Ciphers, Symbols, and Lights in the Night

When my second daughter was born, I was already juggling one toddler and a full-time career as a Set Decorator with the help of a part-time sitter. My spouse was an on-set special effects technician, often working 14–16 hours a day, making his contributions to childcare somewhat minimal. But I’d been making it work. How much harder could a second child be?

Well, I soon learned the truth of the saying: “One is one and two is ten.”

Whether you are a working mom or dad, the physics of time, space and energy are still the same. You cannot be a full time professional doing a good job and also be a full-time parent doing a good job. I was trying to do both and crashing horribly.

Commonly Dispensed Myth: “It’s no big deal, stay home with the kids, when you are ready to go back to work, you can.” Whenever I floated the idea of jumping off the work carousel for a while, this is what people told me. So, when my kids started wondering who I was when I walked in the door at night, I knew I had to take a work break.

Two years into my stay-at-home-mom “hiatus” I realized jumping back on the carousel wasn’t going to happen.

Reality check #1: children may get easier in some ways as they get older, the teething pains stop, they start sleeping better, they learn to walk…but with each transition things also get more difficult. Play dates, after school activities, sick days, school holidays, and the constant state of high alert for the many real (like, climbing up a collection of boxes stacked precariously on top of a chair, to reach the cookie tin, or having a Star Wars fight using straightened wire coat hangers as light sabers) and imagined (like, getting eaten by bears) dangers. Was I ever really thinking that at some point they would become completely apron-string-free from 9–5 so I could get back to my career? How adorable.

Reality check #2: The minute I turned down my first job, I evaporated from the minds of everyone I had ever worked with. I became a Mom Cipher.

In case you aren’t familiar with this phenomenon, this happens to women when, after having children, hitting 40, or both, they become invisible to men. (Women still saw me, but as one female potential boss told me, “I will only hire you if you promise you will never, ever put your kids before this job.” #sisterhood)

Interestingly, this cipheric dilema doesn’t seem to apply to men who, with child in tow, become more attractive to both bosses and other women. A man with a child gives “stability” vibes. A woman with a child gives “she’s going to tell me to clean my room” vibes.

When I fully absorbed this new reality, I got very depressed. Instead of “Having it All” I seemed to be blowing it all. A friend suggested a Jungian therapist he knew, so I went to figure my life out.

This therapist introduced me to the collective unconscious, Jung’s Red Book, and lucid dreaming. I started paying attention to (and sketching) the stories that were unfolding when I was asleep, or even just daydreaming. In one session, I drifted into a meditation in which I saw myself in a tangled thicket at night. A woman came to me and took my hand. I followed her for a long way, through tall brush and trees until we came to a beach where the sun was just coming up. She told me to lie down on the golden sand, which I did, with the water lapping at my feet. Soon I began turning into water myself. I sank into the sand, becoming one with the ocean.

I strongly felt I had been led by an inner “collective unconscious” ancestral guide, someone who gently brought me to a place of surrender. Up until that point I had been striving, and pushing against change, trying to hold onto a former identity I no longer inhabited. With acceptance came a transition, from struggling against being defined as a Mother, to seeing the power of that definition. A Mother is a person responsible for nurturing their family, their community, and the future. A Mother is a person who guides, who acts as a light in a dark forest, and who connects the cosmic continuum, like the woman in my vision.

This power is not exclusively granted to traditional mothers. Some mothers are biological, some are chosen, some choose to be. Anyone can be a shield, a comforter, an umbrella, a lighthouse for the families they love, and a pillar of positive inspiration for generations to come.