Hard

I am a hypocrite.

I feel like such crap right now for how I am feeling, but I need to express myself in order to work through it.  For right now it continues to fester in my heart and I need to let it go.

For all of the years that I have taught and worked with pregnant women, I have continually pushed upon them the need to seek help, seek support, reach out, do not try to do it all on their own, that they need a community of women who will help them and love them.  It is so important to new mothers and old mothers, first time moms and fifth time moms. 

This is a huge thing to me.  I am the one, after all, who wrote a post titled Death to Superwoman. 

But being here in Singapore, I am finding it hard to be so compassionate toward the woes of (expat) mothers.  I truly believe in the statement, "Your hard is hard, my hard is hard."  That we should not compare our hardships in order to met out the amount of compassion earned by one another.  What's hard for one person is not necessarily hard for another.  And what is easy for one person may be extremely difficult for another.  I know this intellectually. I have felt this emotionally among mothers with whom I've worked.  But if feels so different here.

Where I've lived before, it is often a military wife who I am supporting.  If not a military wife, then often a woman without a lot of family support.  And most of these women are low to middle class women, all of whom do their own shopping, cooking and cleaning.  As a postpartum doula, the balancing act of housekeeping and mothering is often what I am helping a woman figure out.  

With military wives, especially, there is a deep-rooted foundation of needing to be strong.  It often takes time to convince a military wife that she does need help.  That it is okay to need support.  That it is alright to not be able to do it all on her own.  She often will wear herself out with doing everything on her own before she breaks down and admits that she's having a hard time.  I know this.  I have lived this.  As a military wife, we need our husbands to know that they do not need to worry about us while they are gone on their mission.  If they have to worry about us, they cannot be fully focused on their mission.  If they are not fully focused on their mission, lives are at stake.  Military wives are typically hard-shelled.  This, I am accustomed to.  This is my norm.

But here.  It is so different.  I am having a hard time changing out my lenses and seeing the world through this new perspective of motherhood.  A world in which helpers abound, so new mothers often do not worry about cleaning or cooking.  A world in which women hire people to come to their home to give manicures, teach a baby to sleep, or a toddler to sing their ABCs.  A world in which women pay hundreds of dollars for someone else to make a crappy birthday cake.  A world in which women send their babies to nursery school so that they can have "me time".

I am trying to get there.  I am trying to see the world through their eyes, and be compassionate.  I am trying to see their hard.  But it is so different, it is hard.

I think of my friend back home.  Pregnant with her fifth baby, military husband gone more often than at home.  She homeschools her four, and runs a hobby farm.  She makes all of her food, mostly from scratch, mostly home grown/home picked.  She fixes the fences and hauls the hay and scoops the poop, all on her own, or with the help of her kids.  She sees that as normal.  So to compare that to a woman here whose husband is often gone on work trips, but has a helper at home to cook and clean and is overwhelmed by one child who goes to nursery three times a week, it is hard.  I feel like a hypocrite wanting to tell them to get off their pedestal and get real.  To toughen up and look at the rest of the world and what most women accomplish in a day.  Because I have preached for so long to ask for help, to welcome the support of their village.  But this is not the village I had in mind.

I have a hard time not feeling snarky when a woman complains about needing a girls night out because her husband is on a week-long business trip.  My husband was on a year-long deployment to a war region.  "Your hard is hard, my hard is hard."  I'm trying to get there.  I am.  This is the stretching and growing process.  I feel embarrassed to write this and post it, because it makes me look petty and self-glorifying.  But, I hope I can one day look back at this and see the growth I've had along the way. 

Can I support new mothers here?  I think so.  The need for breastfeeding support, the need for someone to let them know that what they're feeling is normal, the need for verification that caring for a newborn is hard, the need for encouragement and support for mother-baby connection and attachment - these, these are universal.  And this is why I feel I need to support the mothers here in Singapore.