Sometimes as mothers

we miss who we once were

About a year ago, I was talking to my cousin, who is an art therapist. One topic led to another and soon I found myself telling her something that I’d only ever told one person before.

Over the past couple of years I had been spontaneously crying in my kitchen, while driving the kids to school, in different places in my daily life. Not every day, only occasionally when I wasn’t expecting it. They were tears of grief. I was grieving my sister, or my best friend who had moved away and I missed her so much…

…but my sister or my best friend hadn’t moved away.

And I was confused why I felt so empty and lonely and missed her so much when no-one had left me.

My cousin suggested that perhaps I was missing myself. Grieving who I was before I had children.

This resonated so deeply within me that I felt compelled to express and process these emotions though art. I began to write poems and take photos to express the loneliness and the confusion, the grief and overwhelm.

I talked to other mums and when I tentatively suggested this grief that I was feeling I was blown away that the first reaction was a visible inhale and a “oh my goodness YES! I know what you mean!”

It was deeply comforting to know that there was a whole sisterhood of women who feel and have felt the same way and that this can be talked about openly and freely as we come to understand and heal and process these hectic and lifechanging years of matrescence.

I will soon be launching a book full of poetry and poetic imagery to express not only this grief, but also the grief of miscarriage and the overwhelm of matrescence and later motherhood.

I’ll be sharing more poems and thoughts and ponderings here as I near my book launch, and then beyond, into the evolution of me as an artist and writer.

Thankyou for being here, thankyou for reading!

Jessi

(Photos by Jessica Story, model Lucy St Jack)