Looking Forward to Christmas

Weird one this year, lads. Weird one. Most people who know me know that I am a great lover of all things Christmas. I give myself permission to blast Christmas music from November 1st. I decorate cookies, put tiny ornaments on every surface. I live for the joy, the peace, the goodwill towards all men. I am, as I write, wearing Christmas-bow earrings 

But this year, as it does for many, Christmas feels a little different. All our Christmas 'stuff' is in boxes in another country. My children won't get to hug their grandparents on Christmas morning (in fact, all grandparents but one haven't even met Baby James yet). There's a lot about this season that's hard. But I'm under no illusion that this feeling is unique to me, nor that this sense of detatchment from how it 'should be' is different from a feeling that people the world over feel every day, pandemic or not. 

I struggled to write anything at all this year. Personal, creative writing has been a huge part of my life always and I've missed it. Somehow, continuing to show up for Christmas even when I'm feeling mixed feelings about it is a part of trying to overcome this creative funk I can't seem to get out of. I've been slowly but surely finding my old joy-loving self, but it'd be a lie to say she's been with me a lot this year. I'm doing my best to focus on celebrating the good times together with my dear little family - the cookie decorating, getting our tree, making clay ornaments, dancing to All I Want For Christmas Is You, Anna's endless questions about The Good List, the Nativity, twinking lights. 

This is an ode to Christmases, well wishes to have a celebration filled with Christmas movies and cake, and a wish for a more hopeful time in 2021 and onwards.

Peace and joy xo

For the Love of Blogs

Oh dear dear me, it has been a year. I used to so love writing blog posts. I had a think about it while I was in the shower earlier, and I've been bloggin on one platform or another for twenty years. Yes, since my first Myspace page had that little blog section in the top right hand corner. Over the past year, I have, like many people in this world, been incredibly sad. Sad, frustrated, overwhelmed, any number of less-than positive emotions. So I didn't write, I didn't share my stories the way I used to. 

I realised this morning that I miss that, that absolutely normal, often mundane practice of writing a blog post and talking about the silly stuff of life. It's been an important way for me to keep in touch with friends and family, and this past year I've found myself slipping further and further away from them - taking longer to reply to messages, not reaching out when I would love help or support, in many ways isolating myself emotionally as well as (obviously) physically. 

I started up a Wordpress blog for the purpose of discussing topics relating to the more 'academic' side of my interests, but to be honest I couldn't be bothered keeping that up at this point. I'm going to re-share those posts here, and then I'm just going to keep on writing here. This blog The Feel of Home, has been with me for so long that I'm just going to share those posts here and I'm going to keep writing about the topics that resonate most with me - being a mother, 'home' (what does that mean these days, when I live in a glorified Airbnb miles from home), muddling through life. 

Welcome back, friends. Thanks for sticking around. Sorry I never write back. I'm just very sad right now, you see.

On breastfeeding and The Algorithm

Happy #nationalbreastfeedingweek. I've been breastfeeding humans for going on 3.5 years. I never expected this, to be honest. I’ve immensely enjoyed my experience because it’s helped me bond with my children. I am a person who enjoys strategies of convenience and breastfeeding is very very convenient in my life, at this moment in time. It helps me get more sleep, my children seem to have gained a lot from the experience, and I can be smug in the knowledge that I have vastly exceeded the WHO recommendations on infant feeding.  So I'll take that as a net gain. 

But this post isn't about actual breastfeeding, #fedisbest, 'shaming', conversations how and where and when a person breastfeeds, any of that. They're all part of discourses around the fact that mothers feeding babies is part of a highly emotionally charged and politicised agenda centered on women's bodies, sexualisation, care, work and value. Instead, this post is about how my experience of being a mother is mediated through social media content, and how that is visually and affectively controlled by The Algorithm.

 I do think there is a tendency for people to amplify the importance of the significance of the experience they are going through. That’s just human psychology. This is important to me = this must be important to those around me, and ultimately be important. The algorithm that controls what we see on social media is very good at honing in on the things it thinks you want, or at least the things that are similar to you. So my online experience is dominated visually by images of parenting, pregnancy, babies, children. 

Instead of using social media as a form of home interior, food, political banter escapism from babies and toddlers, my social media landscape has become an endless scroll of mothers, babies, tiny baby booties, those wobble boards and Grimms rainbows everyone insists are 'heirloom' items, but are actually just unnecessary and very expensively hand-painted pieces of wood. 

And while, yes, I love the baby things in my own life, I don’t want to necessarily think about it all of the time. I don't want my social media experience to be dominated by it. Because it’s all about balance, isn’t it. Babies today are children tomorrow. Breastfeeding is a moment in time. Tummy time is given over to algebra and learning musical instruments. One minute it’s baby led weaning and the next it’s olives and steak (and then maybe back to softly mashed foods eventually, anyway, when you get much much older).

What I’m trying to say is that its all life and it’s all beautiful and messy and joyful and all-consuming, in a sense, but it’s also important to keep it all in context. And being in this perverse, highly intimate relationship with social media that we all are means constantly negotiating your boundaries with it, reflecting on how it presents itself to you, and how much of yourself is enough to give.

x

Starting over again

It's now been a week since we moved back to Copenhagen. We loved living here when we were younger, and are now overjoyed to be back. I think Anna will thrive there, and in the long-term it's the best way for our family to progress and grow. 

It's sad, of course, to think of leaving behind family and friends, and that we won't see them every other week as we do now. But the reality is that sometimes hard choices have to be made to move forwards. The cost of living in Ireland for people in our position (with young children) is prohibitively high and you're either cash-poor or time-poor, no inbetween.

So for now, are the foreseeable future, we are back. We're now in that awkward in-between stage of setting up bank accounts, getting a bike, setting up social security numbers and registering Anna for kindergarten (!) and all of it.

I know blogs are mostly dead, but I'm going to keep writing, like I always have.

Not very typically Danish, but omg they have Dunkin' Donuts in the Central Station!
I love donuts. Anna loves donuts. We're donut people. 

On valuing our own contributions as parents and carers.

I've been reflecting a lot this year on two things - firstly, just how hard it is to be the main carer for a smaller child. Their physical, emotional, creative needs are vast. They grow and change a mile a minute and there's no way of keeping up. You're just along for the ride. And I say this as the parent of an incredibly independent little kid. It's just such an exhausting, never-ending job. Anna is also still breastfed, which puts quite a bit of physical and emotional pressure on me to 'be there for her' in a lot of ways. 

Secondly, I've been thinking a lot about my own biases about what constitutes 'value'. It took me all this time, 9 months, to accept that the work I do taking care of Anna is valuable and that I do not need to qualify my 'so, what do you do?' responses with justifications. I really thought I needed to. I thought people who think badly of me for not being in paid work because, I suppose, I thought badly of me. But enough time has passed that I've accepted that the work Anna and I do every day (playing, mostly) is genuinely important. 

What's more, I've been doing my own empirical work on the topic. I've spoken to dozens and dozens of parents, grandparents, people from all walks of life and cultures (that's the joy of seeking out difference rather than staying stuck in your bubble, I suppose). Do you know what not one of these people has said to me? That I should go back to work. Not a one. All of them expressed very clear opinions about how wonderful and precious a time the early years is in a child's life, how much of an honour it is to be there with them to go through it alongside them, and how quickly this time ends.

So for now, I've made my choice. I do believe we should all contribute to the betterment of others in whatever way possible, and my way, for the next few years, is to be with my small people and be their greatest helper. If that isn't adding value, I don't know what is.

On My Little Daughter, Who is Practically a Woman Now

 My daughter, Anna, is 20 months young. All through her early months I wrote little blog posts as a sort of catharsis. In those days she was still small enough and immobile enough that, balanced on a breastfeeding pillow on my lap, or nestle in the crook of my arm, I could wield a laptop or a phone well enough to jot down some thoughts. Which I did, hunched over in the dark, right from about Day Three. I've never been keen on sitting still and I don't think that's an admirable quality.  

There was a lot of breastfeeding in those days, weeks, months, sitting and waiting and holding her while she slept, and thinking about all the other things I might be doing, used to be doing, could be doing. I found it incredibly frustrating at times. I spent a lot of time thinking about what it would feel like when I wasn't bothered by it anymore. But by and by she changed, because eventually everything changes. 

One of my most cherished discoveries in recent years is the singer/composer Tom Rosenthal. He has two particular songs that just feel so much like my early thoughts of being a mother. In the first one he laments 'just as I thought you could not sleep, you slept', in the second he asks 'a lifetime of trouble, but how could I not love you?'.

How perfect are those sentiments, for a parent wonder if their baby will ever sleep out of their arms,  who comes crashing into their world and turns everything upside down? And how perfectly they encapsulate a memory you can hold onto when those experiences are long gone.

Life update as we enter the closing phase of 2019

It's been a minute. It's been several minutes. If I'm being totally honest, taking care of a toddler in a full-time capacity while doing all the other bits and pieces I do has left me with no time. I've been with Anna at home full time since January, since I quit my job, which ended up being an utter disappointment. 

It was meant to be my gateway to academia in Ireland, but it quickly became evident that the job wasn't going to provide me with any networking opportunities and probably no tangible outputs I could put my name to either. I was crushed. I was isolated in my work, stressed out dealing with constantly shifting childcare arrangements, and the emotional aspect of leaving my child with other people all day was just more than I could handle at that point. It just wasn't worth it, so I quit. 

In January I had a miscarriage and that was tremendously emotional, so I was grateful to not have to worry about getting up early, packing lunches and taking passive-aggressive phone calls. A few months passed in a haze of...lots and lots of crying and lying there, if I'm being totally honest. Cognitively, I understood that what happened was not a huge deal - a first trimester miscarriage just isn't that uncommon. But my hormones went crazy afterwards and that caused me to struggle. Plus, we're allowed to grieve and perceive what our bodies go through separately from what we understand to be true about health in a general sense. 

But a lot of good things came out of the year. I worked on my friend's campaign in the local elections, and helped support female candidates in my role as Secretary of Labour Women. I helped to successfully set up our local Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann branch. I started teaching tin whistle and acted as Treasurer. We did a few musical performances  The book we wrote as a culmination of the project I worked on for my PhD was published (it's open access, have a read!). I did some research for a Union and we published a report on the state of the childcare sector for its' workers in Ireland. It was picked up by all the major media outlets, I spoke on the radio and in the Dáil. We didn't get the concession we were asking for, so the fight continues. 

So now we're entering the final few months of 2019. There's a lot of life-changing things coming up, and I can genuinely say in retrospect that everything at the start of the year has helped prepare me for the new and exciting challenges that await. Also, on a completely superficial note, I am incredibly excited to start the Christmas music and scented candles (I've promised myself I can begin as soon as the pumpkin has to be thrown out. Any day now).

Amy xo

It's Been a While - Miscarriage, Time, Good Things and Bad Things

 Greetings dear readers,

Up until about two weeks ago I was sure I’d never write anything again, so bummed out with my life was I. The start of 2019 was hard, and that’s why I wrote nothing. Just functioning was difficult enough. I had a miscarriage that started on the very first day of the new year, and it made me sad beyond belief.

During that journey I learned that hormones are incredibly powerful and, resilient as I might try to be, sometimes you can't control how you feel by just willing yourself better. Surprising, eh. I also learned how woefully inadequate the maternity services in Ireland are. I obviously already academically knew this, but to feel it on a visceral level is something else entirely. I now know we desperately need e-health  records and in the meantime much better and consistent paper record keeping. We need a way to link up GPs and midwives, ER and outpatients and community care. I had midwives both congratulate or commiserate when I was in the in-between portion of time, and neither was the right thing to do.

One good thing came out this experience. I talked about my miscarriage to everyone I came across, because I was going through something that felt totally surreal and unexpected (foolishly, yes). I couldn't accept that I had to keep something so sad completely secret. I discovered that so many women I know and care about have had one, two, or even three miscarriages in their reproductive journeys. We shared and bonded and it was cathartic. I never would have learned that otherwise.

---

I intended to write a newsletter to combine my academic interest in 'feminist political economy', an abstract way of thinking about the structural causes of women's inequality, with my own experiences as a woman and as a mother. This year I've been confronted with the reality of that, and it feels far from good. It has been bearing down heavily on me, and honestly it's been demoralising. In my PhD thesis I wrote about 'invisible inequalities' and how multiple intersecting factors combine to make women's lives difficult, how these factors are often masked and for all intensive purposes invisible. Their impact is often felt privately.

Let me delve a little deeper into this for one brief moment before I leave you for now (I have a pressing project I must get back to - I'm cataloging every trad tune I got from my flute teacher from 2000 - 2006). I just finished studying, and so I'm hoping to actualise my potential and get some sort of nice job that allows me to use my skills and earn some money. But I can only apply for part-time jobs because it would be too much to have Anna in childcare for 50 hours a week. Plus there are no creche spaces available in my area anyway (I rang at least 8), and I can't put Anna's name down until I have a job because I can't afford to pay without a salary. They won't hold places and it's first come first served. 

I had a casual child minder for Anna but I had to stop her going because I couldn't afford it. So now any academic writing, and job applications, anything for me, has to be squeezed into next to no time at all. And that weighs on me. It's also incredibly hard to even find part-time, flexible jobs to apply for. On the job site I look at, about 10% of the jobs are part-time.

It's a ridiculous situation to be in, really. Childcare is utterly unaffordable for most Irish families but they're forced into it anyway because the cost of living is so high. Women are still the primary carers of children. We still do the bulk of the housework. And we also have to work. But if we want to choose flexible, part-time work, it's very difficult to find, and it exacerbates the gender pay gap anyway. Women are delaying the age at which they have their first child, they're having fewer children, and the cost of living is creeping ever higher.

None of these issues are specific to me. And all of this comes with the caveat that I'm in such an unbelievably lucky position to be able to afford to stay at home with my child at all. These are issues of systemic maldistribution, a symptom of an individualistic society that pushes everyone to bend to the will of the market, devalues reproductive labour, informal work and all forms of care. I do believe we can change it, by getting involved in politics and challenging injustices we see in our everyday lives and teaching our small people to be very kind.

On a more positive note, my little human turned 2 and is as kind and happy a child as I have ever known. Her favourite songs are John Denver's Country Roads and Tears for Fear's Shout, which is fab. 
                                                                                                                            

Amy xo

Two Years!

Does anyone use blogs anymore? It feels like as time goes on we use more and more instantaneous and hastily gratifying means of communicating online. It seems like the dominant model of social media communication is more-now-fast-sell. I've decided to start posting here a little more frequently about the things I get up to in my daily life and not just my experiences of postpartum life which obviously dominated my mental skyline for the last year and a half. 

My life of late has been as lovely as ever - I handed in my PhD and, pending a successful Viva in a month, should be able to change the title on all my household bills to 'Dr' in January. Anna continues to be the brightest star that shines in my day, Leo is forever my best friend and the one I bounce all of my entrepreneurial ideas off (and share all my most illogical worries with, sorry about that). We live in a lovely home, in a lovely village beside two beaches, and all is, quite frankly very well.

Here's to the future, to being well, and to new things.

Starting over

When Anna was three weeks old Leo went back to work and I was at home, very tired and quite unsure of myself, with this little nugget to look after. I also had a PhD to finish. Determined as ever, I tried to cultivate some sort of positive practice around it. Anna didn't nap anywhere but on me in those days, so, armed with a breastfeeding pillow I could strategically lie her on, she alternated between feeds and sleeps on the pillow that lay on my lap. I sat, blind and confused, trying to start writing a chapter. I was tired beyond words and still feeling wounded and worse for ware from the delivery. 

When she woke every twenty minutes or so I took a break from the chaos on the screen and just scrolled through the internet, or wrote blog posts that were so cathartic. I ate a lot of bread and biscuits because my body was depleted and I craved sugar and carbs all the time. We developed a nice rhythm in those days, and I managed to do my best written work on an uncomfortable IKEA foldable chair with the baby on me.

In those first few weeks I didn't know how I was going to do it, and honestly I probably shouldn't have. I should have slept and rested and sat quietly. Next baby, I will. As a new mother, my motivation and drive to challenge myself were quite intense, we travelled to so many countries in those first few months, I spoke at conferences and wrote and visited people and I managed to do it all with a pelvic prolapse (don't underestimate your pelvic floor health, folks) and a baby that puked and boobed around the clock. I don't think it's the smart thing to do, to push yourself so hard, but reflecting on it now I am proud of myself. 

Here I am, 14 months later. Same chair, same coffee, same laptop (although Anna broke the hinge on it sometime between then and now). I've finally managed to complete that damn thesis and handed it in, and while I wait for my Viva in September I'm back in the uncertain, muddy time of in-between. Anna isn't here now, she's gone to a minders because that little girl doesn't even want to sit on a lap anymore, let alone sleep there. She's grown into this spirited and rowdy little one, and I've managed to finish something that I'm quite proud of, and help a little girl grow out of her newborn self into a wonderful rambunctious toddler. 

Sitting here feels like starting over all over again but also familiar and sort-of heartbreaking at the same time. It's time to begin my job-hunting spreadsheet. Thanks for reading, lovely people xo.