My first daughter – Zen Toddler (or, more accurately, Zen
Pre-schooler, these days) – taught me to be brave. I wanted to bestow upon her
the belief that she could live the life she wants to live and be the person she wants to
be, and I felt that she’d be much more able to accept that as a possibility if
she saw me do the same. Hence, a frightening, intuitive leap into freelancing
and a career I’d dreamed of for over
twenty years. I doubt I’d ever have had the nerve, if not for her.
I drafted this post sitting upstairs in our Mediterranean
holiday home while listening to the (somewhat misnomered) Zen Baby rage angrily
against Mr Z. Zen Baby is very angry, very often.
There. I said it.
I’ve avoided saying for a long time, anxious not to swaddle
her in a label that she cannot wriggle free from, or to lock her into a
self-perpetuating definition. But she’s hard work. This has been a hard year. I
had optimistic plans to steer my career in a new direction, get Zen Mummy
fully-established, be a more active participant in the natural parenting
community, lose the baby weight through yoga and mindful eating, plus a few
other creative ventures I’d hoped to develop …
Instead, I’ve got two stone of baby weight left, and too
many half-started projects to show for it. Fitting my full-time job around the
full-time job of placating not-so-Zen Baby has left me just a shade short of
burnt out.
There could be all sorts of reasons why she’s the way she
is: innate temperament, elevated cortisol levels due to my heavy pregnancy workload,
a need to battle for my undivided attention in a way that my first-born never
had to, hyper-intelligence, a chemical imbalance, demonic possession …. I’ve considered
them all.
Still, she is who she is. The unique juxtaposition of my
genes and Mr Z’s created this feisty little individual, as tempestuous as her sister
is placid. And instead of trying to ‘fix’ her, my choice is to focus on working
out what it is she’s here to teach me. To be less reactive, more responsive, maybe? To
reduce my ‘to do’ list so that I’m less preoccupied, more present? To mirror
back my own temper-tendencies, so that I can acknowledge them, amend them? I
don’t know yet.
But there’s a lesson to be learned here, for sure. There has
to be. Because otherwise? Otherwise it’s just been a fairly crappy year.
PS: the flowers at the top of the page are from the garden of our holiday home. No idea what they are. Gorgeous, aren't they?
PS: the flowers at the top of the page are from the garden of our holiday home. No idea what they are. Gorgeous, aren't they?
