I collapsed for the fourth time in six months and was carried out of the office on a wheelie office chair. My boss drove me home and I stayed in bed for three months. That was the beginning of my two year long battle with chronic fatigue. As I sought recovery, I was introduced to the works of Gabor Matè who is an expert in how trauma lives in our bodies and how we can nurture and care for our nervous systems.
I began to build a new life. One that prioritised my wellbeing. I learned how to bring myself back to a parasympathetic state (rest and digest) more readily when I had formerly operated almost exclusively from the sympathetic (fight or flight). Part of that meant indulging my love of beautiful spaces. Leaning into the romanticisation of my environment and noticing the beauty around.
My mantra became to ‘move gently’. That means not rushing. That means honoring each action with intention. It was a very rewarding existence, one that challenged many more volatile chapters in my career. I recently learned that consistency, especially for mothers, is not how many days we can repeat an action, but how quickly we can return to our best intentions when derailed. When I look back on this season I see that is when I harnessed this skill of returning to myself in the face of adversity.
It is incredibly fortunate that I had strengthened this muscle at that particular time because the subsequent difficulty was a biggie. Infertility. For two years I prayed not to get my period, and there it would be again, bright red blood declaring war on my dreams of becoming a mother. The tears felt endless, but still I found my way back.
In November 2022 we went through our first round of IVF and a couple of weeks before Christmas we were finally able to tell our parents that we were pregnant. The jubilation was epic, but it was superseded by relief. That unique pain was over. I was with child.
The day after I started my second trimester we flew from London to Melbourne where we were intending to create yet another new life, or rather find a home within which we would grow our family. The baby arrived in August 2023 and I finally got to embrace the title I had long coveted.
My birth was excellent; a form of healing for my complicated conception. Breast feeding was brutal. I’d read the literature. I knew how great breast milk was and I wanted my son to have it, but it quite simply wasn’t working. I wanted to erect a sign saying “I promise, I tried really hard to breastfeed” every time I had to get a bottle of formula out for him in public.
That sentiment began to underpin my experience of motherhood. I contorted my commitment to the gentle life into an unimaginably high bar for myself. Within this construct, I became obsessed with protecting my son’s nervous system. “Babies cry” simply wasn’t good enough. I was unwilling to accept this. Perhaps a retaliation to the uncontrollable feeding situation I experienced, or even my journey to getting him, subsequently turned me into a Martyr Mother.
Defining the Experience
A Martyr Mother is someone who pushes themselves to adhere to their values as a parent to such extreme lengths that they ultimately suffer. Eventually the devotion curdles into resentment because nobody can sustainably abandon themselves forever. This relentless endeavour can often be disguised as devotion but it goes beyond reasonable limits and depletes the Mother until she has nothing left to give herself. A Martyr Mother has very high standards for what she deems as acceptable for her children. There is not a lot of room for slack.
Having written that definition myself, I find it difficult to openly acknowledge this label as being an accurate portrayal of my experience. And yet, if I’m honest about the values and standards I have set myself as a mother, then yes, the shoe does fit. My dedication to protecting my children’s nervous systems has been a primary driver of this behaviour although my fertility difficulties certainly contributed. I pined and yearned for these babies for so long, so many tears were shed in their pursuit that now I think a few sacrifices here and there is a small price to pay for all my dreams having come true.
The Day-to-Day Reality
It is fair to say that age 0-3 is an extremely formative period in every human’s life to create both secure attachment and a steady nervous system that can regulate with grace and ease. Admittedly this hard work can be undone in later years, but it is much easier to lay the positive foundations from the get go than to try and achieve each of those later on.
In reality, this pursuit saw me completely desert my previous aspiration for my own nervous system to feel like a floaty muumuu gliding through life. My distorted motivation to prevent my son from enduring any discomfort as a baby or infant led me to snatch him out of my husband’s hands if I felt he wasn’t trying hard enough to soothe him. “I do cartwheels if it means he’ll stop crying. Why aren’t you trying another position?” I curtly snapped at the baby’s father who was cradling, bouncing and pacing with a very upset little guy in his arms. “Sing! He likes singing!” I yelled. Unsurprisingly to absolutely everyone, this did not entice my husband to start singing. The snatching ensued shortly after the absence of any audible lullabies.
Entering my first ever matrescence without my own mum around meant that I didn’t really have anyone I felt totally safe to share the load with that had more experience than me. My new friends were learning how to be mums at the same time, and my husband was learning to be a dad simultaneously too. I love my husband’s family, but truthfully I was still getting to know them during that incredibly emotional and vulnerable period. What I would have benefited from was having my mum and sister around. I may have gone for a nap if they’d been there to hold the baby instead of being forced to do it and spending the full hour sitting on my bed crying waiting to come out and take my baby back.
I don’t look back on that protective mumma-bear time with any disdain or even regret. I am cool with nature’s design to drive me in that way. I still think it is pretty normal. But what that evolved into hasn’t been the most helpful trait.
Beyond my accidental attempts to slaughter any confidence this new dad was gaining, I was treating myself with the same harsh attitude. As our son grew and playing became messier and messier I started tidying after him with a vengeance. I would reset the entire house multiple times a day, knowing it would be messy again in moments, driven by my previous joy in presenting a beautiful environment. When I visited a friend’s home who embraced a little child-friendly clutter, I was jealous. I thought, “How carefree. That’s how it should be. Their mess is a privilege.” Yet, the second my baby napped, and he was never a very good napper, I would grab the hoover, aggressively wrenching it to and fro, or start chopping vegetables with a furrowed brow, ready for the next mushy meal.
In hindsight, I can see how I moved from the aspiration of floating through life like a wafty muumuu into what felt like a gilded cage of my own making. My devotion to preventing every discomfort for my son became a beautiful ideal on the outside, who wouldn’t want to protect their child so fiercely? But inside, it was a cage, limiting my ability to be gentle with myself.
Each “standard” was another bar, making me feel that any less than perfect effort was unacceptable. In that pursuit, I was no longer moving gently, I was confined, trying to be the perfect mother while losing sight of myself.
I’m not the only mum to endure this self-imposed pressure. We constantly receive the message that self-abandonment is to be expected for mothers. The most frightening part is not that society fails to intervene when women lose themselves in this way, but that it celebrates it. Often applauding mothers’ exhaustion as evidence of their devotion, I was absolutely conditioned by this rhetoric.
This is why it is so difficult to spot. We expect and reward this exhaustion fuelled erasure. The mother who never stops, never rests and never asks for help is labelled “Super Mum!” and asked, ‘how do you do it all?’. I suspect they may prefer to hear, “I see you and all that you’re doing. Make sure you put some of that energy into yourself too. Let me know how I can help facilitate that.”
I started noticing a difference between how my husband was and my relationship with self. He could sign up to ‘old man’s footy’ as I call it, also known as playing AFL for a full season with other 35-45 year old men. Meanwhile I would only do YouTube classes on a mat in the garage with the baby in his bouncer next to me. At first this difference bred resentment. Eventually, though, I learned from it.
I think my husband is the most amazing father. He is devoted, shows his love through service, attentiveness and active growth. It’s magic to watch. He also gives himself space to replenish within so that he can give us, his family, that level of care. When work and toddlers collide into a week of running on empty he knows that his boxing class is even more important than the weeks where everything’s running smoothly. I began to take notes.
A New Outlook
It wasn’t until we had our second child that I really began to deal with my Martyr Motherdom. Due to a combination of our previous infertility and only having one remaining embryo on ice in London, we did a transfer on our first visit back to the UK when our son was eight months old. It worked.
Less than 17 months apart, my two greatest gifts, embryo 1 and embryo 2 are the lights of my life. However, we suddenly had two babies. Two babies who can’t get dressed without help, both wore nappies at the same time, needed to be supported with eating simultaneously. The output required to nurture and sustain our children doubled overnight. That second maternity leave taught me that I simply cannot do it all and that good enough is good enough.
When I became stretched so thin I learned pretty quicksmart to be okay with imperfection. I figured out the art of prioritisation and that included taking better care of myself.
What underpins Martyr Motherdom, I think, is a quest for control. Becoming a parent is a complete surrender to uncertainty. You metamorphose into a new physical being, your grey matter changes and suddenly your heart exists outside of your body, wandering around in a harsh world in the form of a tiny person you cannot fully protect.
Realising this helped me have compassion for the new mother who tried to control or avoid emotional pain, both mine and my child’s, as a way to survive so much change. Somewhere along the line I began to believe that if I just tried hard enough I could prevent discomfort, failure or hurt. Acceptance, oddly enough, has made me a steadier mother than control ever did.
Now, as a former martyr mother I’ve chosen to write a new definition.
A Former Martyr Mother understands that values are taught through example. Wanting their children to thrive while sacrificing their own wellbeing is counterintuitive. Pouring into your own cup is not only part of building a sustainable life but it demonstrates to your children that they deserve to do the same. Resentment is overtaken with gratitude and personal accountability. A Former Martyr Mother knows that what’s truly worth having high standards about is not mitigating difficulties or upsets in life, but having the compassion and resilience to ride them.
Nowadays if you need me when my children are napping I’ll most likely be sitting on the sofa, watching Real Housewives with a slice of cake, because I’ve finally learned to only do the very important things that I cannot do when they’re awake during that time. My children do not need a mother who eliminates every discomfort from their lives. They need one who knows how to return to herself after difficulty too. And I find it easiest to do that when watching Kyle Richards flaunt her latest Birkin.
