasn’t sure how to finish this piece so I called her and asked her for advice to which she replied I don’t want to talk about this, it’s weird and I can’t believe you’re not here tonight or last night I miss you when are you coming home. Which is a reminder to me to cancel some plans for this week, go home early, go gently, be kind to myself, snuggle her close and get some rest..