There's no such thing as the perfect mother, we're assured – being a 'good-enough' mother is all that's expected. But what does she look like? And how do you know if she applies to you? After all, one mother's good-enough might be another mother's, well… not-so-good-enough.
Trying to find that middle ground between idealism and realism can be a head wreck. And yet it all sounds so simple and do-able – give your kids plenty of love, a stable upbringing – and they'll do just fine. But what if you can only promise one of those things?
Loving my kids I can do in my sleep and under heavy blindfold, but guaranteeing them a stable upbringing? That's entirely different. Any mother who bears a child one day and is diagnosed with mental illness the next will know that stability is at the bottom of the queue. To gain any sort of anchorage you'll have to claw your way up because you want to give your kids exactly that, a solid foundation, before they finally get sprung out into the world.
You want them to remember their childhood as a happy one, where the only monsters are the invisible ones under their bed. You'll do whatever it takes and have every therapy imaginable. You'll grab it with both hands if it helps you get there, to the land of good-enough mothers.
The pressure goes beyond that which we heap on ourselves. Magazines, internet sites – they're awash with tips on how to become the mother of all mothers, how to make that cake and eat the whole bloody lot and still stay thin, how to continue the juggle of homework books, ballet practice, birthday parties, date nights and everything else on the endless to-do list of idealistic mothering.
You try not to get sucked into that vortex of modern parenting madness – but you don't want to feel left behind, you don't want your children to feel left behind – so you push yourself. Next thing, you're in a tailspin, a continuous downward spiral until - bang - you're in the midst of a full-blown panic attack. The ever-present anxiety has found your trigger and is feasting on your desperation to bestow on your kids the best childhood possible.
If you're alone with the kids when that tsunamic wave of panic takes hold, you will inevitably drop everything to selfishly go and have your meltdown elsewhere and spare your kids a ringside seat. On your pathetic return you're asked 'what's wrong with your eyes, Mummy?' You'll blame a cold, because how the hell else do you explain mental illness to a four-year-old?
But it's not just the panic attacks you have to contend with, it's the dissociative state, where you lose complete contact with reality to the extent that you sometimes don't recognise your children. For a mother, that's one of the cruellest aspects of mental illness. It sounds like a contradiction to both fear death and welcome it, but there are times when you don't know if you can live like this any longer or have your family live through it.
With mental illness comes a different kind of mothering, because it's not so much about keeping your children out of A&E as keeping yourself out. Tired and tireless, you invent ways to self-soothe, some healthy, some not so – and it can all become one big yo-yo of medication versus meditation, an unhappy hour of cocktails, mood stabilisers meets Agnus Castus, anything that might work – because if you can't learn to soothe yourself than how can you ever hope to soothe your children?
Had I received my diagnosis for borderline personality disorder before having my child, I would have had to think twice about whether to fulfil that instinctual desire to have kids. Children don't get to choose what kind of world they're born into and by default your world becomes theirs. How you paint it is very much down to you. So you get creative, draw from the darkness – overshadowing it with the boldest colour you can muster. Everything has a bright side if you look for it – even mental illness – because one of the better side effects is the ability to see things more clearly from a child's level. So you start there. You write and abide by your own parenting rules. You keep on your toes – actually, make that a bike. Because bikes have stabilisers and sometimes they fall off and have to be put back on again. And that's kind of what happens to mummy. Her stabilisers fall off.