Patience

I don’t remember needing to be as patient with other people as I have learned to be with my children, my partner, or myself, since I became a mother. Maybe I was always deeply impatient - wanting to get somewhere, be seen or heard, recognised for something. Let’s face it, I am hardly saint-like in my patience now. But it is definitely a quality I have had to nurture, cultivate, shape and hone as I have moved through the last 10 years of pregnancy, birth and motherhood.

And I watch mother after mother doing the same: slowing down to the pace of their smallest team member, taking a breath and counting to 10 so their toddler can do the same, catching their responses and choosing them carefully as their teenager breaks away. Mothers learn patience. They have to. And they do so, so others can find theirs. It is a kind of gift, but often one built on hours of practice, frustration and the skeletons of failed attempts.

It can also be a huge source of shame and guilt, to loose ones patience with a child. But really, we all have our limits - and demonstrating where the end of our patience is can also be a well crafted skill that shows others where our boundaries lie. For others meeting us at that point, we demonstrate a care for each other, not just the other.

A virtue

Known as one of the virtues, and a universally feminine quality, it is often associated with a goddess like grace and the epitome of humility. It might even be a headline in the description of an arcane superwoman - so rare and extraordinary - that us mere mortals need to work hard to exude this genteel quality.

It takes great effort, for sure - but it is not reserved for the goddesses. In fact, mothers routinely employ and commit to patience to enable their children to learn, to grow, to make mistakes. In fact, Patience, if crafted well and if life-choices permit, can even be rewarding, fun, and a pleasure to provide.

It is virtuous, because it is inherently generous - a gift - where you can use humour and language and connection to ease something, slow things down and manage expectations. It is the salve to moments of friction and difficulty, one offered where nothing is expected in return. Done well, patience is not a currency - not loaded with returns - but rather a moment to moment connection with others that creates space, calm and agency.

A loosening

Things can feel tight in family life - tensions or pressures, deadlines or expectations of others. We find time whizzing by, whilst we watch our children become, and then stretch, and then move away. The days are long, but the years are short and we need patience for both.

We can also find ourselves impatient to return to a former self, or desperate to feel a sense of ME again - wanting to be able to fit into old clothes again, or get the new job that works with family life, or feel like there’s enough resource available to do what we want. We learn to be patient with ourselves as well as others, when we parent. We mothers often have to wait for our needs to be met.

We have to be patient from the moment we conceive - waiting to discover what will happen to our bodies, our minds, our identities. Some of us need extreme patience for conception, for IVF, for dealing with the trauma of miscarriages. All this gritty patience often goes unnoticed, unknown beyond the bubble of a partnership or family. It’s there. And it is a precious resource.

For others, there is patience in pregnancy, and the many not knowings that happen throughout. Our expectations and limited knowledge are often dashed, replaced by realities we can’t easily prepare for. We must remain patient; there is no alternative.

Patience becomes a loosening - a handy tool with which to remodel our expectations for how things will play out. It is a teasing out of time and energy and perspective so that we can see or do something new. And it shifts and changes throughout our time as parents.

A rock

We are often the rocks in our family: stable, anchored, smoothed by waves crashing time after time against our surfaces. Our patience grows with our children - requiring different types of patience as they develop and need new ways of relating. Our patience for our children is born out of devotion and love. It is also born out of knowing which path creates the least resistance - for that is the golden ticket in parenting, most of the time.

But when we do need to resist - to show when our patience runs out - we offer a different kind of gift. One of care and respect for the self. Why is it that we can be so fabulously patient with others - to enable them to shift and grow and learn - and yet so aggressively impatient with ourselves?

Is it that idea that patience is a virtue that means we often shuffle our genuine and valid needs in the world to the bottom of the list?

Is it a wider societal norm that being impatient is ugly, sinful, disrespectful - and that women, of all people, should demonstrate patience beyond and in place of their own self-worth? (I feel this story needs rewriting somewhat…)

We are the rock for our families. Others break their waves upon us. We employ and give patience to be able to withstand it all. And yet we still break our own waves upon ourselves too. It feels too much sometimes.

A celebration

So here’s to the quiet patience, the intake of breath, the counting to 10 in your head. Here’s to the smile and the joy at someone else’s unfurling in the safety of our patient wait. Here’s to the breath and the bodily knowledge that this too will change. Here’s to the solid, stable and ready - the love, the generosity, and the safety we offer in our patience.

We are remarkable, us mothers. No one is perfect, and even our patience is likely flawed and dented when the forces acting upon us are just too much to bear. But we are remarkable nonetheless, and the world is lucky to have our patience. Our families are lucky. Our children, colleagues and partners too. It is a fine quality, maybe finite as it may be, but one that holds real magic inside it.