On not pushing through

Lessons from sobriety and motherhood

Sitting at my desk at work, I started to feel dizzy. The screen in front of me began to blur and there was a high pitched ringing in my ears. I took a glug of water from my water bottle. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again. Spots danced in front of my eyes. The hum of office conversation faded as the ringing in my ears, like an alarm, grew louder.

‘I’m not feeling well,’ I croaked to my colleague next to me.

‘Oh no,’ she said, not taking her eyes off her computer screen.

I lowered my head, trying to get the blood flowing as I had done many times before. But my whole body trembled. I couldn’t push through this one.

‘I think I have to go home,’ I said, shakily standing up.

As soon as I was out the door, I felt better. I breathed in deeply. The light of the September sun sparkled on the river. I walked up Putney Hill to my flat. When I got home it was filled with light and felt safe. Perhaps I was ill - though it was curious that I now felt OK. I sat down on the sofa. Felt a pang of guilt for leaving work when I now seemed to be fine - especially when there was so much to do. I was a one-person fundraising team; if I didn’t do the work, it didn’t get done. It just piled up, waiting for me to come back to it.

There was something, of course, that might have caused this fainting spell. Two weeks before this, I had watched my father die from cancer in a hospice bed.

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I had had a whole two weeks off work after he died before I felt obligated to return. This felt almost audacious to have so much time off. 17 years before, after I’d watched my mother die on a Saturday evening in January, I had been sent back to school on the Tuesday. I had then had two days off to go to her funeral miles away in Stroud (we had to stay overnight in a hotel) before I was back to school for good. I never had time off to grieve, to cry, to try and come to terms with the monumental loss I had experienced. I was never allowed to skip a class, or told not to worry about homework.

One night, a few weeks after my mum died, I was sitting at my desk in my bedroom. My school always set us mountains of homework and I’d often work late into the night to get it all done. But this time, as I sat there alone, the desk lamp bright on my Textiles homework, I felt this overwhelming NO. I didn’t want to push through and carry on writing an essay on fabric construction. I wanted to lie on my bed and cry for my mum.

But I sat there thinking: they’re not going to let me get away with that as an excuse. If I said I was ill, maybe that would be permission. But saying I couldn’t do my homework because I was crying for my dead mum… that’s definitely not a good enough excuse. I’ll get in trouble, for slacking.

Even on my first day back at school after she’d died, I’d only been allowed to take one 40 minute lesson off that morning and then had to go to a double Maths lesson.

So I took a deep breath, clenched up my body, and carried on writing my essay. I pushed through, as I’d learned to do so well.

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So all those years later, aged 31, an adult now who, in theory, didn’t need to ask permission to take time off to grieve - I used that blueprint. I pushed through. Or, at least I tried to - until I couldn’t.

The next two days, the same thing happened. I would feel so faint I had to go home. And when I began to feel physically better, I felt overwhelmed by the work that was then immediately thrown my way. I felt this rage coursing in my veins - rage that was not at all acceptable to express at work. Once, I got so frustrated in a conversation with my boss, I suddenly stood up and said: ‘I have to go for a walk’ and walked out the building. Because if I had stayed any longer I was going to fucking scream.

In the end, I went to my GP and asked her permission to give me another week off work. And even though it was clear I desperately needed it, I felt like such a slacker. So pathetic. So weak.

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Pushing through works, until it doesn’t. Something was happening that meant I couldn’t go on living the same way anymore. The grief of losing my father was part of the catalyst but also, all this happened at the same time that I was getting sober.

Yes, I started my sobriety journey in the last months of my father’s life. In a way, it wasn’t great timing. But also - it was perfect timing.

Removing alcohol from my life meant that, for the first time, I had to actually get in touch with what I was feeling. To notice what my actual needs were. To question whether alcohol was going to meet those needs. And then, as much as possible, (because of course the answer was always ‘no’) to choose something that was actually going to meet those needs. That, in a nutshell, is how I got sober. Doing that process day after day, for 20 months, until sobriety stuck. I.e. until I chose something loving every time.

That’s what sobriety is - that’s how I live my life. There is no longer an escape from emotional pain (sadness, grief, stress, anger - whatever the flavour); I have to be with it, and I have to choose loving ways to take care of myself. There is no escape and - to come back to the theme of this post - there is no pushing through.

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Sobriety was a brilliant beginning for this. And motherhood was my next initiation. Motherhood, for me, has required surrender. It has meant a relinquishing of old values and patterns of behaviour that I never saw coming. And it has not felt like a choice; it has been a necessity. Totally out of my hands, out of my control. If I tried to fight against it - and believe me I did, and I still do sometimes - it results in the most enormous mental suffering. It creates a rage in me as I reckon with the truth: this is impossible, this is fucking impossible.

It’s impossible for me to work in the way I used to - paid work, I mean. When River was waking me every 1 - 2 hours for the first two and a half years of his life, it was literally impossible for me to work. To even do simple tasks. Cooking, for example, felt overwhelming. There’s so much thinking involved: deciding what to make, checking we have the ingredients, going to a shop (an incredibly stressful experience with a toddler), looking at a recipe, preparing each ingredient, getting the timings right… Insurmountable.

And awful. I felt so useless. So weak. Days after River was born, I couldn’t bear not being able to help do the washing up and tidy the house. I hunched over the sink washing dishes as quickly as I could, before River started crying for me (which he did reliably within 10 minutes if I wasn’t there), my body still aching from the 64 hour labour - but still, pushing, pushing through. Pushing through physical and emotional pain, trying to ignore my newborn’s screaming, so that I could be Useful and Productive. To prove that I wasn’t Lazy or Weak: the two worst things I could possibly be.

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Now I’m three and a half years into motherhood, I usually get decent sleep. (River still wakes once a night - I have no idea when he’s ever going to sleep through). However, my energy is nothing like it used to be.

A few months after we night-weaned River and I was finally getting a good night’s sleep each night, I was still totally exhausted - especially by the afternoon. I spoke to my GP, I had blood tests - nothing was wrong.

‘Maybe you’re just tired from looking after a toddler?’ she said.

Hmmm.

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My energy levels since becoming a mother, even now with sleep, are still totally different from before. Mornings are the time I have to harness to write, to use my brain in any way, to do cleaning, to do anything really. After lunch, any kind of productivity is a write-off. I have tried to sit down in front of my computer and my brain is like: nope. I’m off the clock now. Sometimes James will take River on a weekend afternoon and I write a long to-do list. And I then I lie down on my bed for a bit - just for a bit, I say to myself. And then find that I can’t physically get up again. It’s maddening. Just like being ill - I hate it.

What, you mean I have to lie here and rest? You think there’s time for that? That I have that luxury? OK, I’ll watch a movie for 20 minutes. Then I’ll get up. What the hell! - that was 20 whole minutes of resting! Come ON there’s laundry to do and emails to reply to and childcare for the holidays to sort out and a new Substack post to write and tons of posts to read and hoovering and washing up and laundry and the bathrooms need to be cleaned and and and…

Yeah, and we’re just gonna lie here now, my body says.

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Do you know what else I notice? That when I’m pushing through, when I spend my day doing and doing and trying to push through exhaustion, I’m a real snappy mother. When I haven’t had enough sleep, and instead of doing something audacious, and nourishing, like going for a walk on the nature reserve, I’ve tried to do, do, do- I am on the brink. I have so little patience for holding steady with my three-year-old. I can’t calmly say: ‘I hear you, you want a lolly, and we’re not going to get one. I know, it’s really hard,’ 50 million times. After the second time I am likely to squeeze his arms too tightly and yell at him: ‘River! I AM NOT getting you a lolly! JESUS!’ and storm off, fizzing with rage. Feeling totally justified and also flooded with shame.

That’s what pushing through does. It’s shit for me, and it’s shit for everyone else. Maybe I feel like a slightly more worthy, OK human, very briefly, as I cross off the third thing on my to-do list - but what’s the actual cost of that?

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I was already a highly-sensitive person and motherhood seems to have dialled up my sensitivity so that it doesn’t take much to feel dysregulated. My precious energy gets burned up quickly. It feels like I have a certain amount each day and if I don’t pace myself, I feel like I could collapse by 3pm. Which isn’t much good when my husband doesn’t come home til 6:30pm and River goes to sleep at 9pm. That’s a LOT of hours to push through.

Socialising with more than one person takes a lot out of me. If I go to a children’s party in the morning - socialising with lots of people, noise, constant demands of kids and breaking up fights and sorting out wees and snacks while trying to think of things to say to the adults, burns up my energy at a ferocious rate. So I avoid them as much as I can. I wish I didn’t have to, but this is where the acceptance piece comes in. Accepting that I’m not an extrovert, that I DO get exhausted by parties, and that my energy is so precious that I don’t HAVE to go to something that’s going to leave me so exhausted by the afternoon that I’m snappy and miserable.

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Honouring my body’s needs and being realistic about my energy levels will no doubt impact my ability to earn money. I am soon to start working as a sober coach, and I will only be able to see clients in the mornings or very early afternoon. I hear of some people (not mothers) who work all hours of the day on their business. I’ve heard of a woman taking on 8 clients a day. I’m guessing she earns a few quid from that. And I know that I won’t be able to earn a fraction of what she does. But that’s OK by me.

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My journey to sobriety lead me to question so many things about our culture and what we value. Motherhood gave me even greater clarity.

What I used to value (and what sometimes still has it’s sharp little capitalist claws in me):

• pushing through tiredness by whatever means - alcohol, caffeine, sugar - in order to be productive

• ignoring my body’s ‘no’ in order to please others, not cause a fuss, be a ‘good girl’, be productive, achieve, excel

• success = a high flying job, promotions, pay rises, over-working

• strength is being tough, not showing emotions, not letting emotions affect you

• more is better: more money, a bigger house, more holidays further away

• displays of wealth = status and worthiness

  
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  What I now value (and often forget, and get lost in self-doubt and striving, and return to again):

• Rest is ESSENTIAL

• My body is wise, and worth listening to

• Mothering is vitally important and challenging work, despite what capitalist patriarchy has tried to make us believe

• strength is acknowledging feelings, allowing them to move through me, supporting myself when it’s hard. This has a knock-on affect: the more comfortable I am with my feelings, the more I can be with other people’s feelings (including my son’s) rather than trying to ‘fix’ them

• It’s OK if people are annoyed by me saying ‘no’ to things so I can protect my energy (And people are actually usually totally understanding and kind, or really don’t care either way)

• real success/value is being able to live my life with more ease, spaciousness, slowness and calm. This means earning less money and having smaller outgoings, and that’s totally fine

• what’s really important = deep connection to self, others and the natural world, community, relationships, being of service, grace, forgiveness, acceptance, presence and gratitude. Being here for this one precious life

Losing my mother to cancer when she was only 50 and my father when he was 69 has really brought home that last one for me. It’s possible to live in denial about death and live like we have all the time in the world, but we really don’t know how long we have. So in the time I have, I want to really be here and nourish what’s really important, rather than getting lost in behaviour that benefits the system but not the individuals in it.

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You reading this
by William Stafford

You reading this, be ready

Starting here, what do you remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened 
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening 
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life -

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

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I’d love to hear from you…

• What is your relationship to ‘pushing through’?

• How do you honour your body’s needs? Do you find it hard?

• If you’re a mother, do you feel it’s changed your energy levels, sensitivity and/or tolerance for pushing through?

Please do let me know in the comments.

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