Berenice Howard-Smith
I've told a lot of stories to myself.
I have written them, attempted to live them, 'Rightmove'd' them, taken them on holiday, and discarded them amongst life litter. With the debris are my hopes, fears, and dreams, haunted by a parallel life in which I balanced a child on my hip and morphed inexplicably into a cool mom.
My sketchbooks are a mixed media testimony to moments when I was stuck in a mortal place, unable to feel the liquidity of emotion.
I 'wasn't myself', as we often say, without perhaps knowing who we are. That vision of our parenting self fades to a ghostly figure; there’s a space that we try to fear less. A blank canvas of sorts. It’s terrifying and overwhelming.
Creation has a forward motion. My story had to go forward, on and on, to be more and faster, efficient and on and on … to show unknown souls that I was something better than the mother I could have been. To work harder than ever before, so I - and those around me - might forget the liminal space between the life I felt I should have been living and this one I was stuck with. Keep going, keep going, and keep hoping … it'll be okay.
I'll show 'em.
'Em.
The person who said they felt pity for me. That mum who avoided me in the street when she heard I was childless and the colleague who said she didn't understand why I was tired and that person who … You know an 'em. All those people we are tired of knowing who artlessly supply their solutions, and conclude without listening that we require stitching back together. So sincerely said that we are tempted to cling to threads of hope that might lead us back to parenthood.
All my friends were pregnant - the world seemed to be so I must have missed something. Was I not doing it right? It all seemed so easy. I believed them briefly.
My story contained two endings. The End, or To Be Continued.
I avoided myself thus The End felt agreeable for a while until I became aware of people like me. Like you, perhaps? The touch of a hand. A kind word. A request for help. Gradually morphing gestures and expressions dragged me into a place of curiosity. No revelation, no big hurrah, or a defined moment of clarity; it just was.
I wasn't myself, and I didn't want to know her. (You can find out how 'no plan B whatsoever' got to here on some very nervous first episodes of the Full Stop podcast). In creating a podcast with two friends, I had to get to know myself. Not least because in telling other stories, we tell our own.
All the while, I told myself that I didn't want to go backward to who I was before 'childlessness'. Yet here I am, full circle (or full stop?). My old self, that me who hoped she'd be a mother, was an artist. Knew the art of play and, didn't worry so much about the consequences, and was open to taking leaps of faith.
I found her again; I threw in my redundancy money on a Masters, and indulged in a life-long love of design when I could have had one more (fragile) go at being a parent.
It's taken years to know I'm not myself; I won't see that woman again. But who I am becoming is acceptable.
The End seems so far from now, but it is ever present when I stand on the beach where life seems to have stopped. With the salt in my hair, a full sketchbook, my rescue dog Molly at my feet, and my home beckoning, I turn to it with hope.
I'll meet you there.
Love
Berenice
