“It takes a village to raise a child” is a proverb in dire need of a modern update. Yes, it does take a village. But crucially… No, you don’t have one anymore.
It reassures me that of course motherhood feels so tough because I am not 50 people and simultaneously makes me so desperately sad that I don’t have the 50 people I need.
And I am one of the lucky ones. I have a supportive husband, I have grandparents close enough and willing enough to wade into the chaos on a weekly basis. I have slowly built up a support network of mums to decompress with.
Yet, yet.
Where is the person I need when the baby won’t stop crying and neither will the toddler? When they both want and need my arms around them, my eyes resting on them. And all I want to do is disappear under my duvet and feel someone’s arms around me. When it’s 5pm, I’m shattered, I’m trying to drain a pan of boiling pasta without spilling it on an already upset child. When I know I still have to navigate bathtime, bedtime and everything in between. When I don’t have the energy to leave my house but I also don’t have the energy to stay trapped between its walls.
It’s in those micro-moments that I miss the village. I miss the opportunity for shared meals, for someone ‘on hand’ to quickly pass a baby to, to look after the toddler whilst I find a quiet spot for the baby to sleep, to make me a cup of tea and let me sit down and drink it still hot.
I want to look after my children full time but the full time is So Full Time. I also want some rest. I need that rest.
We must accept and mourn the village that is so needed and yet does not exist. And yet we can do something about it. We can look around and feel gratitude for the village we do have around us, however small their role may be. For the neighbor that lends us enough dishwasher tablets to see us through to the next shop, for the grandparents who walk through the door and pick up all the pieces for a few hours each week, for the husband who is on your side.
The village. We no longer birth straight into it. We slowly build it over time.
Some of it we buy in – like ready meals and cleaners and childcare. Some of it we find by chance – like the most amazing mum friend met out picking blackberries from the same set of bushes. Some we intentionally and with effort source by returning to the same baby group, by shyly asking to exchange numbers, by arranging that first play date.
We hear stories and advice not from our elders, but through podcasts, online courses, Instagram accounts. We reach out and ask anonymous questions of mum forums and do our best to share our own expertise there too. We may mourn that this contact is not in person, but we see the silver lining: we can reach out and connect from the comfort of our own bed, baby in arms, hair unwashed, tears stained on our cheeks.
It’s a strange paradox: often we live in a village of two, of us and our child, and yet at the same time we exist in a village of thousands who live in the small box we carry around with us. Our village is both far too small and far too large. We are alone with a child and a thousand opinions, often strongly opposing, all at the same time.
So unless we all uproot and start a commune, there is no fucking village anymore. But there are some threads of connection, which when expertly woven together, create enough of a comfort blanket to see us through.
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