I saw a post on Instagram last week that made me stop scrolling and think. I was sitting on my bed at the time and the skin on my face felt tight because I’d been crying. I’d recently closed my laptop after an online therapy session that had wrung me out. Sometimes these sessions leave me empty in a good way, like a cleared-out cupboard, an emotional reset. But on this occasion I felt stirred up and frustrated, chasing a resolution that seemed impossible to capture.
So when I read a post by Women Are Mad Podcast asking ‘What’s making you f***ing furious this Friday?’, I paused. Hunched against my headboard, hiding in a house scattered with daughters at the end of another week, a head full of unwritten words, I wondered if it was possible that this ‘frustration’ I was feeling was actually fury. Was I ‘f***ing furious’? This is what I typed in the comments:
‘Feeling frustrated professionally and annoyed that my emotional response to life might be perceived as neediness or hysteria. I think I’m angry because I’m an empath’
And then I added a crying with laughter emoji just in case anyone took me seriously. When I look back at these words now I am annoyed that I directed my anger at myself, but not remotely surprised. If I dig deep and don’t reduce my feelings to a comment on Instagram, I am angry because it is very hard for me to work, and that makes me frustrated and sad. I am angry because I have so much I want to achieve professionally and creatively and I am finding it hard to do that amongst the demands of full time caring and educating my children on my own. And I am angry with myself for feeling all of those things when my life is also filled with a lot of joy. I feel ungrateful and whiney, because so many people have it worse, and perhaps that is why I call my anger ‘frustration’.
Mothers are not supposed to be angry. I have learned that. Mothers are supposed to be calm and soft and absorb the chaos of the day. At appointments I see a wariness in professionals’ eyes when fire rises inside me and I begin to assert myself. This mother is on the edge, they are thinking. This mother is volatile. This mother needs to calm down.
At home I walk a slippery road between the image of a mother I have been conditioned to present to the world, and raising four girls to know it is ok to be angry. More than ok, it is essential. My daughters know that I’m angry about all sorts of things, that I use writing as a way to express my anger. That I stride along the beach swallowing the wind, or scream in the waves because I need to feel as alive as it is possible to be. But also because I am angry.
The villages we need in order to thrive are harder to come by - my villages mainly exist on Zoom, WhatsApp and social media. Mothers and carers need connection wherever they can find it. At the online support group I attend for parent-carers, a common theme is the loss of self. All of the women (yes, we are all women) have either stopped work or reduced their hours in order to care for their children. Most of us have children who are unable to attend school, drastically limiting our ability to hold down a job. Obviously this has is an economic effect on our families, but being unable to work also has a huge emotional impact upon our personal identities. We know that a mother’s job is to care for her children, so it’s hard for us to articulate our sadness and frustration at feeling marginalised and hidden away. Inside this group we have permission to say that it feels unfair, and that we want to be more than carers.
When you have a child who needs to do things differently to many children, and when the measures you need to support you are not there, it is easy to feel as if you have failed as a mother. Mothers are frequently scapegoats for broken systems, when they should be held aloft and cheered in the streets.
I have tried to frame my lack of time to work as something romantic and powerful. I post photos of candles burning in the early hours, record videos of myself talking about the juggle between creativity and care. I am doing my best to build a career with an hour or two a day and in some ways I am succeeding. But beyond the melted wax and images of moons above my home there is anger. I want to do so much more than I am doing. I want to be more prolific in my work. I want to earn some money so I can save for my children’s futures. I am worried that by pushing myself to work as much as I do now I will make myself ill and then what will happen? And this anxiety fuels my anger.
It is unsustainable of course, this rage. Anger is only helpful to a point, it cannot be a permanent state for any individual. This is why I am grateful I can tap words onto a screen, lose myself in skies and plunge my fiery brain into the North Sea. But these are tiny, personal remedies, when a better state of affairs would be a society that does not dismiss difference. The government has downgraded the role of Minister for Disability, as if denial is the solution. 96% of education tribunals rule in favour of the child over the local authority, wasting millions of pounds that could be spent on education for students like my daughter. Unpaid carers contribute £445 million to the UK economy every day, yet the carer’s allowance is £76.75 per week. There is so much to be angry about.
So I will skip along the path between rage and self-preservation, keep shouting whilst calmly absorbing chaos. Remember that women have been called witches for centuries, fierce women who were burned, drowned and locked up for hysteria. But hysteria looks very much like anger, and in 2023 we should no longer be forced to hide it.
So glad you're raising your voice on these issues.....wish things were different and you didn't have to but glad you are....