On balancing strength with flexibility...

I often ask for guidance from trees. Usually whilst hugging them. I think that hugging them allows their amazing energy to flow into you somehow. If you let it. And for me, what makes trees amazing is their incredible ability to hold both polarities of strength and flexibility. Polarities might be the wrong word because they are not necessarily opposites, but for me they kind of are. Because I find strength relatively easy to channel (much easier to find your inner warrior than expose your vulnerable inner child) and I find flexibility much harder to summon up. Flexibility requires true, inner strength. A real, unshakeable core of knowingness that allows you to deviate from it without losing anything. (Which shows me that what I see as strength is often actually just false bravado or rather a shield covering up what I don't want to face or feel.) Today I was called upon to be flexible. I got a call at 4pm from the travel clinic informing me that the anti-malarial tablets we have ordered for our three children (to last us through 11 months of travelling through high-risk malarial zones) will no longer be available. Because the wholesaler is out of stock. They told me to "go online to source them from a large pharmaceutical chain or to get a private prescription from a GP and ring round some local pharmacies to source the right amount". All by myself. Just the 95 boxes of the stuff. ON A FRIDAY NIGHT. WHEN WE ARE LEAVING IN FIVE WORKING DAYS' TIME.

I first saw these guys in April. They knew I needed the tablets in April. I have since spent nearly £6,000 with them on vaccinations for myself and my family. (Not because I want to - this is not a luxury decision - but simply because most necessary vaccinations are not available on the NHS.) And yet the answer when I questioned why I was only being told that they were unavailable now, was that they could have chosen to wait until Monday to tell me so actually they were being kind by telling me "in advance", today.

My reaction? Shock. Horror. Overwhelm. Confusion. Anger. And disbelief. I spent a good five minutes questioning the status quo (ie. crying / being angry) before I was able to think about how I could possibly move forward. Unfortunately for the children, when I got the call we were on our way to a play date - half way down a busy road, in our waterproofs, in the rain - each of us on our bicycles including little Raphael, newly on stabilisers, who had already fallen over twice. In fact everyone had fallen off their bike once by this stage. And yet they patiently stayed with me on the side of the road for at least 45 minutes whilst I tried to sort out the mess. Unquestioningly. Trustingly. Sympathetically. They were amazing. But then they always are when I really need them to be.

And fortunately for me, I live in the "provinces". A town in which your local pharmacist and GP switchboard do actually recognise your name when you call. And so I didn't do as the travel clinic had told me to do and instead I reached out for help from our local pharmacist. She too was amazing: by 6pm as she was about to close, she had already got on the case for me without having an actual prescription to hand, had found a contact within the HQ of the drugs' manufacturer who had requested a fax of our prescription when it was available, and they were going to contact all the depots across the country to source emergency stocks for us. Even those in Scotland. Note: this is the same manufacturer (GSK) that could not apparently be called by MASTA. And then the friend to whose house we were travelling for tea (and ended up an hour or so late for) then texted her best friend who happens to work for said manufacturer, for help. Incredible.

So today I feet like I have seen both the worst side of people and the best: incompetence, laziness and arrogance from those I don't know, as well as compassion and efficiency from those that I do.

And I was made to think on my feet. And to be flexible. To see beyond the current, emotional disaster and to think coherently of a plan B. Hopefully, fingers crossed, I will be able to source at least one month's worth of anti-malarials so that we won't have to change our flights or cancel our visas to Myanmar. We could then try to get some more on the road by diverting our onward journey via Bangkok. I hope that won't be necessary.

This won't be the first time I am asked to be flexible over the course of the next 11 months. Somehow I dread to admit that I know this is bound to be the first of many such dramas. So I will continue to channel the energy of (and to hug) the humble tree. So strong and firm and rooted to the earth and yet so graceful and flexible in its branches that it sways and swishes in even the tiniest of breezes...

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Travel Adventure Countdown: 13 days to go!

Never has a month gone by so quickly. Time is literally flying through the door. Each day is filled with last minute check-ups, purchases, official document applications and packing. This week and next include visits to the hairdresser, chiropracter, optician, hygenist, GP, nurse and dentist. You name the body part; I am getting it buffed, trimmed, polished, checked and tested. Our recent international travel purchases include sterile kits (which I hope we will never have to use), mosquito sprays, nets, plug-ins and coils, anti-malaria tablets, probiotics, travel towels, adaptor plugs, travel wallets and safety pouches, torches and reading lights, huge (and very heavy - oops!) anthologies of stories in both French and English for both bedtime stories and homeschooling, French audio books, kids entertainment, sun hats and creams. International driving licences are being applied for, our flights and visas to our second destination (Myanmar) have been booked and our VAST first aid kit has finally stopped growing. In our spare time, we are packing up the contents of the house to put into storage. Weirdly, I feel totally calm. Happy actually. I was even described as looking "very serene" this morning.

I did not feel serene a couple of weeks ago. Far from it. But now that our mammoth to-do list has only a few items left on it and I am clear in my head about what me and the kids are taking, there is nothing much more to worry about. Choosing what to take however? Now THAT was stressful. And here is what I whittled it down to:

Photo caption: two sterile kits, mosi spray and plug-ins, sun cream for the family, wash bag (mine), travel towel, family first aid kit, three long sleeve t-shirts, two cardis, one fleece hoodie, 4 pairs of trousers, one pair of fleece trackie bums, one puffa jacket (that neon thing), two silk jumpsuit (for making me feel pretty), one fancy dress, one long skirt / dress, one short dress, one skirt, 4 bikinis, two shorts, two tops, 3 boob tubes, 3 singlets, underwear, three pairs of shoes (will wear my trainers to travel), a journal and three books....

I keep worrying that I don't have the right combination of items to keep me warm enough / cool enough / ward off mosquitoes / make me feel pretty when I want to be but I'm just going to have to trust that I do. And we can always buy more on the road to fill the extra wheely suitcase we've just decided to check-in (for a mere £50).

Last week's assignment was to dig-out-my-old-backpack-to-check-that-everything-I-would-like-to-take-actually-fits-in-it. Luckily it did! It may be small and make me look like a snail but it is a bit of a tardis and has bottomless corners that you can stuff things right into. It was quite emotional putting it back on after so long. The last time I used it was exactly 20 years ago when I embarked on the obligatory "travelling" I had delayed until after my four-year university degree. Sweetly it still has my name tape sown on to the front!

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On sharing the love...

Today I had to go to two different banks to change our address, and then to the post office in order to get our mail redirected during our year abroad. I had to bring the three kids with me. Not exactly fun on a hot, sunny day but it had to be done. The to-do list just couldn’t be put off any longer. The only post office that does this is the main one in the centre of town which has big queues and is full of people with not much room to move around. You know the kind where you need to take a ticket with your number on so that you know when it is your turn. The hot and stuffy kind that you really don’t want to be going any where near during the school holidays when accompanied by small people.

And, on cue, as soon as we got there all three started climbing all over one of the clusters of red cushioned seats and all over each other. The just 3 year old inadvertently kicked a woman twice whilst attempting a forward roll from one side to the other. I went bright red and resorted to my best 'stage whisper' to tell them to get down IMMEDIATELY (that voice you use when you want to show your disapproval but can’t shout because you are in public and the room is otherwise silent).

As an alternative form of amusement, they then turned to “welcoming” people into the building by standing on the pavement outside, right next to the busy road and bus stop. They kept being ushered back in by the man on duty who was clearly terrified they would either get abducted or run over on his watch. He kept looking over at me with a fixed smile and raised eyebrows as though to ask me to keep an eye on them. I kept smiling and shrugging at him in an attempt at miming my response of gratitude/powerlessness to move or do anything differently.

I was actually half pretending that the kids weren’t mine (my new parenting rule is that anything goes as long as they are not fighting), as well as half arguing with the post office lady that my council tax bill definitely WAS as good a proof of address as a utility bill, when an old lady tapped me on my shoulder. “I just wanted to say that your children.....” I held my breath in a mixture of fear and apprehension... “look so happy and healthy. You can see that they are really well looked after.” Gosh! I was bowled over. And in true English style, unable to take a compliment without belittling it somehow - why DO I do that? - I responded that they had actually just been clambering all over the chairs so they weren’t actually that good but she responded “yes, but they took their shoes off first in order to do so. That shows how thoughtful they are.” She continued “I am 83 and I have seen lots of children in my life and yours are some of the sweetest. You can just tell how well looked after they are. It’s lovely to see”. I was speechless.

Later that morning I reflected that sometimes it takes an outsider to show you what is right in front of your nose. I so often focus on the potential discomfort their behaviour might cause others: the excess noise, the unwanted physical contact, the boisterousness, that I forget that others might not see it that way. They just see a bunch of great kids being kids. The overall picture is obvious to anyone on the outside: that I have three, healthy, beautiful children that ARE sweet, confident, thoughtful, intelligent, curious, friendly, affectionate and kind. And that hasn’t happened all by itself. It is thanks in part to me, their very own Bobomama. Which must surely be the definition of a job well done?

So this post is for all those mamas out there that get so caught up in the daily grind that they temporarily forget just how blessed they are: that their kids really are awesome and that that is mostly because they are doing a great job. Sometimes it takes a stranger to remind us of what we know deep down is true. My encounter with the kind old lady made my day. So I’m sharing some of that love and passing it on...

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On getting through the messiness...

I realised something today. Nothing groundbreaking. Just one of the many reasons why parenting is so DAMN hard. Why it demands every ounce of self-control from you and then more...Because there is an unspoken rule that says that one is “not allowed” to be rude to children. We can neither answer back nor use their childish language nor throw a tantrum when we've had enough. Why? Because we are parents. We are supposed to know better. And yet how ridiculous is that? In exactly which other walks of life would you put up with someone repeatedly telling you that they hated you? Or that they hated whatever dish you had just painstakingly made followed by “I don’t care” when told that they might be acting a little rudely. The answer: NONE! No-one has ever been as rude or as ungrateful to me as my children are. And yet because they are my children, I’m meant to take it all on the chin. Because, as a mother, I’m supposed to have automatically and immediately developed a very thick skin and become such a balanced person that it doesn’t bother me! Well here’s the rub: I haven’t and I’m not. So it all builds up. In fact, I’d like to complain that NO-ONE PREPARED ME FOR THIS! I was not forewarned about the colossal amount of will-power that needs to be summoned up every day, many times a day, in order not to lose it. Neither the private NCT nor the public NHS parenting courses mentioned just what a relentless psychological and emotional onslaught it can be. Friends that had already had children remained silent on the subject. And yet we are all suddenly expected to morph, during birth, into the saintly mother archetype who is always-forgiving, forever-loving, continually-patient, endlessly-fair.

It can be a dark and lonely place when we realise that we do not fit this perfect archetype. Firstly because it can seem like others do (although this is probably a result of our, skewed 'behind-the-scenes' comparison with others’ perfectly-edited 'highlight reel') and secondly because no-one else talks about feeling like this. It is taboo to admit failure: that not only are you not infinitely patient/kind/forgiving and fair but that you are actually sometimes rude to your children, maybe even a bit mean on occasion; that they do quite often bore you; that sometimes you don’t want them anywhere near you; that there is the odd day when you wished you were child-free.

Last week was a particularly bad week for me in terms of falling short of the archetype: I was told that I/my food/my presence/my attitude was hated a few too many times to bear and I committed all of the above crimes. I momentarily felt bad about it. But then I reflected some more and thought but why should I always rise above the challenge? Why should my children be allowed to go on and on and on and on, pushing my buttons, insulting me and what I do without me breaking, just because they are my children? The answer is, they SHOULDN'T! But they will. Because they are children. Because they are human and boisterous and exploring and trying things out. And we, as mothers, will keep having to suck it all up and keep having to try to provide them with a (mostly) positive role model.

But that doesn’t mean that we can’t share how hard it is. Sure, there are blogs out there already that slag off being a parent, and there are others that extol the virtues of patient/calm/saintly(?) parenting, but that's not the kind of sharing I mean. Because to me, the former seem to glorify 'bad' parenting at the expense of all those involved and even if some can make for amusing reading, the humour ends up detracting from the pain of the situation which is belittled instead of validated. The latter, on the other hand, seem just a bit too sanctimonious and preachy so reading them always makes me feel like I’ve somehow failed even more.

What I mean is meeting somewhere in the middle. A place in which we can destroy the mother archetype and get over the taboo of not being perfect but without going so far as to make fun of ourselves or our children when we screw up. Let’s meet instead with a shared humility about just how hard it can be and let’s witness each other without judgement. Let's help each other to get through the growing pains of parenting with empathy and encouragement. Not from a pedestal nor from the naughty corner but as equals.

As the picture above shows, life is complicated. Parenting is equally so. But in the end, as overwhelming as it gets, we do love our kids. And they do love us. We’re doing the best we can. And not only is that enough for now, it's to be applauded, because there's a whole lot more mess just round the corner to replace the one you just got through!

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On acknowledging the darkness within...

I recently held the last of my women’s circle workshops before we set off on our travels; the theme was self-worth. Every circle, I like to offer up a selection of Goddess cards as something fun before we start: I ask the attendees to pick the one whose image most resonates with them, and often it delivers an insightful message that is relevant to that particular moment. My choice was Lilith, the Middle-Eastern goddess of abundance, fertility and fecundity but also of death and transformation. Lilith “challenges us to look upon our dark side and incorporate it into our wholeness so that great beauty can blossom forth”. This goddess was particularly pertinent because I have been thinking a lot recently about my dark or 'shadow' side – the hidden bits of my character that lie behind the mask I choose to show others. I didn’t come across this willingly of course; as usual it was revealed to me by my children. After being the brunt of a particularly relentless run of bad attitude, rudeness and being ignored, plus countless futile attempts on my part to mediate between pointless bickering and them being horrible to one other, I had exploded. All because my middle one wouldn't finish her homework reading. It was the straw that broke the already very fractured camel's back. So far so normal. But this time it wasn't a normal explosion. It was an enormous one. So huge that it took me ages to recover physically and mentally because something felt very deeply wrong. So wrong that I had to go and create some time out to reflect upon and journal about what had happened. Why had I lost it so badly?

The answer was that it had become a power struggle. My middle child refusing to read had left me totally and utterly powerless. I felt out of control and wanted it back. So I did the only thing that an adult can do in these situations other than become physically violent: I resorted to a superior command of the English language. I manipulated my advantage into verbal abuse and said some really mean things. In a really mean voice. A hissing, nasty, vicious one. I was hurting and didn't like that feeling so I wanted to spread the load. I wanted her to hurt too.

And whilst journalling about all this, I realised that I was a bully. And even worse, I was a mother that had bullied her children. This realisation brought up a host of painful emotions: shame, regret, fear and grief. I was ashamed of myself as an adult: I should have known better, and I was ashamed of myself as a mother: I should have been the children's moral rock and instead I had behaved far worse than them. I regretted that I could not undo what I had said, and I feared that it might have scarred them permanently. I was also very sad: in trying so hard to be a ‘good’ mother, I had lost control and ended up being the very opposite.

I spent quite a while afterwards feeling really bad about myself: for being a totally rubbish mother and even worse, for not revealing it. Not because I wanted to hide the fact but because there is no real way to discuss these things: exactly how do you bring it up and with whom? There is the always the fear of moral outlaw and the lurking spectre of social services. Being a bad mother must be the world's biggest taboo - and I hated that no-one knew just how bad I was. I felt like a fraud.

And then I came across a brilliant passage in my current book, The Shaman’s Last Apprentice. He was describing the medicinal plant Ayahuasca as “a tool to help you find yourself, to know yourself, by destroying the image of who you think you are, and illuminating the truth.” This stopped me in my tracks and got me thinking about my recent outburst as an opportunity to face the person I AM rather than the person I thought I was. It wasn't easy.

We all hold an image of who we think we are. And this can often become confused with who we think we would like to be. We wear various masks to disguise the discrepancies and can get so good at denying those parts of ourselves that don’t fit the chosen ideal that we can almost get to a point where we feel they don’t exist. Until, that is, they are thrown up in our faces by an unconscious trigger. Being faced with the extent of my desire to cause hurt through emotional and verbal cruelty was a shock. Firstly because we are taught that it is not ‘nice’ to be cruel and secondly because it is hugely taboo to even bring up the fact that a mother might not follow the impossible archetype of forever-patient, forever-loving, forever-forgiving, nurturing and kind. But we are not robots. We are human. And humans express a range of emotions that are not always socially acceptable and don’t always conform to archetype.

But even if it isn't easy and is in fact deeply uncomfortable, it is crucially important to acknowledge the full extent of our personalities – our darkness AND our light - because this is what makes us unique. As the shaman of the book says later: “it takes discipline, and a strong and courageous person to accept who they are. Many people do not have the courage to see themselves, because they have unconsciously accepted the images and stereotypes created by society. They have forgotten to honour their unique potential, and particular strengths and weaknesses, fearing that deep part of themselves that we keep hidden from each other.”

Indeed, it is the fear of our dark side that keeps us from embracing it. But “if" as they say, "you don’t own your story, it owns you”. So I am working on owning the darkness within - the part of me that is cruel and vicious, manipulative and bullying - so that it doesn't erupt in me in the unconscious, uncontrollable way it did. I'm not sure I'm quite there yet. But since “trying to incorporate it into my wholeness” as the goddess Lilith encourages, I have felt less triggered by the same scenarios and have been able to act more like an adult and the mother archetype. I'm not sure I'm quite at the "great beauty can blossom forth" stage but my behaviour has actually been more patient, nurturing and kind.

The kids still trigger me of course. And I still shout. But I am getting there. And whenever I feel bad about myself I remember that we are all works-in-progress. And that, thankfully, children don’t hold a grudge.

What are the parts of you that you keep hidden from others? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below. If this post resonated with you, please do share it with other social media and feel free to sign up to receive posts by e-mail by clicking subscribe! Don’t forget you can also follow me on facebook, twitter, instagram & bloglovin.