I am excited to share with you
the publication of my second book, Moods of Motherhood, just in time to mark the
second birthday of Dreaming Aloud.
Hurray for me, hurray for you - so glad you're here, dearest dreamers!
So what about this book, Lucy, I hear you ask, what's it about???
Well, dear reader, it is a compilation of my best-loved posts on motherhood from Dreaming Aloud, my columns from
JUNO magazine and many new pieces, never before published. This is a book full of my trademark searing honesty and raw emotions. It will make you laugh and cry - wherever on your mothering journey you may be.
Topics include:
tenderness, pregnancy and birth, happy days, anger and fierceness, playfulness, love, patience, homemaking and much, much more... it is illustrated throughout with beautiful black and white photographs.
I really wanted to put all the glory stuff that I have written about motherhood into one place, so that you can hold me in your hands, so that you can snuggle up with all the best bits in the cosy warmth of your bed, rather than the cold blue light of your computer screen.
I have put it together by topic so that you can dip in and out, wherever you are in your mothering journey. Pick it up for wisdom, reassurance, a laugh, some empathy. Take me to the park in your bag, keep me by your bed, or on your bookshelf... what a funny concept! See a review
here and
here.
Perhaps you have a friend or sister who isn't into blogs, but you wanted to share Dreaming Aloud with her... well now you can!
You can buy it from me at The Happy Womb - all copies are signed and come with one of my brand new bookmarks! It is also available in Kindle and Paperback from
Amazon.com and
Amazon.co.uk.
Please do leave me a review on Amazon!
Let me share with you
the introduction...
My
grandmother always said: “You are your baby’s weather.” How true that
is! There is nothing more remarkable about the act of mothering than the
changing moods. The weather of motherhood can seemingly alter from
moment to moment, day to day, a rollercoaster of emotions stronger than
one has ever experienced before. The stakes, after all, are far higher
than anything we have ever played for before: the very life, health and
happiness of a creature that is our own flesh and blood.
On
reading back over my blog, I noticed how contrasting posts follow one
day after the other – all so real, yet so intangible. Like the weather
we are only left with vague memories and snapshots of how hot or cold it
was, no real yardstick of the tempests and sunshine of our mothering
years.
Other mothers were drawn to these posts, these
outpourings of emotion, frustration, joy and despondency. It seems we
are all yearning for a reflection of our own tumultuous experiences, a
validation of the endless emotional turmoil and physical exhaustion
which motherhood reeks in our lives. We seem to lack a language to share
both the mundane repetitiveness of our daily mothering lives, as well
as a forum for sharing the deeper emotional parts. For perhaps the first
time in history, the mothers of the twentieth and twenty first
centuries mothered alone, in separate houses, often far from family
support. The job of parenting is not meant to be handled by one adult,
it takes a tribe.
Few of us entered the role prepared, though we
might have been expecting (some) sleepless nights and smelly nappies,
the all-consuming nature of motherhood lay hidden, until we were well
and truly embarked on our maiden voyage. The sweetness of a first baby’s
smile did not reveal the cacophony of demands which another child - or
three - would bring.
Most knew how they wanted to be, and what
they most certainly would not do. And then after the first glow of
motherhood had worn off, the disappointments begin stacking up: the
ideals which had fallen by the wayside, the perfection not achieved, due
to lack of energy, experience, insight or something else.
And at
that point we can despair and see ourselves as failing. But the
mothering journey, does not, cannot stop that day, even though we feel
we cannot continue. And it is in overcoming these moments that we find
ourselves as the mothers we truly are. In this moment we let the perfect
mother die, and embrace our quirky, impatient, silly, messy, deeply
loving mother selves.
This book is far from a parenting manual
written by an objective expert. Rather it is the life of a mother –
warts and all. It is compiled from posts written for my blog, Dreaming
Aloud, published articles and previously unpublished work. So here, for
you, is a journey through the emotional terrain of a mother, from humour
to heartbreak, though the story is mine, it could be yours.
When I
was the mother of one, I thought I was an expert. Which is why I became
a writer on parenting issues! As the mother of three, I have been
humbled to my core. I have realised just how much I don’t know or can’t
do – and just how little I am “in control”. And yet ironically with that
knowledge and acceptance, comes a little more wisdom, and a lot more
experience.
I see new friends starting out on the road to
motherhood with mixed feelings. Immense joy at the ecstasy of love they
are about to experience, great protectiveness, wishing to shield them
from the scars it will make on their souls, the pain, the heart ache,
the worry, the exhaustion, the touching of anger which they had been
able to keep hidden all these years. But this is the journey. The one
that makes us the mothers that we will be. The mothers that our children
will live with every day, yet barely know.
Becoming a mother
brings with it such a vast raft of complications for the psyche, before
you add the momentous task of caring for a small and ever-changing child
to the mix. Becoming a mother reawakens our own feelings, good and bad,
about our own mothers. It changes our relationship with our partner
forever: suddenly we are not just lovers but parents. And it shifts us
instantaneously into the next generation, causing potentially seismic
shifts in friendships where one set are not parents and we now are. Not
to mention the adjustment between us and our families of origin. And
that is before we even consider the massive shift in roles for most
modern women from full time work or study out in the world, to suddenly
being at home, if only for the first weeks, with a small being who needs
you all the time. Ideas of women’s roles in society suddenly become
less abstract or idealised, and the whole dilemma of who cares for the
child, who works, who pays the bills and how suddenly become pressing
realities with few ideal answers.
Very often I find it hard to be
really mentally present with my children – though I aspire to be. I find
the demands of motherhood too intense, their needs too much. And so I
do what I know, what I love: I write. In writing I capture the mood, the
moment in a more effective way than my whirling thoughts and fuzzy
memory could ever hope to. And so I find that even in my moments of
despair, distraction and elation I was present. And in these vignettes
of mothering life, and the images which accompany them, I have captured
the whole process of motherhood which was at times almost unbearable in
the actual living of it.
And so I have it here in all its
preciousness to savour, and give thanks for, from the safe distance of
time and the security of the written word. Yet, as I read back, I
realise with great poignancy that these babies who I am capturing have
grown, without me noticing, despite my almost daily writing about them.
They are bigger and stronger, little rugged human beings out in the
world. Little humans that I co-created, that I carried in my belly and
fed from my breast. I feel like I need to pinch myself, it doesn’t seem
real, or even possible. And yet it is. And that is the miracle of
motherhood.
The most important thing about this motherhood lark is
that we know that we are not alone. That we are not the only ones
feeling these feelings and living these experiences. Surround yourself
with like-minded allies to laugh and cry with, to confide in and
gratefully accept support from.
I look forward to sharing my journey with you and hope that it might give you insight and support in your own.
Lucy Pearce
From the back cover...
"Moods
of Motherhood traces the life of a mother: her tenderness, joy, anger,
love, frustration, grief and gratitude. Compiled from posts written for
her popular blog, Dreaming Aloud, her best-loved columns from JUNO
magazine and many new pieces. This is a book full of Lucy Pearce's
trademark searing honesty and raw emotions. It will make you laugh and
cry - wherever on your mothering journey you may be. Though the story is
hers, it could be yours."
*
(Discount valid to midnight (GMT), this Sunday, 4th November, use valid to one product per customer).
