Columnists / Tessa Lidstone
‘Being a mum is valuable, unquantifiable, rewarding, hard, fun and scary’
I was waiting in the reception of my eldest daughter’s school a little while ago. Parents had been asked to go in and talk to the children about their jobs and another mum and I were there with that task in mind. I asked her what her job was and she told me. Then she added: “I’m going to tell the class that I’m also a mum.”
Also a mum.
I’ve thought about this often since. I am ALSO a mum. It’s a bit like Clark Kent saying: “I’m also Superman.”
is needed now More than ever
Oh, I know, there is only one Superman, and mums, well, mums are everywhere. They are two a penny! But still, that does not stop ‘being a mum’ from being one of the most incredible jobs a human can be.
Five years ago I read a book in a postnatal fog. The book’s title was What mothers do – especially when it looks like nothing. It was written by a rather special woman called Naomi Stadlen who compiled it based on her years of conversations with mums.
Naomi explains that few jobs leave us so alone, so unsupported, but with so much responsibility, as motherhood. It is arguably the most valuable job in society. But also the most unquantifiable. And rewarding. And hard. And fun. And shit-scary.
I distinctly remember looking, from the bath, at my newborn baby, in her Moses basket on the bathroom floor, and feeling that I would never be able to do anything ever again where I hadn’t first thought of her. It made me feel trapped then. Later, that feeling changed into something altogether more comforting. This is my role. I am the only person who can be my daughters’ mum. They inform everything I do.
Even when they are not with me.
There are some people who believe that mums should not work; that somehow being a working mum makes you less of a mum. Half restaurant manager / half mum. Half is never as good as a whole. On wobblier days it is easy to believe this is true, but sometimes two halves are greater than a whole.
It is poignant to me that it was only when I went back to work after having my first child that I realised that being a mum was something that I was good at. And so I try to say loudly and proudly that I am a working mum (because it is something that I am proud of).
I am a mum. A working mum. I am ALSO a mum. Always.
Tessa Lidstone is a mum of two girls, an uncontrollable liker of Bristol docks photos on Instagram and not the chef at BOX-E.
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