Not Mum Enough

Or a tree-climbing fish in a world of primates.

Everyone feels ‘not good enough’ at certain points in their life. Whether it’s school, job, relationship or family related. There’s always some time that you feel on the back foot,  just behind the curve or at it’s worst the butt of everyone’s jokes. To counter this, there are periods when you can feel at the top of your game, everything falls into place and it’s just click, click, click. I have to say that it’s usually the former for me but that could be my slanted angle of pessimism that’s not grounded in reality.

I work in an industry where you never quite feel “enough”. You’re the wrong size, the wrong shape, you’re too serious, you’re too comedy, you’re too regional, you’re too this, you’re not enough that. It comes with the territory. You get over it. And things in this business are always an absolute absolute, until they aren’t. I’d never done comedy before Fresh Meat, I was seen as a drama actress, I didn’t think I had a hope in hell. Josie was supposed to be middle class English until she wasn’t. You’d never have a black, female writer and star of a TV show until you did in Michaela Coel. You’d never have non-white actors in period dramas until you did in Bridgerton. The famous account of this is obviously Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption. His character of Red was supposed to be portrayed by a pasty, red-headed Irish guy - until he wasn’t.

I agree, this is niche to my profession, but I’m sure you can extrapolate to your situation. We’ve all experienced it but I’d never felt it quite as acutely as when I became a mum. “Never Quite Mum Enough” was a mantra that subconsciously and continuously rang through my mind. I let my baby sleep too much or not enough, I slept too much or not at all. I tried to breastfeed and even went dairy-free to accommodate his intolerance but it made no difference. He wasn’t interested and much preferred the prescribed ‘stinky milk’ instead. I thought of him constantly or could be distracted for 5 minutes and forget he existed. I judged myself against other mothers I saw in the street or on-line and never quite measured up. They either seemed more hands-on and conscientious than I could ever be or the Earth Mother kind who took everything in their stride. What should I be? Should I care too much or not a lot? Should I scrutinise every single decision whether it be what he wore, when he slept, when he bathed, whether he hitting developmental milestones or should I just relax and rely on instinct? But what if I didn’t have that maternal instinct? What if I made the wrong decision? What if I’m just not mother enough?

I so clearly thought, at that time, that I needed to know the answers to the next 18 years worth of possible problems from weaning to bumps’n’scrapes to personal problems in his teens. I had no answers. Zero, zilch, nada. What the fuck was I doing being a mother? I had spent so long trying to get pregnant, it didn’t occur to me that being a mother wouldn’t come naturally.

Of course, I didn’t realise then that I was learning as much as he was and that’s how it’s supposed to be. With each phase, each milestone, each passage of time, we were learning about each other together. But in my sleep-deprived, OCD-addled mind in those early days - that just wasn’t good enough. And maybe my baby, my family, were better off without me.

Even though I’ve learnt a lot and evolved my thinking since then, that lingering “not mother enough” sentiment is a tough stain to scrub out. I frequently catch myself undermining my ability or my motives and that ever present OCD alarm that I MAY be a danger to my baby rears it’s ugly head often.

I think we all have that general, underlying “not enough” feeling. I couldn’t begin to analyse where that comes from. You hear the phrase ‘generational trauma’ a lot now. Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s something to do with being British and under a near-constant grey drizzle of sky. It can lock you in a strange limbo, always waiting for the sun to come out. Maybe we’re taught and raised to keep searching for and wanting more and so enough will never ‘be enough’.

My mental compulsions - or Pure O - still take up a large part of my day, my life. The difference now is that I recognise them, try not to let them alarm me and can pretty much multi-task living my normal day-to-day life with it barely showing.

I’ve masked my neuro-diversity my whole life. I’m very good at it - maybe that’s where the acting came from. Holding a conversation with someone whilst concurrently seeing a nightmarish horror movie play in my mind is child’s play to me now. Hiding my compulsions so they seem like a flick of the head or a one-off spasm is easy peasy lemon squeezy. Experiencing a full-on overstimulation episode in a room full of people and appearing like I’m just peacefully taking in my surroundings is second nature to me now.

Do I wish I had an easier brain? One that didn’t get stuck and glitch and keep me in a time and place I don’t want to be in? Sure. That sounds nice.

But then again, the way this mind works allows me to see more than just what’s in front of me.

When I think of not being enough, what am I measuring this against? There’s that old Einstein quote that seems pretty apt. Although, I believe Albert didn’t actually say it but why let truth get in the way of a good sound bite? Whoever said it, I’ll leave it with you and perhaps it will help us all shift the lens through which we determine our value.

“…if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

Or maybe I’m just a stupid fish in a world of normal, efficient fishes.

Kim x