Write Your Way Through Lockdown - Helen McNutt, Mother of Copy
/Write Your Way Through Lockdown
Last Saturday night I got the text every parent dreads. The one that reminds us that the following Monday is an inset day. As I read the text I experienced that sudden burst of frustration that comes when you realise you’re not actually going to be able to get on with the day you had planned.
And I was so ready to get on with the day I had planned. I’m developing a big work project and I need every spare minute I can get my hands on. Due to a combination of different half terms and inset days for my three children, I’d had one child-free day in three weeks.
Come Monday my two sons stayed at home with me as my daughter went to nursery. I told myself it was going to be ok because tomorrow everyone would be out of the house and I’d finally have some time to get on with my work.
And then, at three o’clock on Monday afternoon, the text that every parent really dreads arrived from my daughter’s nursery.
‘I am sorry to tell you that a member of staff has tested positive for Covid-19…your child must isolate for 14 days.’
Naturally, my immediate concern was for the person who has Covid (they are OK). My following concern was more selfish; how was I going to manage the next two weeks? Whilst my sons could still go to school and my husband to work, my daughter and I were going to be pretty much housebound.
That one child-free day in three weeks had turned to one child-free day in five weeks. Which is one week short of a normal summer holidays.
I am well aware that if a few weeks off nursery is the worst that Covid does to our family, we are very lucky indeed. But I do wonder how mums (because it mostly is mums) are going to cope with juggling sudden, unexpected childcare requirements and their workloads over this next period, when they’re already still exhausted from their heroic efforts during spring and summer.
I admit that this mum panicked. On Monday evening I had that horrible melting feeling of overwhelm. I just couldn’t see how I could do my work whilst my daughter was at home.
Then my husband came home from work and gently advised me to swallow a little of my own medicine.
I’m a writing coach, you see. I teach other mums how to write themselves happy. I show them how to ‘write to out’. To find their own inner wisdom and clarity on the page. To use their pen to draw out the answers from within. Because I firmly believe we do have the answers, it’s just that most of the time we don’t know how to access them.
But by sitting somewhere quiet and writing non-stop free association for an hour or so, we can make our way to these answers. We literally write them out of us.
I’ve written all my life. Yet it’s only since becoming a mum that I’ve steadfastly clung to writing when life gets difficult. It is absolutely crucial to my wellbeing.
So last week I wrote. I wrote by myself and I wrote with other mums during Facebook Lives. I wrote like my life depended on it. Because my sanity absolutely did.
And now, as I enter the second week of having my daughter at home, all the ‘how am I going to’s…’ have turned into a calm to-do list. And this has permeated out, this sense of peace. It has turned into acceptance, and a laser-like focus which has whittled down the to-do list to what is absolutely essential.
It is still a long list. And it is a list that is regularly punctuated by the needs of my daughter. But a lot of these interruptions have been pure joy.
For example, last week I got to be the person who taught her how to ride her first pedal bike. Watching her proudly ride her red bike up and down our driveway, face squished by her helmet, little legs frantically peddling, was one of my most favourite moments of motherhood.
We did other fun things too. We made fairy cakes together. She took daily Facetime calls from my mum. She helped me with the cooking. She did a ballet lesson via Zoom. Our poor cat got cuddled to within an inch of his life. We made a den in the lounge. She watched a lot of Cbeebies, and I wrote in the background, hands flying across my keyboard as frantically as her little legs on the bike.
I stuffed in work whenever I could. At six in the morning, at eleven o’clock at night, on Sunday morning while my husband had a lie-in. And I wrote about the experience as I lived it; about lack of time, about the intensity of it, about all the tiny ups and downs. And as I wrote I had the realisation that when it comes to juggling motherhood and a career, this is as difficult as it’s going to get. Time-wise at least. And despite this I’m still managing to get everything done.
I’m not the only one who has turned to writing to help get through lockdown. At least three of the mums I coach have talked about keeping a ‘Covid diary’; somewhere they can go to explore, discard and rage against their fears and frustrations. It makes perfect sense to me. Writing is an invitation to quietly come back to yourself. It is an outlet, a release valve, somewhere else to go when physically we’re all so restricted.
Of course, writing doesn’t completely fix everything. There has been exasperation, shouting and tantrums from both my daughter and me. Yesterday she told me I’m a ‘bad mother’ because I would not let her pick up a chick for under its heat-lamp. Admittedly this last one made me laugh quite a lot, although to her it was a matter of the utmost seriousness.
And today I feel the kind of tired I thought I’d left behind when my babies outgrew the sleep patterns of new-borns. Last night I had an entire conversation with my daughter when she came into our room at about 2am.
My husband later told me it had been our son.
But the point is that writing nearly always makes things better. Even though today I feel so tired I could be sick, I know that if I write it all out, then everything will seem more manageable again. That clarity and empowerment, joy and vitality are patiently waiting for me on the page. All I have to do is pick up my pen.
Bio:
I teach mums how to write themselves happy. Over the past 16 years I’ve written for people including GQ, the Times and Sunday Times, the Guardian, Gok Wan, French Connection and Myla. For eight of these years I’ve written with children in tow; I have three, aged eight, five and three.
If you’d like 31 writing prompts to write your way happily through lockdown, please visit the website here.
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