Rewriting Motherhood: Do We Need New Stories?

While walking under the blue sky in rural southern France, I had a most interesting conversation with a woman, I coach, about feminism, how the role of women and the idols out there interfere with understanding the lives we live, when we choose to home-educate.

We talked about how the freedom our mothers and grandmothers fought for, has become restrictive to my freedom now. The discourse around the woman who chooses not to send kids off to kindergarten and school is framed as victims, “sacrificing” their “own life” to take care of others and in many ways working against progress.

Do we need new stories? 

Do I have to be a rebel, or can we re-tell the story of motherhood, setting us free just to live our lives the way we want?

Is there a biological agenda going on, and is it wrong?


When I, 13 years ago, started blogging, it was as a reaction to critique I got from feminists, based on my choice of life: Stating that my choice gave them a bad taste in their mouth when they handed their kids off to strangers in the schools and kindergarten—implying that I made it harder for them to pursue “their own life”.

So I had to stop doing what I was doing, otherwise I was restricting them in their freedom.

Wait, what?...

Now, I feel the same thing happening to me in a strange way, and this client pointed at it paving the way for a very interesting conversation. 

Do I have to buy into the story that my choice to live close to my kids and take responsibility for setting the scene of their lives, spending many hours a day with them in support of our family's life, is a sacrifice of something that belonged to me?

In that case, what am I sacrificing?



Do I also have to accept the following argument for sound logic: Only the ones who bite their tongues and choose the institutions are the powerful ones, the strong individuals fulfilling all of their purpose?

This leads to reflections on the stupid concept of “full potential”. 

Don’t get me started.

What does that even mean? 

Living up to your full potential is impossible. We all have a lot of unused potential. When we do one thing, there are lots of other doors closing, we have to CHOOSE. And we have some sort of freedom to choose, all of us.

I respect that freedom a lot, I respect humans who chose differently from me, and most of all I respect their freedom to do it, it is theirs to work with.

Some people spend a lot of time in the gym, the spa and in front of the mirror before they put on their high-quality, in-style clothes, and they look way better than me. I could do the same, if it were what I chose.

Hopefully we choose based on a feeling of having options, and knowing one choice makes other things impossible.

I read a lot these days, hours and hours every day - and this means, I am not working very hard on the books I am writing and neither am I playing boardgames. Simple examples, yes, but you, the reader, have the brains to project this into life itself.

One of the things restricting our freedom is fantasy: What can we think about what we are doing, what stories do we have to lean on - and here my client was so right: “We need some better stories.” 

It is either the warm sacrificial mother never ever being a someone, or the powerful carrier woman, aiming for the stars. 



What if there are other stars to aim for? Even planets? 



Can we come up with fairytales or poems or novels or short stories or movies or cartoons with a different story about the woman, a different kind of woman? 

Are we in the world of blogging singing that song now, all the home-makers, making a space on the internet, sharing all of their knowledge and thoughts, showing how powerful the choice to stick around the family for 20+ years is, and how much personal life unfolds in exactly that?



…

Again, I sat down to write a little something for my Facebook and Instagram pages, but I ended up writing something too long, yet not long enough, to unfold all of the perspectives. 

Do we need a conversation here, a workshop to create the stories, or another forum to share them? I am not sure, but I am very open to suggestions. 



Please respond in the comments or send me an email directly at hi@cecilieconrad.com.

We need to talk more about this.