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<\/p>\nAlmost a year ago, I put up a short note on Substack to ask if anyone would be prepared to talk about the secret regrets they have about being a mother. What I received was an influx of emails detailing relationships severed because of children, careers sacrificed, exhaustion, loss of identity \u2013 the stories went on and on. But one thing remained constant, and that was the guilt, shame and fear of acknowledging any of this.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Many women agreed to talk with me, only to change their minds at the last moment. Others chose not to talk on the record, but simply wanted to share their stories with me privately.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Though I am not a mother myself, what this outpouring of stories did was underline the complicated and often taboo feelings around being a mother. Which is why I am publishing the following story. It comes from a woman called Gill Moakes who agreed to talk to me on the record and without anonymity.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Hello, I\u2019m Gill,\u2019 she wrote. \u2018I have a severely autistic son called James. I adore him and tell anyone who will listen that I wouldn\u2019t change a thing about him. On some levels that\u2019s true.\u00a0On others it\u2019s a big fat lie\u2026\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gill\u2019s account is unique to her, but it is also a wider story about the dichotomy of feelings, good and bad, that exist around motherhood for many women. Please read it with an openness of mind and heart.<\/p>\n
Gill’s Story\u00a0<\/p>\n
Looking back, I can see there was nothing intentional about being a mother for me. It was just a sequence of events that I followed. Much of the excitement I felt around it was, \u2018What pram am I going to get?\u2019 or \u2018How am I going to decorate the nursery?\u2019. It was not motherhood that excited me, it was the status around motherhood that did \u2013 the beautiful nappy bags, the prams, the clothes. I spent more time thinking about that stuff than I did about becoming a mother.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I have older siblings who both started families before me, so I had glimpses of what motherhood might be like. But what I never encountered was an image of it being hard. My sister loved being a mother and had enough money to ensure things were never difficult, so I had no concept of it ever being a struggle. James was a normal baby for the first 18 months, but then, bit by bit, I noticed that he was out of step with other children. He was not behind exactly, but he was different. Whereas the other mums could predict their children\u2019s routines, I found it impossible.\u00a0<\/p>\n
James\u2019s speech was very slow, too, and he rarely made eye contact or responded to his name. And he would stay awake for hours. About a year later we got a diagnosis: James was autistic.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t remember feeling upset when I was told. I think I was simply relieved because it opened up the door for the support he was going to need. What I didn\u2019t think about was the support I was going to need.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a funny thing to admit now, but there was a time when I quite enjoyed the attention of having a child with special needs. I suppose I enjoyed people thinking I was coping well. But as time progressed it became much harder. For a start, you couldn\u2019t reason with James \u2013 there was no bribing him as there was with other children. If he wanted to go and lie on top of the frozen vegetables in the supermarket (one of his favourite things), there was nothing you could do about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The hardest part was having to navigate an unimaginable future for myself. All the landmarks my friends with children had on their horizons were taken away from me \u2013 being mother of the groom, James going to university, James\u2019s first day at work, James being a father, me being a grandmother.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But what was worse was that I didn\u2019t know what James\u2019s life would look like. I couldn\u2019t get my head around what would happen when he finished school. Would he sit in some sort of day centre rocking back and forth? Over time it became impossible to be around close friends with their \u2018normal\u2019 kids, and gradually I abandoned many of the friendships I had made when James was much younger.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I split up with James\u2019s dad when James was three. He started a new life and said James was too disruptive to be part of it. But I remarried a wonderful man called Phil who treated James like his own son. Sadly, Phil passed away a few years ago, but James can\u2019t understand that and still asks to see him. So that\u2019s doubly difficult to deal with. It also gives me the most painful insight into what will happen to James when I am no longer here.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As James grew, his anger and violent rages grew with him. For many years \u2013 and it pains me to admit this \u2013 I hated every minute he was awake. I was relieved when he went to school, and I lived for the moment he would fall asleep. The struggle started as soon as he woke and I would have to wrestle with him to get him ready for school. When I collected him I would then have to bundle him into the car, whereupon he\u2019d hit me and try to grab me around the neck. James was still in nappies until 12, and would, on occasion, smear excrement all over the walls. When he was eight, every night for about three months I had to strip the bed, wash his hair and mouth, then disinfect the entire room.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was around that time I had one of the darkest thoughts of my life. I remember James was outside but I wasn\u2019t sure where exactly. Suddenly, I feared that perhaps he had been run over, followed by the flash thought: \u2018Well, that would take all this away.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
The lowest point of motherhood for me was when I had to have James put into residential care. By then I\u2018d had to stop working to look after him. He was terrorising my stepchildren and could fly into violent rages at any moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
James was almost nine years old at that point, but with a very strong rugby player-like build. I knew I could no longer care for both him and myself. We found a residential home for him in the next village. I packed his bags knowing this would be the last time I would live side by side with my son. That afternoon I stood in front of him and told him that after school he would not be coming back home that day, nor the next day, or the day after that. James didn\u2019t comprehend, but it broke my heart.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Without question my son has ruined my life, but, and this is the important bit, he has also enriched it beyond compare. The two sentiments can live side by side. I resent the fact that his autism denied me so much affection from him when he was younger. I was distraught that, until his early teens he wouldn\u2019t let me touch him so I had to wait until he was asleep before I could tiptoe into his room and kiss him. Yet even when I got nothing positive from James \u2013 no affection, no smiles, no joy, no gratitude \u2013 that desire to go in at night and kiss him overrode it all.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One of the best things in my life has been my relationship with him, despite everything we have been through. That\u2019s why I think it\u2019s OK to live with the dichotomy of feelings. The love and the hate. The resentment and the joy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Motherhood has taught me that light and dark can live alongside one another. However dark the dark got, my love for James never diminished. It just stood strong alongside the disappointment, the resentment and the fear.<\/p>\n