Emerging from the unseen to craft a life of fullness in motherhood.

moving beyond the discomfort and expectation in winterspring of mothering.

Lyndsay Kaldor

Apr 11, 2024

“Yes, I deserve a spring — I owe nobody nothing”.

—Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary: Being Extracts from the Diary of Virginia Woolf.

Hello everyone

I hope you are all doing well this week… have you felt the shimmers of spring?

Even as the tulips emerge in the garden, I still feel very much in the dance of winterspring. I didn’t know when I wrote that post in early March, that I would be referring to it quite so much, but it does feel as though it speaks to a broader, deeper experience and life chapter, than that of an annual seasonal shift.

As I started to write this week, I found myself needing to write an introduction to give my thoughts context which became a prequel, and so that is what today’s letter is, a preface that feels like a necessary part of the story. It speaks to the underlying feelings of discomfort in the in-between, the unseen and ‘not enoughness’ as I shift those perceptions into creating a life of fullness.

Something I mention in the post is the creative work I crave, including collaboration and events — both of which tie in to the first Holding Stories creative gathering in London on Saturday 20th April, an entwined offering from myself and

Lauren Barber

. We hope it will be a time to both nurture and inspire your creative unfolding in the seasons ahead. If you are in the UK and able to join us, a week on Saturday, we would love to gather with you — read more here.

Book your space

And I hope you will find some time to join me in this an exploration of time, space, truth and emergence as we pave our way in the unfolding seasons ahead…

Comfort zones.

I became comfortable in winter, in those the earliest of days — the cold, dark, impossible and inhospitable weeks of January and February when the wind swirled and I cocooned for two long winters with each of my January babies (in 2020 and 2022). A hibernal state imposed by myself, in response to the needs of my babies and the conditions outside our front door.

I became used to wrapping them up at home, the outer shell often a soft cloth sling, their tummies pressing on mine as they curled into me, finding familiarity and closeness there. I found comfort and recognition in the fact that my babies didn’t know they were separate from me yet. My rounded body was still their home and they didn’t need much more than that.

When they met their first spring-times, there was still a primal need for proximity. Into summer and beyond, evenings were spent lying next to sleeping babies; naps were taken on long walks in the sling; the invisible but strong tie of breastfeeding stretching well beyond the first year.

Tentative emergence.

Now four years into the metamorphosis of matrescence1, I am feeling the discomfort in this life chapter of winterspring, a tentative reemergence whilst navigating the contrast between what is expected and what is true for me.

My children no longer need me for moment-to-moment survival, and yet I am drawn ever closer as they traverse the dynamic and challenging landscape of growth. As their understanding evolves and they move through developmental chapters, learning more about the world and their place in it, they crave both independence and closeness, often within the same breath — a cauldron of untamed emotion, their imaginations wild too, especially in the dark of the night.

Choosing mothering.

Perhaps the intensity of my early mothering days (magnified by the Covid pandemic in my daughter’s case) that I had not anticipated or been prepared for, has paved the way for me to be pulled to having my children with me (and close family) for much of their formative, preschool years. A choice I know I am very fortunate to be able to make, but at the same time isn’t the easy option.

Mothering brings with it layers of simultaneous unravelling and becoming — in amongst the mundanity, repetition and tedium are the inspired, magical moments of clarity.
My world has become small, and yet the little things have become the big things, and the characters within it are larger than life.
The physicality and strength required sits alongside a need for a gentle tending and holding of emotional states, theirs and my own, which often requires re-patterning deep within.
There is the boundless responsibility of modelling and guiding them to find their place in the world, allowing them to fall in love with it, as well as keeping them safe from it.
The outpouring of love sits alongside the rawness of anger and the inevitable rupture, and the repair.
My nervous system feels constantly activated from the sensory overload, as well the heightened vigilance as I am on high alert for perceived risk (from the very minor to full-blown catastrophe…).

And when I am not with them, my time overflows with a million things I can’t do whilst in sole charge and in the company of two spirited children — including the creative work I crave, producing words, crafting events and immersing myself in collaboration; as well taking time to find my edges again, delicately piecing together the parts of me and envisioning how this all finds form in an unfolding future.

From The Whole Woman oracle deck by Laura Lewis.

Just a mum — an odyssey of the unseen.

Despite this feeling of fullness, I am often at a loss of what to say when people ask me the (dreaded) question, “so what do you do?”. Numerous times I have uttered the words “I’m just a mum” whilst gesturing wildly at the inevitable chaos unfolding around me, as if to explain how indeed being ‘just’ a mum is in fact entirely all-consuming, demanding, challenging work.

And although I know all of this deeply within the bones of my everyday existence, there is a feeling that I am not doing enough — that my lack of acceptable response to the question of what I do elicits the idea that I am sitting at home (admittedly this is my own projection and I don’t know the thoughts of others). Whilst knowing that the work I am doing as a mother is of utmost importance to me, our family and, collectively alongside every other caregiver, it is a radical act of hope for the future of society — the pervading feeling of not enoughness in a wider societal context has seeped into my consciousness.

All of the work I am doing is unseen and unpaid, it is hard to describe and therefore holds very little external, tangible value.

It is an odyssey of the unseen, a path of deep trust originating from somewhere within, it is invisible work undertaken from the inside out — I am laying foundations in my children’s lives, and in my life as I envision it in its most vibrant form, alongside my children.

As I dig deep to orient myself in orbit of two little beings, I find myself both swept away and also existing in my fullest expression when I am with them.

No going back.

Despite this new way of being, there seems to be an imposed obsession with going back — for us to operate as we did before we had children, before we were stretched beyond our edges with the marks to prove it emblazoned on our skin; before our hearts expanded beyond our softened bodies; and before the wrinkles creased the corners of our eyes from sleepless nights, tears of exasperation and of laughter.

I remember in my early postpartum days being asked if I felt “back to normal yet?” — thankfully I realised very early on that in fact there was no going back, that would be far too convenient. In my experience, babies are anything but — they certainly do not fit into our lives as they once were, into our illusion of control, into labels, strict routines (or even cots in my experience). Instead they spill beyond the boundaries — they are messy, magical and unapologetically themselves as they demand the world from us with unrelenting conviction.

A new sense of time.

Time as a mother no longer exists on a clock or a calendar, it is in the waking hours or the sleepiness in a baby’s eyes, it is absorbed in the hours of rocking, holding and soothing; and it is in the new shoots in spring and the fading petals in autumn. There is another temporal dimension, coined maialogical time (Maia meaning mother in Greek) by Robbie Pfeufer Kahn, a term Kahn created to stand for the period of the woman’s life where she gives birth and breastfeeds, this is a time “of mutuality, inter-relatedness, interaction and reciprocity. It is a slower time, closely connected to bodily rhythms”.2

Unlike mechanised linear time, there is a deep connection with life processes, like cyclical time, it is grounded in the richness of life. Perhaps this is why whilst being immersed in maialogical time, I felt anchored into place by the blossom on the trees and how the light fell on the living room wall, over the time showing on the clock or by the date in my diary.

It is not a case of forward and back. It is a visceral experience of expanding beyond the edges of ourselves, of becoming one with another, of peeling ourselves apart again and re-learning how to be. It is as though the messy haze of mothering cannot be understood, harnessed or contained by our societal structures — instead they exist to squeeze us back into our past lives; to undermine us if we try to step into a bold new way of being; or indeed deplete us if we dare to dance within both worlds.

Finding fullness and form in transition.

As I move deeper into this feeling of tentative emergence, I feel a pull to shape my days much like I did when I very slowly emerged from the cocoon of new motherhood. I am not looking for a strict, linear routine but rather a rhythm, a cadence and a feeling of familiarity to guide me. Although I now do not plan too far ahead or attempt to control, instead led by the conditions as they present themselves and a deeper sense of inner knowing, I want to be intentional about the way things unfold in this new chapter.

I hope that soon I will have the conviction to answer the enquiries into the way I spend my time, unapologetically — by talking to the quiet consideration and discernment required to craft a life that is filled with work that lights me up from within, whilst honouring my role as a mother. I hope to forge a creative way of being that doesn’t neatly box me in or deplete me, that allows for the wildness and the fullness of life.

I would love to hear how a life of fullness looks to you? And of any barriers you have experienced along the way…?

Thank you so much for reading — I hope we can chat more in the comments, or of course feel free to send me an email with your thoughts.