#TuesdayCheckIn: What’s My Name Again?

How are you doing this week?

Today’s #TuesdayCheckIn is an excerpt of a poem by Hollie McNish. She writes:

And it’s only when the stars are out and everything’s dark that my own name creeps out from under the table, and I’m able to remember the person I am, with a hot cup of tea and a book in my hand and a two hour slot to remember my own plans before I turn off the light. 

Cinderella’s clock strikes at midnight each time, my clock strikes loudly at nine, until she cries out for me or needs her next wee, or shouts in her dreams, or pleads for a fiftieth cuddle from me, or I sneak in her room just to look at her sleep. 
And the label shifts quickly to Mum again, to Mum again. 
Hollie 
Mum 
Hollie 
Mum 
Like a grandfather clock or a metronome run. 
But one word cannot sum up the things we’ve all done, the ways that we love, the stories we tell. 
No bouquets of roses are thrown on our stages. 
Underpaid. Over-worked. 
Us feeders, us nappy-changer divas, us breeders, us milk-makers, milk strainers, cracked nipple, swell-painful, bottle-fed, guilt-ridden. 
Minds riddled all day and night with their care.
One o’clock in the morning just to check they are fine, if the covers are on right, if the nappy is too tight, if the bedroom is too light, so that even in the middle of a mother’s own night, she’s not quite an individual in her own right. 
Someone said that mums are the rocks that never crumble. 
I don’t think that’s true, ‘cause I do. 
I cry hidden in loos, I scream alone in my car, and when I’m woken once more and desperate to sleep, I weep watching the stars. 

And every parent I know says those moments are never so far. 

One of Embrace’s biggest goals is to unify mothers. We are not blind to all that divides us. We know that even as we all mother, our experiences and the challenges we face are not the same. But we know that we have enough in common so that every mother’s experience is important to every mother. No-one else knows intimately the pressures of holding this identity, this title, this responsibility like another mother. So, we try to make that precious shared knowledge mean something by showing up for each other, mother to mother.