I was a little surprised when I was asked to write a piece about keeping life together as a working mum.
The timing is somewhat ironic. As I write this, I’m alone in my house with my four-year-old son and my 10-month-old daughter. My daughter has caught some virus that seems to be generating a really terrifying rash on 90% of her body.
My lovely paediatrician, whom I’ve now seen three times in the last 10 days, isn’t concerned, but she doesn’t have to wake up every 90 minutes to comfort an inconsolable infant. And my son has been waking up nightly as well.
He wanders into my room at two or three in the morning, looking for his father. Who isn’t here? Because we’re getting a divorce.
So, I may not be the most helpful voice after all in this endless debate about working motherhood, leaning in, keeping-it-together-while-falling-apart (actually, on that last point, it’s easy… lots and lots of wine).
But I can see why the nice editors might have thought otherwise. Over the course of the past five years, I’ve got married, had two children and watched my career blow up as an actress.
Overnight, I became a bit of a poster child for ‘having it all’.
That’s how it looked from the outside, anyway. Now let me paint you the picture from the inside.
We’re in the middle of shooting the second season. I’m pregnant, but not enough to tell anyone. I’m really, really sick.
I wake up vomiting; I’m vomiting in the van on the way to the set; I’m holding the pressure points on my wrists with my thumbs when I talk to actors to avoid vomiting on them. The actors are unhappy because the scripts are late. The network is unhappy because the actors are unhappy. I seem unable to give anyone the time or attention they feel they deserve. I drag myself into a rented apartment after 14-hour-days on location. I’ve invariably missed my son’s bedtime by hours.
There’s another episode due, so I make some coffee and sit down to write, but my computer screen makes me nauseous and coffee makes me nauseous, so I end up vomiting some more.
I want to spoon my husband and talk, but our room is dark and he’s asleep. He’s begun pulling away from me. The cracks that will eventually break our marriage are already visible if you’re looking – which I’m not.
He’s angry that I’ve disappeared on him. We are only recently married. Now, he’s moved across the country to a city he hates to support my career – and I’m never home. And when I am home, I’m sick as a dog and there’s another baby on the way.
I’m so tired and overwhelmed, I know I’m going to cry, but I don’t want to wake anyone up, so I go into the bathroom, I turn on the water, then I lay down on the floor, curl into a ball and cry there. Pretty glamorous, right?
You can argue that I should have seen this coming. What was I thinking, trying to run a TV show, support a new marriage and have two children at the same time?
I admit I was operating under the delusion that I was tougher than most other people and therefore could handle any amount of stress. And I admit, I was wrong.
I don’t think I wanted anything different than a 35-year-old man in my position would expect from his life. Two children, a happy marriage and a white-hot career? Is that such a crazy thing to strive for?
And I don’t regret having my children when I did. Because biology is biology, and I knew it would be harder for me to get pregnant post 35.
But here’s what I do regret. I regret not asking for enough help. I felt that I needed to prove I could do it on my own. I didn’t want anyone to see me as compromised because I was a woman.
In recent months, however, as my whole life changes and I’m forced to let go of my nuclear family, I’ve been asking for a lot of help. And I’ve been shocked to find how readily available it is.
Especially from other women. Friends who are also struggling to juggle marriage and children and crazy careers. And yet, they call, they text, they show up at my door. They offer food, childcare, conversation, support.
Old friends from university, new friends from pre-school, older writers and show-runners who’ve mentored me along the way. When I finally sent out an SOS call, I learned there is a whole underground railroad of women who are primed and ready to respond. We are all fighting the same fight. But for some reason, we believe we have to endure it alone.
And then, of course, even with help, there have been days where I’m so sad that as soon as my kids go to bed, all I can do is pour a glass of wine, sit on the couch and breathe.
And sometimes, even breathing seems challenging. At which point, I invariably start making lists in my head of things I’m convinced I need to do to feel better. I need to see a therapist. I need medication. I need to exercise or be a vegan or join a dating site or learn to meditate.
For some reason, in this day and age, we’re always trying to ‘fix’ ourselves. Especially as women. We’re convinced that happiness is just a pill or a plan away.
But lately, I’ve been wondering if there is anything so wrong with just being really sad. If, in fact, being really sad is the only way to ‘fix’ anything. Because pain brings us back to our most basic selves and forces us to figure out what we actually need to live. Which, it turns out, is not that much. Just a few things that you love.
So now, when I have those terrible days, I eat some food and put myself to sleep early and when I wake up the next morning, my daughter is standing in her crib singing and she’s absolutely thrilled to see me. And my son wants to pretend he’s the brother dragon and I’m the mummy dragon and his sister is the baby dragon and we’re all in a canoe in space.
And after they’re both dressed and fed and their bottoms are wiped and their teeth are brushed, I get to actually leave my house and go to work. Where I get to make up stories about the characters I love. With other people I love. Which is something I have done since I was a child for fun – but now they’re paying me to do it. And the reason they’re paying me is that I have worked very hard for a very long time, through my girlhood, my marriage, two pregnancies, two labours and two post-partum depressions, through great love and great disappointment – and I’m still getting up and I’m still going in.
So, I obviously don’t have an answer to the paradox of working motherhood. And I’m sure I never will.
But I have learned a few things along the way that I didn’t know when I began. Firstly, this is hard. Even for very tough people, it is very hard.
Secondly, reach out to your friends. That’s why you let them puke in your car back at university and you didn’t make them get out and walk home. Because one day, they’ll pay you back by sleeping over at your house when the power goes out and you have two small children and you’re afraid to be alone.
Thirdly, be kind to yourself. Treat yourself like someone you really care about. If you’re hungry, eat. If you’re tired, sleep. If you’re sad, cry (that’s what showers are for). And finally, don’t be afraid of your own story.
Even if it doesn’t work out the way you expected it to. Even if it feels like a failure. No matter what happens, it is still the story of your life and nobody else can tell it.
