Mothers Need Time-Outs, Too: A review

In a couple of short weeks, Hamlet will enter kindergarten. As excited as I am for him (and me!), I’m also apprehensive–not for his sake or any fear that he won’t excel, but because I know this new chapter in his life will bring changes in mine. That may sound selfish, but the fact is, listening to the other preschool moms talk this past year about their own experiences with school activities, after-school activities, their volunteer activities in the school, and (occasionally) their own work… I often wondered how I would make it all fit.

I’m not a people person and I’m comfortable with that, so I don’t see myself becoming hugely involved with the PTO or doing a lot of volunteer work in the school. At the same time, I thought, would Hamlet see other mothers volunteering more often than I do, and thus think maybe I care less? If I have trouble balancing my work life and mothering now, how will I do with school in the mix?

Enter Mothers Need Time-Outs, Too, authored by Susan Callahan, Anne Nolen, and Katrin Schumann. Indeed, in their opening chapter, they write: “But as our kids grew in inches and independence, everything started to shift…. Our lives sometimes seemed to lack achievable and satisfying personal goals.” These three are mothers who understand the balancing act, and their book is chock full of useful and resonant advice that cover a wide variety of mother care. Consider their chapter titles:

Introduction: From Never Being a Good-Enough Mother to Finding Happiness in Doing the Best You Can
1. The Attitude Shift: From Trying to Be Perfect to Taking Time-Outs for Yourself
2. The Power of Self-Awareness: From Losing Yourself in Motherhood to Understanding Who You Are Today
3. The Importance of the Here and Now: From Perpetual Preoccupation to Appreciating the Moment
4. The Value of Downtime: From Living in Perpetual Motion to Hearing Your Own Voice in the Silence
5. The Loving Link with Your Partner: From Living Side by Side to Integrating Your Life Together
6. The Need to Reach Out: From Motherhood in Isolation to Creating and Providing a Support Network
7. The Significance of Self-Care: From Never Putting Yourself First to Taking Care of Your Whole Self
8. The Power of Less: From Living a Frenzied Life to Gaining Greater Control
9. It’s Supposed to Be Fun: From Being a Good Girl to Breaking a Few Rules

But this book isn’t just about the advice. It’s interactive, with exercises to stimulate your thinking about how to get your mojo back (and what it is to begin with). Tips from the Trenches at the end of every chapter, especially, ask you to take a few risks–step away from the familiar and toward what will make you happy. Finding opportunities in ordinary life (even boredom), learning to share your interests with your children, and carving out space of your own (even if it’s in the car alone for 10 minutes with the music turned up) are just a few of the tips presented.

A freelancing friend of mine is contemplating returning to full-time work because as she says, being at home makes it too tempting for her to worry about family, friends, and neighbors. She knows she needs to say “No” more often, but sometimes it just isn’t that simple. This is the kind of book that breaks down the tasks needed to get to that point, thus making everyone happier in both the short and the long terms.

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The Yummy Mummy Manifesto: A review

I have been trying to break out of the domestic mold for some time now. I bought girl clothes, attended a grown-up party, and made a new friend whose children are so close to being out of the house that talking kid stuff is just not a temptation. So when MotherTalk presented the opportunity to review Anna Johnson’s new book The Yummy Mummy Manifesto, I jumped at it.

I was not disappointed. More than a guidebook, the manifesto (as all good ones should be) is an intricate call to action: getting away from the “Juicy sweats” and ponytail that often seem easiest and most practical for mothers of young children to wear, and recognizing and fulfilling ourselves. Not to be selfish or to escape from our children, but to be better mothers.

Johnson covers all aspects of early motherhood, from pregnancy through childbirth and into the toddler years. While I had a hard time relating to pregnancy fashion (I’m done) and sexuality (HA), Johnson’s treatment of sensuality in pregnancy is right on. Linked to the process of birth itself, her discussion may seem a bit odd at first blush, but how right she is that one must reflect on childbearing as “a state rather than an act.”

Having first labored naturally, then having had to endure an emergency Caesarian section, Johnson can afford to advise women: “Drug-free, peaceful, and private birth is the ideal, yet for every alternative, there are ways to humanize, personalize, and empower your birth. Seeing it first and foremost as your own sacred rite of passage is primary to feeling strong and connected.”

Johnson is wonderfully, refreshingly honest about so many aspects of mothering: postnatal sex (“Coming back into your sexuality after a birth is wed pretty tightly to coming back into your power”), fighting with one’s mate (“At the heart of most really awful fights between parents is the same challenge ripping at both the mother and the father but often in different forms”), fitness (“The depletion of muscle tone, loss of agility, and dull weight of new-mother exhaustion pin us down”). Many chapters provide lists with tips on how to achieve Yummyhood, and even if none of the ideas fit you, they should provide a decent springboard from which to find your own way.

Occasionally Johnson edges into what my friend PT-LawMom calls “SanctiMommy” territory. Her chapter on pregnancy diet is delivered like a Jo Frost lecture on discipline, and she strays a bit from her message–finding the woman under the mommy–in her chapters on play and simplicity, which left me feeling like an utter failure. I quite literally draw a blank every time I sit on the floor to play with my children, and I do rely on television and obnoxious plastic toys, but I admit – I am afraid to try more radical mothering, fearful that despite Johnson’s claims of the boon to her creativity, my own will be subsumed.

Johnson understands, though, and her following chapters include “Crafts for Women Who Hate Them” and “Mummy’s Room: How to Build a Sanctuary,” which brings with it a number of ideas for all kinds of spaces in all sizes of home. To that end, The Yummy Mummy Manifesto isn’t just a silly idea of becoming more in tune yourself through fashion and flirtation, but about all the ways in which womanhood and motherhood are inextricably intertwined.

At the core of her book, indeed, Johnson discusses “Gut Reaction,” the criticality of maternal instinct to our lives as both women and mothers: “Blazing your own trail through all the dogma, right and left, and following your heart and senses as much as your logic, will not protect you from the fatigue of the job. But it will help you stand by your choices and know that they were truly your own”–the reason we must all find our own path to Yummyhood.

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Social graces? What social graces?

A few weeks ago I attended a Women’s Expo in Portland ME. It was okay. Lots of crafts, makeup, food, jewelry… you know. Chick stuff.

But there was also a corner reserved for Usborne books. I flipped through a couple and was immediately struck by the colors, the facts, the quality. They were having a buy-5-get-the-5th-free sale, so of course I picked some up. I had trouble choosing.

I also signed up to host a home party. I never host home parties. The last two I had gone to, over 10 years ago, were not good experiences. One was a Mary Kay party hosted at the home of a corporate Stepford wife. (All the conformity with none of the social graces, plus her husband was completely whipped.) The other was a PartyLite party at which the sales person actually got mad at me because I didn’t buy anything. I told her I was broke, so she shoved–literally shoved–a pamphlet at me describing how I too could become a sales consultant. I trashed it. I’m an introvert, people. I don’t do sales consulting.

So why in the hell did I sign up for this Usborne party? Well, the books’ quality really impressed me. I felt if I was going to hit my friends and acquaintances up for cash, the least I could do was present a product that is great for kids (Hamlet barely looks at his other books now) and high quality (Puck can’t destroy them).

So I contact a bunch of people: preschool moms, other Raising Maine bloggers (figuring I could meet a few in the deal), online friends. I got a few RSVPs and a few online sales. Things seemed to be going all right. I went out the morning of the party and got cheese and crackers, Chex mix, things like that.

No one showed.

The sales consultant and I did have a really nice chat. We have many things in common and it was nice to have adult conversation (even if half of it had to do with children). After she left, a shocked Rain Dog told me we could nosh on the leftover snacks for dinner. And now I sit here blogging and musing on my lack of ability even to plan a social event, let alone be part of one. Little wonder I write post-apocalyptic zombie fiction, I guess.

So here’s the part where I completely dispense with all social graces and solicit my readers. Feel like buying kid books? Visit my web party at this website linked in this sentence. Now, I understand the economy sucks and all of our budgets are going down the crapper right along with it. I am there myself, believe me. But just look, and if you see something you like–even just one thing–go and buy it. I think you’ll like the books’ quality just as much as I do (and I don’t make recommendations lightly) and I think you’ll like how your kids get into them, too.

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Tagged for a book meme

Patti tagged me for one that’s making the rounds right now. The rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

The book: one I am reading right now for the purposes of reviewing – Mothers Need Time-Outs, Too (Susan Callahan, Anne Nolen, Katrin Schumann, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008). Let this be a teaser:

Humans are better, happier beasts when their personal, emotional needs are being met. “Cerebral virtues–curiosity, love of learning–are less strongly tied to happiness than interpersonal virtues like kindness, gratitude, and capacity for love,” says Dr. Martin Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness. It’s the gentleness and appreciation that couples share in their best moments that nourishes them in a way nothing else can.

I’m tagging Bethany, Brittany, ML, Joanna, and Sheri. Have fun!

 

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Healthy Child, Healthy World: a review

When I received my review copy of Healthy Child, Healthy World, I admit I was a bit put off by its cover. Not by the picture of the child on it, of course, but by the block that told me: “With contributions by Gwyneth Paltrow, Brooke Shields, Tom Hanks, Tobey Maguire, Kate Hudson, and Erin Brockovich.” Great, I thought. I’m supposed to go green just because the celebrities do? Even though I can’t afford a fraction of the things they can?

This first impression could not have been less accurate. Although a few mention buying things like bamboo floors and organic mattresses, most–startlingly–come across only like other mothers whose names you happen to recognize. “I could easily use organic shampoos and face products but I don’t, not yet,” writes Jenna Elfman. “For now I’m sticking with what’s worked for me all these years.” Brooke Shields agrees, “You do all you can, but there are particulars to your own life that you must respect.”

It’s a view espoused by author Christopher Gavigan, CEO and director of nonprofit organization Healthy Child Healthy World, who encourages readers to start small, prioritize goals, negotiate changes: “Just as nothing slams the brakes on progress more than a sense that you’ve failed right at the start, nothing spurs progress like having milestones, no matter how small, that you’ve reached.”

Indeed, the beauty of his book is that it contains solutions both large and small, and he remains ever mindful of the fact that most of his readers will be budget-constrained. Rather than beat you over the head with eco-guilt, Gavigan presents facts about manufacturers and chemicals, then provides alternatives. For instance, Chapter 2, “Cleanup Time,” provides a number of recipes for easily made, natural cleaners that use ingredients like vinegar and baking soda–which also happen to be much cheaper than most chemically based cleaning products.

In fact, Gavigan’s book is so chock full of useful information that it’s impossible to highlight any. He covers everything about normal life, from cleaning and cosmetics to gardening and pets. His features include:

• “copy and carry” pages about plastics (good vs. bad), produce (the Dirty Dozen vs. the Cleanest 12), and others
• “Healthy Bytes” of information, such as the Ecology Center’s website, which features a searchable database of 1200 popular lead-tested children’s toys (healthytoys.org)
• Contributions not just from celebrities, but also from doctors and scientists
• Names–of responsible manufacturers who have moved toward making greener, healthier products. In fact, an appendix in the back of the book contains a comprehensive list of responsible cosmetic, pesticide, textile goods, toy, food, and other manufacturers.

In short, although I walked into this book skeptical, I walked out with a desire to change. I won’t be able to implement many changes at first–despite the reminder that I will likely save long-term costs in catastrophic health events, my current tight budget is what it is–but there are far more changes that I can make that I would not have expected, and I don’t even have to embrace a “hippie” lifestyle to do so.

That, ultimately, may be the strongest message of Gavigan’s book: individuals can make the world a better place–without giving up so many of the comforts that savvy marketers have convinced us we need.

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Book review: The Sky Isn’t Visible from Here

The popular-media image of the mother-daughter relationship is, generally, a yin and yang of deeply personal conflict and everlasting love. We’re told that we drive each other mutually crazy–but that our love trumps all. The uncomfortable truth–that this is not always so–seems to escape most women’s media. That’s why Felicia Sullivan‘s memoir, The Sky Isn’t Visible from Here, is so important. Mother-daughter dysfunction is real, and although its significant symptom in her life was substance abuse, it’s clear that drugs and alcohol were only a symptom; the core problem comes out in behavior and dialogue.

One of the most painful aspects of the memoir is that “the core problem” is never neatly defined as “borderline personality” or “bipolar,” or other disorders that often result in substance abuse, shaky romantic relationships, and so forth. For Sullivan, there is only the desire to make sense of why her relationship with her mother was such a catastrophic failure.

Jumping back and forth in time, she moves between her hardened (and ultimately truncated) childhood in 1980′s Brooklyn, to her not-so-distant past: first as addict, then as recovering addict. Throughout, her painful details of her childhood as an outcast who could only be friends with other outcasts become equally painful details of an adulthood where Sullivan treats her friends as surrogate mothers, stand-in dartboards for the rage that she can’t direct at her mother, even as she self-destructs. And always, the remembering, thinking back to when things seemed better, or at least when she had the ability to try to make them seem better.

When I first began to read The Sky Isn’t Visible from Here, I feared that its beautiful literary language would obscure the real story. Other literary writing is a breath on the lens that examines life–fogging it and making it seem ethereal. Sullivan’s writing, however, effectively shows the brutality of her life, at the same time that it blunts the impact and carries the reader toward hope.

Interestingly, the book’s cover is a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge under repair, with the author’s childhood image appearing to gaze up at it. But the “bridge repair” is not between her and her mother–indeed, her final forgiveness of her mother is ambiguous, and she freely admits that she feels no love for her mother–instead, it’s between her past and present selves. In other words, the relationship may be irreparable, but the person is not, when she chooses to make the repairs.

Sullivan’s memoir is excruciatingly personal. She does not claim to have healed; her blog contains some touching continuation of her story, even with the success of a published debut:

I had a nervous breakdown at work on Wednesday and had to go home. I’m pretty sure I freaked out my boss and several of my coworkers. I continued sobbing all the way to Brooklyn and even through my four-mile run. I then proceeded to read Glamour and US Weekly and slept for twelve hours…. Right now, my life needs to be about tabloid glitz and celluloid heaven. Easy things. Things I can handle.

The Sky Isn’t Visible from Here is hard to read, at times, because of its honesty, but it is also a worthwhile and healing read–no matter what the relationship you have with your mother.

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