Letters to my daughters: January 2024

Eric Carle - The Very Hungry Caterpillar, 1969

Happy New Year my darling girls!

We’ve just said goodbye to cousins celebrating Christmas, and now we’re moving into a whole new year. I wonder what shifts and transformations 2024 will bring? If last year was anything to go by… quite a lot.

It’s funny when you spend time with family - who have known you forever, but may not have seen you for 6 months or so. ‘How you’ve grown!’ you hear them say, or ‘you’ve got soooo good at that!’ as you rattle off I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles on the piano for the thousandth time this week. It’s interesting to hear what they notice, and how we (as your parents) are reminded of the immense changes that you are going through every month of your life.

How. You’ve. Grown.

The changes you are experiencing are rapid and transformative - little-one, you couldn’t read this time last year. And not-so-little-one, you used to race past the piano on the way to your scooter - but now you’re drawn to it for another round of Bubbles. Every time. Things in family life are in constant flux - comings and goings of new fads, interests and preoccupations. And new ways of communicating and interacting and needing each other.

If there is one constant in parenting, it is change.

Don’t think we don’t notice you change too. (We do.) But the changes are not as apparent to us, or as clear as they may be to others. Your family provide a regular benchmark throughout your life - unwittingly tracking the changes as they pass. Like a real life wall, marked with your heights as you grow.

However much you do or do not get on with your relatives, they are important in that respect: they may have known you your whole life, and have seen you in your many iterations, styles, peaks and troughs. They remember you as you have been, see you where you are, and may yet witness you in your future.

Family are different, possibly, to friends - some of whom may come and go in different chapters of your life, who may only know you in a particular way. I have been thinking a lot about this lately. Life changed so dramatically when you came along into my world, and we moved city quite quickly after No.1 was born - so those I left behind don’t know me much as a mother; and those I came to know here don’t know me as anything but.

It has made me think about those people who remain constant in my life - who have known me well and have seen the transformations I have been through. Not all those family and friends remain firmly in my life: there can be a (sometimes painful) letting go of some relationships as our priorities shift and change - thanks to distance, or choices, or just an unfortunate out-of-synch-ness that results in silences and gaps in the conversation.

But it can also be rewarding to renew long lost relationships, putting in the effort to maintain a baseline knowledge of each other’s lives. For some, they broadcast events in an annual newsletter. For others, it can stay a bit superficial - ‘how’s your new job going?’. But for others still, it doesn’t really matter how long the gap - the rhythm or speech and the ways we interact just feel like a well-fitting glove. There is enough knowledge of and interest in each other for that connection to remain alive.

I do regret some of the long-losts that have become my past since having children. Partly because I would love them to know you more. (I am suitably proud of the butterflies you are slowly/quickly transforming into.) But also, I miss their knowledge of me, pre-children, to help remind me of the metamorphosis I have been through.

I do not long for times past, exactly. I am more confident and comfortable with myself on this side of parenting than I ever was before it. I have learned so much - adapted, innovated and refined myself - that I would not go back to more self-absorbed and awkward (albeit free-er) phases of my adult life. No thanks.

So maybe I want those long-losts to know me NOW. I wonder what that would be like? I think I would offer them a more honest, happier version of myself. But I would be changed to them. I am changed by motherhood. And mostly, I think, for the better.

For lots of people, this looking back might seem unnecessary. I certainly know a lot of people who are uncomfortable with even this level of navel-gazing. But to know what has changed for the better, and to reflect on the choices I took to cultivate that, gives me a kind of inner glow that is worth being alive to.

For me, it helps me recognise that I have agency, things can change, I can make good things happen. It helps me remember (in other more frustrated moments) that becoming a mother has forced me to change in very positive ways. I don’t think anyone really celebrates that. There are no awards for becoming a parent. But I think there is much to celebrate and acknowledge.

***

I talk to other mothers daily about the changes and transformations going on in their lives. Often, it’s hard to see the changes we go through as a beginning, middle and end - often because they are not linear in this way, but also because they tend to happen at a glacial pace that no one would particularly notice. But then we give a moment’s notice and, hey, here we are! Look what we’ve become! It’s easy to find ourselves questioning - ‘and how did we get here?!"‘

The beginning of the year is an opportunity to notice what has changed. What feels like a change for the better - and what for the worse? What can we do that we couldn’t before - or what choices have resulted in some thing new? What feels more difficult, limiting or frustrating than it did before? What needs your attention this year?

Its not navel-gazing, in my opinion, to give a moment’s thought to this. It helps us remember we have choices, things change, that we are more in control of our lives than we might think or feel. Parenting does have such a logistical quality to it, that it can often feel like we exist that the whims of our diaries and the competing and intersecting needs of others. It can mean that we feel a little out of touch with what our choices are, and how we want our world to be like. Logistics fatigue can set in.

Reflecting on the changes you have been through - and the many choices along the way - can be a helpful reminder that life is a series of choices. Some conscious, some not. Some biologically urged, others rationally designed. Some shaped by society, others by inner desire. They are worth getting to know. What we notice helps us choose better in the future.

It can also help to acknowledge what you have had to overcome in order for change to happen: that we might need to challenge beliefs or assumptions, or how we think or feel about something, in order for change to be possible. That’s the big work, in my opinion. And immensely rewarding; it’s the groundwork for confidence to be safely built upon.

***

And so what will your transformations be like this year, my darlings? Even as children, what will your choices be? How will your preferences and desire shape what you commit to, what you resist? How will your food choices change (do you think we could all eat the same meal, please, this year!)? What will be your favourite colour this year, and how will that affect what you choose to wear? How will new friends change who you are; how will old friends remind you of who you have been?

Motherhood has enabled me to flex, to adapt and to succumb to the constant shifts and changes that occur in each of us, and between us, as we move through this family life together. How to surrender to change. It is not something I anticipated learning as a parent, but is is a daily experience. And it’s a useful quality, I think. One much undervalued by those on the outside (like so many qualities of parenting). Imagine the award ceremony for parenting… ‘and the award for deepest surrender and greatest ability to change goes to….’!

Well, I’m going to give it to me.

I’m happy for someone to challenge the legitimacy and impartiality of my decision - but for now, while no one else is recognising the immense life changes I have been through as a parent - ones that I am proud of and want my long-losts to know about - I’m going to hang onto that particular gong.

Here’s to change, my darlings. May we expect it. May we manage it well. And may we celebrate what it brings.

From your loving mother x