Becoming creatively maladjusted to the expectations of motherhood
On rest, rebellion, and refusing to see exhaustion as normal
Hi! If you're new to Heartbeats, welcome. I'm Mariah, and I write about the messy, beautiful intersection of caregiving and creativity. Today's letter is about rest as rebellion, becoming maladjusted to motherhood's impossible standards, and why small acts of defiance matter. Heartbeats is a reader-supported community. Thank you for being here! 💗
Hello.
I don’t know about you, but the recent time change has wreaked a bit of havoc on our family. There’s nothing like having a kid to show the absurdity of a strict 24 hour schedule that doesn’t allow for the change in light or seasons. After a rough bedtime and several wake-ups during the night, I didn’t have the heart to wake him up at our usual 7am (especially now that it’s still dark outside).
We turned off the alarm and all got another hour or two of sleep, which means Noah is home with me today, an unexpected, yet now familiar disruption in our routine.
Which brings me back to the subject of rest, one of the biggest lessons and initiations I’ve experienced in motherhood.
Historically, I am not good at it.
In college, I not only double majored in nursing and Spanish, I worked three part-time jobs and frequently woke from periods of rest with a racing heart and sense of what I can only call a mix of both dread and panic for everything I had not yet done.
When I began my career as a nurse, I worked the overnight shift from 6:45pm-7:15am, 3-4 times a week, which sent the rest of my waking/sleeping hours into such a dysregulated state I resembled a walking zombie, even on my days off.
After backpacking around the world for over a year in my mid-twenties, I “eased” back into life at home by working part-time for a non-profit while training for my first marathon, writing The Pattern Shop, and simultaneously trying to build a social networking app.
Transitioning to full-time work at the non-profit was paired with buying and renovating my first house (literally pulling carpet staples out of the wooden floors by hand one at a time), and re-entering the dating world.
Oddly enough, experiencing the pandemic, my father’s unexpected passing, and my unexpected pregnancy (all within two years) gave me the biggest chance to slow down, though not by choice.
Even now, it is something I fight.
And something life compels me to do, this mastery of a lesson I never signed up for but just might be the thing I need most.
You, too?
I wrote the poem below in those early, raw days of motherhood when I felt like even my body wasn’t fully mine.
I’ve come back to it lately in a different context–evidence of how women are trained, coerced, and treated under the extractive forces of patriarchy and capitalism.
Reading it today, I feel the urge to share it as a reclamation–a calling back of all that’s been taken with the knowledge it does not have to be this way.
My Body
Pleasure mine excavated captivated concealed Darkest desires hidden, safe Pillaged for gain Incubator Swollen, burgeoning cells Warm, taut laboratory experiment Factory automated hormone signal Twenty-four seven product, supply and demand Jungle gym, hair in knots like rope, grasped Stomach soft and ready when you fall Laughingstock Blemished skin, sagging bones ache revealed Dust coated collectible, half-off original price Abandoned ghost town rubble Wind whistle teeth Panned for gold, left behind When will it be finally mine?
Motherhood is teaching me to push back on internalized blame, acknowledging the systems and structures (ahem, daylight savings time) that consistently reinforce productivity and tangible growth, ignoring or even demonizing periods of dormancy, grief, silence, sickness, integration, and rebirth.
The necessity for these qualities of life, the ebb alongside the flow are always present, yet motherhood brings them to the surface in a way that’s impossible to subvert. It simply doesn’t operate on a 24 hour, 9-5, 5 days a week schedule. Nor does nature, nor do our bodies.
So how can we soften into this truth, while questioning the cultural, societal, and economic demands of our current reality?
I recently discovered Martin Luther King Jr’s call to be “creatively misaligned” to unjust systems.
“But I must honestly say there are some things in our nation and the world to which I am proud to be maladjusted and wish all men of goodwill would be maladjusted until the good society is realized.
I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to a religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few, leaving millions of people smothering in an air-tight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence. We need maladjusted men and women where these problems are concerned.”
—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Normalizing the struggle many of us face to conform to systems and structures that are antithetical to our wellbeing reminds us that we are not the problem.
It shifts the burden of responsibility from mothers to “try harder, do more” to the environment in which we are set up to fail. In this context, small rebellions (like rest) become ways to slowly re-shape cultural expectations and demands that are impossible to meet.
Here are a few ways this is showing up in my life lately:
Not accepting that it’s “normal” for me to be tired/chronically depleted just because I’m a mother nearing 40. I’ve advocated for several years to figure out why I’m feeling this way and finally have a functional medicine nurse practitioner who is taking it seriously and helping me find physical reasons beyond “get better sleep” to improve my health.
Taking more naps. Even if it means Paw Patrol is on in the other room while I’m under the covers.
Teaching Noah to meet his own needs (age appropriate) and to help around the house, rather than expecting to be waited on hand and foot. I’m very cognizant that how he and I interact will be the blueprint for how he treats/interacts with other women!
Not shaming or blaming myself when my creative practice takes a backseat to my health or my family’s health. Consistency is less the goal than an ability to keep coming back, no matter how long an absence.
I certainly don’t have all the answers–more often than not, I find myself sitting with an unnamable sadness for what’s been lost in our insatiable need for more. Sometimes the remedy is simply being with that grief and resting in the budding belief that I’m enough, always.
May you remember the same, in small, rebellious ways.
All my love,
Mariah
For the rebel spirits 🦋
I wrote The Pattern Shop after quitting my job as a nurse in the ICU and backpacking around the world for over a year, trying to find home. It’s a fictional story inspired by my lived experiences of rebelling against the life I was supposed to want, versus the one that was fully mine.
It’s for the misfits with stubborn curiosity who ask too many questions, who can’t seem to quell their wanderlust or belief that there’s more to life than this.
Really wonderful and insightful Thank you Mariah
My husband recently went on a solo camping trip & while he was gone, I realized how much of external expectations I've internalized. While he was away I felt like I could rest and let go. I decided to investigate that feeling and I realized that he wasn't putting those expectations on me, I was. I have been running myself into the ground, saying no to help, and meeting expectations that are all in my own head - then I'm angry at everyone else because they rest and I don't. Letting go of it is hard after 30 us years of internalizing it but I'm doing my best. Here's to becoming more maladjusted!