If you had told me, even 2 years ago, that I would be entering into the Stay-at-Home mum era of life I would have shot you down. My entire adolescent and indeed adult life had been focused on achieving academic success with the goal of forging a successful career. After undertaking two degrees back to back, including spending 5 years studying at the University of Cambridge I then threw myself into further, intense, advanced training in my chosen speciality field. In fact, I was so driven by the need for an impressive CV and to continually do better that actually I have never taken time to explore or understand the things that bring me pleasure in life outside of "achieving". I've always wanted to have kids but refused to believe that anything other than a high flying career would be enough to bring my life satisfaction.
Cue 2021 and a significant scare with my health that lead to me crashing out of my hard earned career with no back up plan of any sort in place. I spent several months in despair before I started playing around with the idea of taking up a new crafting skill - the plan was to find some mindfulness and quieten my hyperactive and ultra-critical mind. This started well, but within weeks I found myself wondering about the logistics of monetising this outlet. Within two months I had launched from scratch a limited company to sell my wares and was at various craft markets while undertaking strategic digital marketing campaigns across a multitude of social media platforms. What had been enjoyable quickly became stressful, and not to mention expensive. Fast forwarding another 4 months and we decided to put the house on the market and move our whole lives away from the area I had lived most of my life. This mandated a pause in running my business. From there delays in completing on the house, coupled with complications in my second pregnancy meant that large scale (and extremely expensive) business commitments had to be cancelled leading to significant financial losses for the company and additional, unwanted stress for me. This brings us to now and some serious, harsh self-reflection.
This period of life has felt a lot like I have been stumbling through the dark. I learnt a lot about business and marketing in my year of small business ownership which was all very far removed from the strongly scientific background of my academic education (and my business is still active and steady). However, I realised very quickly that I am mentally incapable of slowing down my pace of life, despite how stressful and unhappy constantly being on a self-inflicted treadmill was making me. This realisation has been somewhat of a pivotal moment for me. At around 6 months pregnant with my second child, a pregnancy that has been far from easy, I am beginning to have an understanding that no matter the success I achieve in my professional life, it will never be enough. It is in my very nature to always look for the next step, the next thing, the next idea. I suspect, not unlike a lot of other people out there, this drive is deeply routed in childhood "issues" that, after years of therapy, I am still unpicking. My worth, and the love or praise I have received in life, has always been intrinsically linked to my successes. As a result the over--achieving "part" of me has been so dominant for years that I have been unable, or perhaps unwilling, to listen to the other "parts" of my mind. Those creative, happy go lucky bits that I knew and loved in my early teenage years for example. Even when I tried to explore my creative "parts" the driver of success took over, made what should have been fun, stressful and "worthless unless it was for a purpose". If you have yet to read around "parts therapy" and internal family systems, I highly recommend it - the book "No Bad Parts" is a great starting point.
However, I am becoming more aware and accepting that true happiness is not possible without listening to and accepting the needs of all of your parts. It takes time and space to allow those less dominant parts to share their needs, wants and desires. This internal battle can be further complicated by those around you not fully understanding or appreciating that suddenly taking the foot off of the pedal is not you giving up or "failing", but in fact simply you recognising that constantly striving to do or achieve actually is not always in your best, or most complete, mental interest.
This brings us to now, 2023. A year where I hope to build a creative, peaceful and satisfying state of living. I am giving myself permission to be present with my family, to take time to grow things and tend to animals. Tend to myself even. Unapologetically taking the time to listen to all the parts of myself. To embrace and explore myself as a whole whilst raising my small humans. Embracing my accidental slow-living stay at home mum era whole-heartedly. However off-plan it may seem to be.