Tag: saying yes

I Am The Imposter; Sorry, Cowgirl!

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We had an emergency trip to the opticians last week, necessitated by The Cowgirl’s glasses ending up, entirely inexplicably, in two very separate pieces. (Apparently, someone may have trodden on them, and maybe that someone was her, but actually maybe, no, they didn’t. Well covered, darling, well covered.) Other families of glasses-wearing geeks will be all too familiar with the entertainment that ensued. The check-up itself took about 10 minutes, but the combination of taking pictures of eyes, squirming in the middle so having to retake pictures of eyes, choosing frames, checking frames, spelling names wrong and having to start the whole process again, meant that we were actually in the opticians for over an hour, and my masterly plan of treating us all to indulgently warming refreshments between wrapping up the appointment and arriving in a calm, relaxed manner at our weekly swimming lesson were quickly demonstrated to be utterly foolish: we actually screamed into the swimming pool a mere 5 minutes late.

Somewhere in the midst of this, as is normal at such things, I was asked to sign for the NHS voucher that entitles all children under 16 to free eye tests and mostly-free glasses (#ThankYouNHS). And exactly there in the midst of this, I had the same reaction I always do when an adult calls me “mum”. I looked over my shoulder for the person they were really talking to; I hesitated, to give them enough time to call me out; I signed the iPad with a shaking hand and a rote comment about modern technology they must hear 50 times a day, but were still sweet enough to smile at.

I have spent most of my mothering years looking over my shoulder and expecting someone to out me as just pretending to be able, or willing, or responsible enough for this role. I thought that feeling would pass; it didn’t. At first I thought they might say that I wasn’t old enough to be a mother (ironic really when you consider that I had my first child in the UK’s Teenage Pregnancy capital, and that I probably had 10 years on the next oldest person in the ward where I spent my first night with The Palaeontologist). I don’t think that now – a decade of building up grey hairs and sleepless nights has put paid to that – but I still look over my shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop and for anyone – for everyone – to realise that I have no idea what I’m doing here.

Despite having had so long to think about this, it took me until this week and an opticians appointment to put the name Imposters Syndrome to my parenting experience. But through that lens (in a totally undiagnosed fashion) it all makes much more sense. Do I feel like a fraud? Like I have to work 3 times as hard to justify the title I have been given? Like any moment someone will see through the mask and spot I don’t belong there? Like I do not deserve this relationship? All of the above. All of the time. I know it isn’t rational; that I have been there from the beginning and in every moment since, there in the decision-making and the praying and the worrying even when it is not me there in the day to day. I know that there is no-one else my children would want to be there even when they tell me that I’m spoiling their lives and I’m the worst mum ever, as much as when they run to me when I walk in from work and hug me till my ribs hurt after an argument. I know that this is the place I am meant to be and the place I am called to be and the place I want to be. But that still doesn’t stop me feeling like an imposter, like I’m outside looking in and like sometime soon, when I’m least expecting it, everyone else will feel that too.

When The Cowgirl plays Among Us, she always wants to be The Imposter. I once asked her why she would want to be the baddy, the one who everyone else wants to kick into the outer reaches of space and never be contaminated by again? Because, she explained, The Imposter is the one who has the most fun. They can do what they want, and go where they want, and if they manage to kill everyone, they get to win the game. Being on the outside is the thing that gives you control, because it means that you’re not governed by the rules that everyone else has to play by.

Among Us. A bizarre and probably totally inappropriate game for children to be playing, full of challenges and spaceships and stabbing people in the back. Fun, though.

I will probably never feel entirely comfortable in my own skin or in the rules that are set down, in my head or others’ expectations, for people who are Mothers, or who are Vicar’s Wives, or who are struggling to live simply and sustainably in the 21st Century western world, for that matter. But however I feel about those titles, all of those aspects of my life and personality are ones that I have made a conscious choice to add in to the jigsaw that makes me the problematic, overstretched and overworked person that I am. And all of those roles help me see, from the inside out, how life could be better if fewer of us followed all the rules; if we were the rebels, who went through secret passages and found our own ways to success (but who maybe didn’t have the goal of killing everyone else around us. Any metaphor can be stretched too far). They show me what fun can be had by not focussing so much on how others may or may not think about me but accepting my view of myself instead; the good and the bad of it. They remind me that this is my choice and I have earned the right to make that choice, and have the responsibility to live by it. They whisper that I have been doing this for some time now and haven’t killed anyone yet, despite a fair bit of provocation. They demonstrate that, Imposter-ish feeling or not, I’m actually doing all right. And it turns out, that’s a pretty darn good thing to realise.

The Big Bad Maybe Later

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This will come as a surprise to absolutely nobody: I am rather inept at saying no. Slightly more unusually maybe – or at least, slightly less talked about – is being equally bad at saying yes.

So how do you go through life saying neither no nor yes? By becoming a master of the unholy trinity: We’ll See, Maybe Later, and I’ll See What I Can Do. Used effectively, they will answer any situation known to humanity, and are as useful in a classroom as they are in any number of parenting conundrums. In fact, The Paleontologist has started predicting my response, and has changed her questioning technique, asking open questions whenever possible: “Why can’t we have bubblegum ice cream?” is a frequent opening gambit. Other favourites include “When are you going to let me have a phone?” and the wonderful “Why does our Tooth Fairy give less money than the Fairy that goes to [insert the name of absolutely any other classmate]?” The Cowgirl, predictably, approaches things totally differently, dodging asking questions altogether by doing things she thinks she won’t be allowed to do as secretly as possible. Thankfully, subtlety is not as much her forte as, say, running headlong through any obstacle, from rose bushes to recalcitrant authority figures. The time she ate a whole pack of chocolate coins, hiding the wrappers in her pillowcase so that I didn’t see them in the bin, showed particular insight and forward planning. At least, it did until she asked me to plump up her pillow the next evening. Oops.

So I have one child who has developed excellent open questioning techniques, and another who has mastered the art of independence before mastering her 3 times table. This is good, right? Nothing wrong with a bit of healthy noncommittal… Except, of course, we all know there is. And not just the kind of wrong that leads to my more decisive friends and relations (looking in no particular direction, but we both know who you are!) wanting to throw me out of the nearest window fifteen times on any given day. Avoiding both yes and no is a great way of dodging most forms of conflict: if no one (including me, particularly in busy times, or September, or first thing in the morning) knows what I want, they certainly can’t get in a grump if I disagree with them. But it has a deep darkness as a cost. It also means avoiding contentment within myself. Saying yes means saying this is good; saying I’m happy with this; saying this is enough.

There is often a feeling that living a more sustainable life means saying no. You say no to flying and take your chances on holidaying in the UK – may be amazing, may be the end of your marriage and feel like December. You say no to plastic and no to frappacinos, to deodorants bought in your lunch break because you forgot to put any on this morning, to sanitary towels, to the basic fundamentals of everyday living. You say no to meat, to cheese, to takeaways, to many of the things that make busy lives both enjoyable and achievable. You say no to all the things other people are doing, heart pounding as you say it – will they think you’re judging them? Are you judging them?

What if, instead of saying no, simple living was all about saying yes? It would change my perception of it dramatically if I could navigate that mindshift. Here’s an example of when I’ve tried. A few days ago, I went on a train journey to the very North of Scotland – and, as if 7 hours on a train (plus delays, of course) wasn’t enough, three days later we came back again. I was, obviously, not optimistic about the whole experience. Two children, one tablet, tired Mum, Dad away with work; what could possibly go right? But then came the magic. The first bit of magic was my previously-mentioned saintly mother saying yes to buying magazines for both children. Hooray for plastic toys! Hooray for Ninjago mini-figures! (That’s Lego, if you’re not up to speed with the latest lingo the kids are using.) Hooray for activities, and quizzes, and facts that keep science-crazy munchkins engaged for… well, actually for hours. We also had activity books, Top Trumps (cathedrals in one pack, dinosaurs in the other – only in my family…) and an ancient game of Master Mind that involves breaking a code set by the other player. And with that, we survived. We not only survived, we thrived. Both Mum and I managed to spend time reading; in fact, I stopped when I was ready, not before. I genuinely can’t remember when that last happened. It turns out that saying yes to what is directly in front of you, being present and answering questions, reading instructions, then letting the instructions be followed without interference (even when they Do It Wrong), works terribly well, something I used to know, but had let myself forget.

View from a train window, looking out over a very wide river. In the bottom corner is the reflection of a child playing on a tablet.
The beauty of the Scottish coastline. The wonder of a happy child who hasn’t run anywhere for several hours.

Sometimes, I say we’ll see because I don’t know how to even conceive of having the energy to do what is asked (particularly when I’m being asked to build a working robot out of toilet roll wrappers, to take just one example…) And at other times, I say we’ll see because I mean no. Just no. In fact, I frequently mean I’d rather do the school run across hot coals than even think about doing what is asked. (Building a robot isn’t that bad. A whole afternoon of joining in with watching Peppa Pig is.) So I’m setting myself a slightly late #ChallengeAugust. To say no when I mean it; to say yes when I want it; to say we’ll see when I genuinely mean I don’t know yet whether it’s yes or no. Well, apart from when discussing birthday parties. With four months to go until the closest one, any resolution needs a touch of realism and some hard-won messy survival techniques, naturally.

A long bridge curves across a wide estuary, big enough to almost look like the sea.
The rail bridge approaching Dundee. An utterly stunning sweep of countryside.

Community, connections, and saying yes: moving beyond giving or receiving

Simply Messy3 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, I got a flat tyre. It turns out that ignoring the warning light because you know something needs doing, and you’ll do it when you get a moment thank you very much, means that sometimes, you end up in exactly the situation the beeping light is meant to avoid. Oops. Now I’m not great with cars, but I can just about use the air machine. I even worked out for myself how to use the flat tyre button, and so was a bit peeved when a random guy came over and terribly helpfully offered totally unsolicited advice. It was 5:30pm, I was tired, and he was patronising, so I may have been a little sarky in my response. The assumption that I needed help just grated, and brought out my inner pre-schooler, insisting on doing it by myself, and probably making the whole job take three times as long as a result.

As it turned out, the tyre was well beyond being fixed by blowing air into it, and I ended up going back to the guy (who was genuinely nice, as well as volunteering for the Air Ambulance). He and his colleague not only agreed (with some surprise) that I had been using the machine right, but also identified the problem with the tyre. They then changed the wheel for me, which is definitely beyond any knowledge I may have had about my own car. I was half way through explaining I didn’t think we had a jack in the back when they slid off a hidden panel and there it was. Good thing there wasn’t anything else hidden in there, really.

Standing at the side of the petrol station, watching two strangers go through the boot of my car, I had another decision to make. The children needed to be picked up ASAP. I could phone our neighbour, who is lovely, and gave me her number at Christmas with the assurance that I should call if I ever needed help picking up the girls from school. Or, I could call my husband, who was busy, stressed, and half an hour away.

I called my husband. Of course. Why? Because it was easier, and I was tired. Because I utterly loathe making phone calls, and making a phone call to someone I don’t know particularly well, in order to ask for a favour, is about the worst kind of phone call I can imagine. Because I didn’t want to look like I wasn’t coping, or was needy. Because she might say no, and I would have gone through all of that for nothing.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that asking for help is not one of my strengths. To be fair, very few of us are any good at it – we all seem to ask for too much help, or, more commonly, none at all. However, this was not just yet another incident of me refusing to accept that I might need help. It was also a case of the offer being made in that fabulously non-commital way: just give me a shout if you ever need help. It’s up there, in my experience, with “just ask if you need a babysitter”, or “if you’re feeling down, just talk to someone”. The times that you really need help are also the times you are lying on the floor in a puddle, hands over your mouth to hold in the panic, and you are damned if you are going to admit that you are not coping with things that everyone else manages with ease. Right now, that tiny dreg of pride is the only thing keeping you from melting into the floor, and you are not letting go of that too.

When The Paleontologist was old enough for me to be desperate for a grown-up night out to not need me around for milk at a moment’s notice, we discovered how hard it is to find babysitters in a new town. We had plenty of people offering help: “just pick up the phone, dear.” I loved that community, but the only time we ever accepted an offer of a babysitter was when someone did not leave the action to me. Instead, she took out her diary, picked up a pen, and said “When shall I come over?” This taught me a lesson I try to replicate, though I often fall short. It is not just that we are really bad at asking for help; we are also, generally, really bad at offering it in a way that lets people say yes.

This affects parenting, making it much harder to form the villages we all need to raise our children well and maintain our sanity at the same time. It affects mental health, leaving the onus on the people who are crumbling, instead of expecting more of those who – at the moment, at least – are more steady on their feet. But it also affects things that are bigger than our individual lives. One of these is our attitude to climate action, and as such, it is something we all need to change.

We all have our own reasons for not wanting to take help. We have our own reasons for not wanting to impose our help on others, too, and most of them are either noble and genuine or so deeply ingrained into the British psyche that it would take the end of the world to get over them. The problem is that all these things make us islands, fighting to survive, standing on our own. Some of us have very small islands – some of us live on them entirely alone. Some of us live there with our families, or close friends. Sometimes they include work colleagues, or your church, or other people who think the same way as you about the things that are important. But all of our islands stop us being genuinely connected to this beautiful shared tear-drop of a planet. They stop us reaching out to help people on our street, forming relationships that will help us work together to reduce our consumption or improve our local communities. They stop us seeing the the world around us as something that we all equally share, and depend on. The air I breathe is merged with my neighbour’s long before it reaches my closest friends; why do I act as though we are not that closely connected?

If we are going to change the world, it isn’t going to be done by individuals taking small actions, though that is a good place to start. It’s not going to be fixed by governments and radical laws, though that will be a necessary piece in the puzzle. We need to change the fundamentals of how we relate to each other, and how we see the world. We need to make community a thing that just happens, rather than something forced and awkward. We need to change our mindsets from What is best for me and mine? to What can I do for all of us? People like me, who might obsess for a week over exactly the right thing to casually say if you see the neighbours in the morning (and therefore end up saying nothing at all) need to take a deep breathe, get out of our introverted comfort zones, and say yes a lot more. We all need to get more specific, and make helping each other routine, instead of being remarkable, patronising, or an act of charity. The best harmonies are those where all the voices have their own lines, weaving and intertwining to create something more beautiful than any individual note. We need to stop practicing our own lines in front of the mirror, getting them to performance standard before we let anyone else know we’ve even been learning to sing. We need to work together with all our stumbles and missed notes, letting the shared melodies carry us through and make us stronger.

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Image by Dieter_G from Pixabay

Of course, saying this is one thing. Doing it is quite another. For me, I think it might be time to step out of my comfort zone and offer my neighbour’s daughter a lift to school. Taking one step at a time, who knows where I might end up?