Now in my mid-forties, I do not have children. I often wonder at this decision and think it stems from a fear of getting it terribly wrong.
These themes run through my novel, Bright Burning Things, about a single mother who is forced to give up her acting career when she finds herself pregnant with no support. As an actress myself , I know only too well the feeling of comedown when the adrenalin - kick, excitement, glamour and attention is removed from your life. It is like coming off a hard drug.
And yet my mother’s generation were given Valium and told to ‘get on with it’. In my book, my main character lost her mother very young and barely remembers her. She doesn’t have any memories of being held or cared for. So, how does a mother find that nurturing instinct when she has not experienced it herself?It is, of course, reductive and unfair to simply say because a woman has a difficult past that she will inevitably become a ‘damaging’ mother.
There is another aspect to dark mothering that is difficult to openly acknowledge - and that is a sort of emotional vampirism, where the child is made to feel responsible for every negative feeling and mood their mother is experiencing. A house without boundaries – which is a very common state for alcoholic homes, but also any home where the mother has not learned to parent herself – is a frightening place for any child to grow up in.
And for those who do find themselves mothers, feeling ill equipped, isolated, floundering – surely more understanding, more honesty can be brought to this conversation, so a woman’s complex feelings aren’t regarded as defective and shameful? Motherhood can be a great challenge for some and until we can address this openly, it will be pushed underground into the area of ‘taboo’ where damage flourishes in the dark.
My body feels strong as I push through the surge of water, the sunlight refracted like so many tiny stars, until my lungs are burning, and my heart is thrumming in my throat. I turn on my back and float, staring directly at the concentration of light. When I close my eyes a carnival of colours and shapes explodes behind my lids. Oh, Mr Sunshine’s working his magic alright! I crane my neck to see my boys, but there’s a stranger, bending down to talk to Tommy.
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