TAMING MY TIGER

Debbie Tembo - 16 Oct 14

When did becoming a mother mean forgetting to look after yourself? Of course, I’m guilty of doing this myself, but now that the girls are growing up and becoming more independent, I feel like “Wait, hang on a moment, what just happened to me in the last 5 years of my life?!”

That doesn’t mean that I’m sorry that I nurtured my kids the way that I did, that I sacrificed my career to be at home to nurture them full-time, I just mean that I shouldn’t have forgotten to take care of some parts of the youthful single me – I shouldn’t have suppressed her for so long.

So this got me thinking about why some women like myself, find ourselves feeling like “something’s not quite right with this picture”, because when I think back, nobody ever told me to stop being me or to stop enjoying some of the more youthful indulgences I liked. So why then, did I suppress those things that I cared about deeply and that in many ways, made me the woman that I was, in many respects, still am. I think that what really happened is that I fell prey to my own expectations of myself.

I’ve been walking around for five or so years, blaming society, “mummy” groups and whoever else I could, for placing such high expectations on me to be “the good mother”, “the responsible mother”, “the perfect mother”, “the well-put-together mother”, “the tone, flat-tummy mother”, etc. when all along it was me telling myself to be all of those things, because like I said before, when I think back, no-one ever uttered those expectations to me. Even if I tried to place the blame by telling myself that even if they didn’t say it, they were thinking it, I’d still be lying to myself, because lets be realistic, I’m not clairvoyant and I don’t know what goes on inside the heads of other people! So why then, did I place these high expectations on myself? Where did it all come from?

I think that there are two reasons. The first is that I’m an obsessive perfectionist, I was before kids, I’m getting tamer with kids, but on the whole, I’d say I’m pretty much still an obsessive compulsive. I find it incredibly difficult to just let go and let things be – that is reserved for my yoga practice and I know that I definitely need to integrate many of the principles on the mat in to my life off the mat!

It therefore is no surprise that some of my own expectations of myself as a parent are sometimes verging on ridiculous and I’m trying to be more gentle with myself, to be more forgiving of myself and to be okay with everything not being on its place all the time (for that, I’d need a permanent housekeeper and I’m nowhere near that reality yet).

It’s a daily struggle, but when you’re conscious of it, it helps to give you perspective. I no longer believe in good and bad parenting, I only believe in conscious parenting and as a result, I thank the universe that my expectations of myself aren’t transferred to my children. Yes, I’ve mentioned in a previous post that I expect my children to have self-respect and respect for others – that’s the only expectation and I think it’s a reasonable one considering its a basic human tenet.

The second reason is what I like to call “the mummy pressure,” put simply, competitive mothering. The thing about it is that most of the time, we don’t even mean to be competitive, but it’s so hard not to get caught up in it – no surprise really when we live in the age of tiger and helicopter mothering and hothouse education. It’s interesting when I think about how idealistic I was to think that motherhood would be such a leveller for women, and in many respects, it has been when I’ve met like-minded mothers. In other ways, it has been the biggest competition of my life!

In my experience, there are two types of competitiveness – there’s the one that aims to “one-up” one mum against another, and then there’s the other, which is more about comparing to learn and explore together. Sometimes we get too caught up in the “one-upping,” or it starts out innocently and then goes horribly pear-shaped and before you know it, you’ve forgotten all about what’s really important to you and your family, and you’re completely rearranging your life to ensure that you’re keeping up. And, that’s where and when we start to place unrealistic inauthentic expectations on ourselves. I am guilty of being in so many situations where this has happened and every time that I have made a decision based on what’s good for someone else and not me, I have paid for it dearly, because those expectations weren’t mine to begin with.

The more I hit my stride in motherhood, the more confidence I gain to question the status quo, to silence the inner and outer voices that are trying to instil fear in me by whispering “you’re not doing enough to ensure your children’s success in the world”, and instead to focus on making my experience a less stressful and more enjoyable one. If my goal is to raise happy carefree children, then surely, I need to be a happy carefree mother – easier said than done, but it’s a worthy expectation that both myself and my children will benefit from. I need to start taming my tiger.

Read more posts by Debbie Tempo here

Debbie Tembo

I am Debbie, I am Mme (which means mother in Sesotho) and I am Me. I am Mme to two beautiful daughters, Lerato aged 5.5 years and Nia aged 3.5 years. I am South African-born, from the beautiful city of Cape Town, but London, UK is what I've been calling my home for the past 7 years. I am a marketing professional with work experience in the FMCG sector and in a strategic brand and innovation agency but since starting a family my career has been somewhat on ice. I started blogging as the first step in doing more for me and living out my personal mantra of "courage in my diversity over mediocrity". This is my journey, this is Mme and Me.

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