Mothers’ musings. How a mum is helping others journal their way through motherhood.
Sarah Piscopo Mercieca
Writing always felt therapeutic to psychologist SARAH PISCOPO MERCIECA. As she graduated and began her career in psychology - while also embarking on her personal journey into motherhood - she turned to the power of words to make sense of her experiences. After witnessing the benefits firsthand, she co-founded ‘MUSE: Mothers Uniting in Stories and Emotions’, an initiative designed to help mothers express and process their experiences through writing.
Why did you start journaling?
I started journaling as part of my own therapeutic process, back in 2012. Journaling was, and still is, a way of making sense of the internal chaos created by my many thoughts and emotions.
Through experimenting with journaling, I found that I could see myself clearly through writing. Putting it down, pen to paper, brings containment and validation. It brings a sense of acceptance even when nothing is solved. It helps me reflect and come to different ways of thinking about what I am facing in the present moment.
My own profession and specialisation also continued to solidify my journaling practice. Journaling is one of the tools I encourage adolescents and parents to pick up in my private practice as a psychologist.
“Journaling was, and still is, a way of making sense of the internal chaos created by my many thoughts and emotions.”
There is plenty of research demonstrating the benefits of journaling as a self-care tool, especially for parents and mothers. It has the potential to increase gratitude and positive thinking and help parents cope with distress related to their children. It helps with alleviating depressive moods and lessen anxiety. Research also demonstrates that even when journaling takes different forms, it still has a positive impact on psychological and mental health.
I tend to take a more spiritual outlook on journaling apart from (and together with) the pragmatic and research-based perspective. My favourite quote about journaling is from C.G Jung written in The Red Book:
“I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you can, in some beautifully bound book…Then you can go to the book and turn over the pages and for you it will be your church – your cathedral – the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal… for in that book is your soul.”
How did you merge journaling and motherhood?
Journaling was also my saving grace the moment I became a mother. Even though becoming a mother was one of the most magnificent and pivotal moments in my life, it was personally very disempowering.
I struggled to cope with the transition from a family of two (my husband and I) to three (our precious baby boy). I felt lonely and isolated, even though I was surrounded by other mothers and babies. I felt this burning desire to authentically connect with other mothers, say it how it is: “I am struggling!”, without the fear of being judged for feeling so disempowered.
In my head, there was this expectation that, when you become a mother, you automatically transform into this empowered mother nature type of goddess, who has been through birth and came out of it feeling victorious. I just didn’t feel it.
The cherry on top of the cake was my second birth, where both my baby and I passed through a very traumatic birth. I remember frantically writing in my journal and sobbing during the first and second night after the birth, since I was separated from my newborn.
“In my head, there was this expectation that, when you become a mother, you automatically transform into this empowered mother nature type of goddess, who has been through birth and came out of it feeling victorious. I just didn’t feel it.”
I also remember (being the nerd that I am) finding research showing the benefits of journaling for mothers who had babies at the NPICU, to self-heal, process emotions and connect with their babies.
In those moments of confusion, joy and pain, I reached out to Roberta Azzopardi from Songs of Motherhood and asked her if I could publish my writing about my traumatic birth in her book. It became very clear to me that I felt this incessant need to reach out and authentically connect with other mothers, to create with other mothers and share my story with them.
How was MUSE born?
Motherhood brings overwhelmingly beautiful love and joy, and I think most of us feel better about sharing these moments. However, when it brings pain and struggle, it’s harder to voice, which creates isolation. I yearned for a place where I could just be honest with where I was in my motherhood journey and how I felt about it.
Fast forward a couple of months and I came across a project in Edinburgh of a writing circle for mothers (Creative Writing | The New Mothers' Writing Circle) and it just clicked. I contacted Roberta again with this idea to create a mother’s journaling community - and that was the start.
MUSE, Mothers Uniting in Stories and Emotion, was the perfect name (Thank you Roberta for picking such a beautiful name!!!). We started off with an online community where journaling mothers joined in and experimented with eight online journaling tasks published over a few months.
“It became very clear to me that I felt this incessant need to reach out and authentically connect with other mothers, to create with other mothers and share my story with them.”
The members were challenged to write a letter to themselves, to their child or to their partner, write a journal entry from the perspective of their child, re-introduce themselves to their journal, write lists of things, people, situations they are grateful for, write bucket lists… to name a few.
This initial online journaling experience served as a platform of personal reflection and connection with other mothers who are in the same boat. In my opinion, every time someone shared their writings and reflections, there was a sense of “Amen” and reverence towards each other!
We organised our first MUSE face-to-face journaling group session with members from this online community and a few other mothers who were enthusiastic to join. It was an emotional and deeply connecting experience. We met to read literature concerning motherhood and had time to journal and write in each other’s presence.
Each of us was welcome to share parts of our writings and reflections, which led to a passionate discussion that brought with it interesting aha moments.
Being part of MUSE has left me with this powerful realisation that even though our motherhood experiences are unique, underneath all the differences lie the same bedrock of motherhood themes and realities. The MUSE mothers have given their permission to share pieces from their writings to give a voice to these themes and realities. Thank you!
Motherhood realities
Comradery
There was a powerful sense of comradery about the seismic effect that becoming a mother had on our sense of identity. Who are we again?! One of our mothers shared the below to explain the chaos of this transition and the fear of being honest about the invisible struggle that is rebuilding ourselves:
“At times I struggle to explain this, mostly because I fear that I may be misunderstood or that I sound ungrateful or frivolous. But it’s true. My son has changed my life, me, my relationship with my husband. He’s given life and this world a new meaning, he has given me a beautiful and special purpose. I’ve never known a love like this.
“However, this love and feeling comes with a price. I’ve always struggled to understand what I need or want. It usually takes me a while to recognise this. Add a baby to the mix and my self-understanding just turned upside down. It’s like I had to start from scratch. I had to re-discover myself, physically, emotionally and psychologically, while taking care of a baby.”
Change
As hinted in the above writing, change was a massive theme, experienced within all aspects of a mother’s life. This change also seemed to have an impact on the relationship with one’s partner, which in the below writing can produce uncertainty and fear but also gratitude and love:
“I am scared for the years to come…I fear who we will become after our sons have wreaked havoc on our bodies, souls, personhood and home! They already have started, and I think we are in for a wild ride in the next 10 / 20 years! Will we want to find each other’s hands at the end of the day? We already have days where we don’t. Will I know you? … Will I resent you? Will you resent me? … Our love is strong and can weather any storm. Our connection solidified by the creation our family. I want to thank you for being the father that you are to our children and for being a companion, a solid companion to the mother I have become.”
Conflicting needs
Some writings uncovered the constant push and pull between the children’s needs versus our needs as mothers and women and the emotion that this tension creates:
“I feel guilty that I wish to run away for an hour or two because I feel so suffocated. I feel terribly selfish when my patience runs low. I feel terrible that I have very little energy to deal with those multiple night wakings. [...]”
“I love them, of course, I love them. I’d jump in front of a moving bus for them. But I crave that one afternoon where I can just write or read or read + write - imagine, what a luxury. The written word is my tether to this world, that reminds me to slow down. But it’s tricky, this bending over backwards to make the time for me.”
Honest connection
I admired the courage all mothers involved showed in being true and honest with each other about how rock bottom motherhood can make us feel and how resilient we become in dealing with the darkness that at times falls:
“This week I met a mum that saw me on the verge of tears while I tried consoling my son, and what she said hit hard: ‘you’ll miss these days one day’. On a good day I manage to take this and be ‘more’ tolerant, on a bad day… I’m spiralling into ‘if this is what I’ll be missing, then what’s coming?!’”
“Where am I in this journey? I am not sure. I go up and down. I have been at the bottom. I have touched the depths of the well and now I think I have made peace with the bottom. Before it was an enemy, a place to fear…I have made peace with the darkness…the sadness, the challenge, the grief, the loss, the pain...”
Exhaustion
The feeling of exhaustion was a theme that kept coming up which was met by a great sense of solidarity. Like soldiers at war, we could recognise the relentless physical, mental and emotional ache that motherhood chisels into us. Yet, this was also accompanied by a sigh of exasperation upon realising that there is a bigger picture. The sacrifice is real and hard, but the journey is meaningful!
“I’m tired. They tell me I don’t look it, that I look great, but I am. I see it in the way my eyelid droops a little lower over my right eye. I see it in the way I can’t for the life of me focus for more than 10 minutes at work and even that comes at great cost. I want to do so many things. I want to write + plan holidays + sleep. So much sleep. But instead, sometimes I feel like that hamster, caught in an illusion that it’s getting somewhere—that it must get to a destination because why else would it be tired from turning that wheel so much? ... I’m tired. But I’m also grateful, so grateful to feel that right now, this is my biggest challenge—fitting all the life we have in our days. Because isn’t that true? Isn’t it also a good thing that there isn’t enough time to fit all that is good + great? It’s tricky, scaling up that wall. I stop for sips from the water I’m carrying when I remember to—But I see the light. And it’s getting bigger.”
Self compassion
Through listening to each other’s stories, we are humbled at the great feats that mothers and parents do on the daily. Patience, forgiveness, gratitude and self-compassion is not for the faint hearted. Seeing them put down in words created an opportunity to recognise them and express a sense of pride and achievement in the face of this motherhood challenge:
“Most of all, lots of patience and forgiving myself when I lose it with him and have a meltdown of my own with him!! Have faith Mamas (and Papas) and keep feeding in the love metre! It works, slowly but surely.”
Childs views
Encouraging each other to look at motherhood through the eyes of our children was a sweet experience. One of our mothers shared snippets from a sweet journal entry, which reminds us of the other side of mothering, our kids. We are everything to them! This served as a beautiful reminder of our purpose:
“I reach out in the dark to touch her face…I feel her lips, nose and my favourite part, her nostrils. She’s here. Yes, she is. Even in the dark, I can feel it’s her. She has come. And as she rocks me to sleep on our favourite chair, I rest my head against her chest. “Oh yes, this is nice and warm. It’s safe.”
“My fingers move to her lips, and I feel her kissing my fingers, one by one. I hear her soft voice as she whispers my favourite bedtime story. My fingers roam around her face…hoping that she can understand and feel what’s in my heart and mind. Hold me tight, Mummy. This is what I need right now. Us, just like this.”
Love
Notwithstanding all this, there was also a common sense of overwhelming love and joy, and the fact that we wouldn’t want it any other way. What a great contradiction motherhood is:
“She wishes for more lightness, to not appear grumpy by default because in truth she is not. Yes, she misses her books and getting on planes, but the fact of the matter is that she has never felt as alive as she does now.”
“And so, my sweet, I must remember to hug you more frequently and hold you more tightly. And try to embrace the good, the bad and the ugly. For there is not one without the other; they come hand in hand, to show us the fragile but beautiful nature of human life.”
May is an exciting month for MUSE!
In May MUSE has a collaboration with Positive Birth Malta, where they will be posting four online journaling tasks on their socials (https://www.facebook.com/positivebirthmalta).
Mothers and expecting mothers within their community will be encouraged to journal and share their writing on the page. This seeks to widen the online community of journaling mothers while supporting mothers in their self-care!
At the end of the month (Saturday, 31st May) MUSE is organising the second MUSE in-person journaling session! This will be MUSE’s future focus, to create a physical space, an in-person community where mothers can meet, have a coffee (or two), get to know each other and of course journal and share. The sessions will be monthly, where mothers (even if you are still expecting, adopting, fostering, parenting) can drop in (with some heads up!) and write! The ambition is to offer mothers an opportunity to connect both in person and online in a manner that is flexible for a mother’s busy schedule. To create a refuge for mothers who many a times put their needs last.
Mothers can get in touch and join by contacting Sarah on journalingmother@gmail.com or by clicking Join Us Now on the webpage: Muse - Journaling Workshops for Mothers | words
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