Why I’m a misogynist and 18 other surprising things I’ve learned about myself in the 19 years of being a parent

And why the biggest lesson is learning to parent ourselves

Oct 16, 2024

Donegal holidays are my favourite part of parenting (and living)

My eldest turned 19 today. Over these 19 years since, I’ve realised the greatest parenting skill of all, is learning to parent yourself.

1. How much I’ve had to parent myself

The first half of adulthood, I was really only playing at it. I went travelling and thought I was cool but really I was just playing adventurer. I got a job and wore proper shoes but really I was just playing Busy Woman like a child tottering around in her mum’s shoes. I bought my first flat and thought I’d arrived but really I was just playing house. Then life got serious. I’ll never forget the day after my first emergency c-section, my mum tenderly showered my wounded, stitched, raw body before putting a fresh night dress over my head and rubbing cream on my feet. The day I became a mum, I still very much needed mine. Five far-too short years later, just days after she had done the same thing for me with my third baby (and c-section) she would have a catastrophic stroke and never say my name again. I would rub cream on her paralysed body, wash her hair over the back of her permanent bed, and mother her as best I could. As my marriage ended, and I helped dad care for her, and raise my 3 little girls, I missed the only voice that would tell me to sit down and rest. I missed the loving hands that always gave me a reassuring squeeze. I missed the words that always told me I was loved. And as my daughters looked to me, and I could no longer look to my mum, I finally learned how to parent myself by being those things to me.

2. How to feel trapped and not eat your young (or your arm)

Facing the guilt of the disconnect between what I was being told I was “supposed” to feel (love EVERY minute of parenting and sacrifice all my own needs as a GOOD mother should) versus how I really felt (unfathomable love, immense enjoyment alongside soul-crushing boredom at times and panic at loss of agency) I took a long time to acclimatise to the seismic shift in my life. Independence is my middle name (it’s actually Margaret, but that adventuring has a deep play role in me). There have been times when I’ve felt so trapped in care-roles I have nearly eaten my own arm (this does not mean I didn’t always love them, just sometimes I didn’t / don’t love the relentless commitment). It has taken developing a deep connection to, and relationship with, myself to take my teeth out of my flesh and find adventure in the mundane.

3. How to be loved

Being good at being loved, I’ve learned, is letting go of expectation and adjusting to the love language of the day. From babies it is pure joy. From toddlers it is exuberance, their clingy, claspy desperation for you, glorious and overwhelming. The teenage love is like a slap in the face. It stings. Still needy but wrapped in eye rolls and rejection. The love of a mother who no longer knows your name is a ghost. I’ve learned to love regardless of the feedback and that is the hardest love of all.

4. I’m a misogynist

I’m a fierce feminist determined to raise fierce feminists. Yet there are times I just want them to be people-pleasing, smiling, Good Girls to make my life easier. It’s deeply conditioned that girls are easy going and pleasant and so we react to them much harsher than a boy if in fact they don’t fancy smiling, or have an opinion and don’t portray a nurturing-first policy. (and in turn we call women ‘difficult’ or we feel ‘difficult’ if we don’t want to go with the flow). If I have to check myself, I see how hard it’s going to take for those not aware they need to check themselves to change. We have all grown up in a patriarchy and so misogyny is in-bred. I’ve had to learn that it starts with me; every internal judgement on my own body, and on how other woman are “supposed” to be.

5. How kind and loving I can be

I’ve always been a kind and loving person; generous to a fault, and tactile with my hands and words. It was easy when it was my choice and could contain the drain. Then, with three smallies and a mum who needed 24 hour care, the drain had no tap. Now, parenting three teenage girls, I’ve had to ferociously fight for someone who’s behaviour I didn’t always particularly like. Women in midlife are the busiest and least supported in society and learning to give from strength not drain is the only way to survive. Never mind putting the oxygen mask on first…. Go sit up front of the plane with a glass of Prosecco once in a while! (I saw a mum do this once and had such intense boss-bitch-envy I cried into my screaming child’s back). I’ve always been kind and generous and now I’m also kind and generous to myself.

6. How to live with someone you love who lets you go long before you are ready

Life with young kids goes beautifully and painfully slowly. The ‘difficult’ phases last forever but just as they become more manageable physically, they go full frontal teenage emotional unmanageable and the fear that time is slipping away too fast as you try to connect and grapple with their ever- changing maturity is frightening. Time speeds up. Taking it day by day, moment by moment, take-any-smile-I can-get is the only way to slow it down.

7. Life is hard and wonderful and really hard, and sometimes boring.

Who knew?

8. Expectations are the killer of happiness

Oh I wish this was taught in school. We create the expectation and then life falls short. It has to, because mostly our expectations are created from bullshit social narratives and Facebook lies and patriarchal promises of having it all (while we just end up doing it all). Game-changer for me was starting to practise not attaching a narrative to everything. It is what it is… now, how do I feel about this reality, not the over-priced expectation?

9. You have to meet people where they are, not where you need them to be

I don’t parent from a place of perfection. Sometimes I fuck it up. I’m selfish. I’m exhausted. So I cannot expect them to be perfect children. This piece of advice - to meet them where they are, not where I need them to be - has been the single most important piece of parenting advice I’ve ever been given. I extend it to every person and every situation (when I remember). It means I don’t take things personally when they don’t behave exactly the way I want just to make my life easier. See my latest IG post on this here.

10. Love is a verb

Helping my mum die was was the bravest act of love I’ve ever done. Not that I helped her in an actual way, but after five years of being brain damaged and paralysed, my dad, brother and I worked with her medical carers towards not prolonging her life in any way. It took months, and the actual end took weeks, and her actual death took days and amid all of my pain and fear and shock that I’d soon be breathing in a world she was not, there was love. Her love. It was the 40 years of love she’d given me until her stroke that helped me let her go. Love is a verb and it is always in action.

11. I am a better person than I thought

I really fucking am. I have pulled some strength and love and bravery and patience out of the bag in ways I could never haver imagined.

12. I am a worse person than I thought

I really fucking am. I have pulled some petty, selfish, madness out of the hat sometimes in ways that have shocked me. There is no bigger mirror to see yourself through than the eyes of someone who needs you to get your shit together.

13. I do not have unlimited patience

No is my new full sentence.

14. There is no such thing as unconditional love.

Another fairytale women were told to make them give of themselves relentlessly. I want an occasional thank you. I want to be seen. I want a glimmer of gratitude. I’ve just explained to my 19 year old daughter that I was ok for the ratio of input into our relationship to be 98% me, 2% her while she was a child. I’m not ok with that now. I’m fine with it not ever being 50/50 but as two adults in a relationship going forward, it has to be at least 80/20 and eventually 70/30. This love and energy and unfeasible levels of care-thought about her no longer comes free. I want to be asked how my day was. I want to be offered the occasional cup of tea. I want to be more than a hugging, driving ATM. There are now conditions, lovely.

15. Me being right is not always the answer

I am always right (my group chat with any girls is literally called “Mum is Always Right) but I’ve learned that letting them be right is a good thing for them. Also, it frees up some emotional bandwidth on my part if I don’t have to be responsible for every bloody outcome. Letting them experience being right and wrong is my gift to them (and me).

16. I have a lot to learn

I tell them that knowing what you don’t know is where you start to get really smart in life. The more I learn, the more I see how much more I have to learn. It’s such a relief not to have all the answers anymore and that adventurer me can go exploring again.

17. Parenting isn’t about the drudgery - it’s about role modelling

A lot of my coaching work is helping women realise who they want to be role-modelling for their children. Coming out from under the “role” of parent, and becoming themselves. It’s a constant practise.

18. Parenting is about so much drudgery that it’s inhuman that I’m still alive.

I will not be thanked for 99% of it.

19. The majority of my relationship with my children will hopefully be as adults.

All being well. And I see how my relationship with my own parents continued to grow and change over the decades after I left my childhood home. That makes me relax. There is still so much ahead. And the goal is not to always be their mum, but to invest my energy being me, growing me, investing in me so that we can all keep growing up together.

I absolutely love hearing from you, and I’d love to know if any of my lessons resonate, so please join me in the comments below (if you’re reading this in an email, please click on the link below to go through to the website to join the conversation.)

Why I’m a misogynist and 18 other surprising things I’ve learned about myself in the 19 years of being a parent

And why the biggest lesson is learning to parent ourselves

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