Wife Mode, Life Mode, Lost Mode, Paid Mode

There's gonna be some changes around here.

trying to make sure everyone gets a fair slice

When I put up the first Mama Nomics post in January, I had a plan. Three posts, about the economics of motherhood. I knew what the posts were, and was confident I could deliver them in respectably swift succession, and then carry on with the next thing.

Of course, it’s now June, and that’s not what’s happened. So I thought I should offer an update about what’s been going on the last few months, and how it has shaped my plans for Mama Dentata going forward. Which I will explain in the final section (feel free to skip forward to that if you prefer).

Wife Mode

My father-in-law died in February. Quite unexpectedly. He was coming up on his 90th birthday, but was about as healthy as a horse as far as anyone knew. My husband adored his father, and was of course upset by his abrupt passing. So, I went into Wife Mode. Figuring out how to get my old passport back from the American Embassy, since the new one I’d applied for two weeks before hadn’t yet arrived. Booking flights to Ireland. Sorting out funeral-appropriate clothes for the three of us. Arranging a cat-sitter. Being emotionally available for my grieving husband. Helping him think about the eulogy he needed to write. Round after round of laundry. Dinners. Packing. Travel snacks. Dealing with my son’s puke on the nearly four hour bus journey from Dublin Airport to Tipperary while my husband was busily contacting folks about the funeral. Sitting with my father-in-law’s body, and all his family. Trying to explain what little we understand about death to a four-year-old. Trying to keep said four-year-old, who had never been to church, quiet during a long Catholic funeral service, but also ready for his turn to go up and lay his grandfather’s fireman’s axe on the casket. Shaking hands with hundreds of strangers. Sheltering my freezing son from the astonishing wind up on the Rock of Cashel, where his grandfather was buried. Having tissues and snacks and handkerchiefs and water and puke bags ready for whoever might need them. Keeping everything together as we shuffled between spare rooms in the homes of friends of the family. They were strange weeks. But very important ones. And I am grateful I was able to play my small part.

Ireland is still very Catholic. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Life Mode

The week after we got back from Ireland, I was on a train to the Netherlands. Because a few days before my father-in-law passed, I had accepted a spot at a psilocybin retreat there. I thought I might cancel, but my husband insisted I should still go. The whole way there, I wondered why I was going back. Both times I had gone in the years before had been mind- and life-altering, in the most positive possible way. But even as I sat down before the temple fire, I was worrying; what if nothing earth-shattering happened this trip? How would I justify the expense of the journey there if I just had a good time?

And then I stared into the fire, and thought about the beautiful tree I had leaned against before coming into the temple. How I had felt so attuned to that tree, and here we were burning a different one to feed the fire. And I started reflecting on life and death: which trees and people and animals get cut down when, and the suffering and shortness of life across species, and the wars and tragedies happening all over the world at that instant. And how even though I was so very fortunate in my own little life, I didn’t seem able to make the most of it, in the way I thought I should be able to. Why was that? What did I need to do differently?

And then I got this message. I don’t think I actually saw the words with my eyes, or heard them with my ears. But I was somehow experiencing them very clearly, being pummelled into my consciousness over and over again:

ENJOY IT. ENJOY IT. ENJOY IT.

That was the message of that trip: in the face of the brevity and unfairness and sometimes brutal nature of life, we have a duty to appreciate and enjoy the shit out of everything that is good about the whole strange business as much as we possibly can, while we can. That was the whole point of being here. For everyone. Me included. And that was where I was getting in my own way. Agonising over whether I deserved the nice things life offered me. Worried I was somehow going to get punished for taking too much pleasure in them. Trying to make myself do things I wasn’t enthusiastic about, whilst fantasising about doing other things instead, and doing a kind of lousy job at all of it. That’s where I was making things more difficult for myself than I needed to, and wasting my short time in this life. If I could embrace pleasure, I would gain power. And if I could experience and express my gratitude for beauty and kindness wholeheartedly, then there was simply no need for guilt. That was how I should try to live going forward.

Lost Mode

My son was not happy at his old daycare, so he changed to a new one in February. There was a ‘settling in’ period for the first couple weeks, during which he went in for only brief pockets of time each day. And then we were off to Ireland for the funeral. Since we got back in March, the daycare was closed three days for Women’s Day, had a four day weekend for Easter, were closed for May Day, had three days off for training and two days off for Christ’s Ascension, and another long weekend for Whit Monday. We also had a few rounds of staying home sick, which ranged from prolonged respiratory issues to abruptly vomiting in the night. There were also day they asked parents to pick up our children early, as they are short-staffed; which is a problem at daycares across Berlin. So much so that, as I was writing this post, I got an email announcing that their union would be holding a ‘warning’ strike today (the notice was in German, English, Arabic, Turkish, French, Spanish, Italian, Ukrainian, Russian, and Vietnamese, because that’s the kind of place this is). And further strikes quite likely continuing next week.

There were also doctor and dentist appointments for my son and I. Paperwork and appointments for our new passports and new daycare. Physiotherapy and acupuncture appointments for the back problems that still plague me these many years after my son’s birth.

We had a visit from my stepdaughter, who came home for her spring break from college, and from my mother, who came over from America for my son’s fifth birthday party. Planning my son’s party, and deciding on the best new bike to replace the one he outgrew in the winter. I had my psilocybin retreat in March, and my husband went to the Netherlands for his turn in April. Then he needed to go to Ireland again in May, so I had about two weeks of solo parenting.

So you see, the days I could actually just spend at my desk, focused on my work, have been hard to come by, and keeping a routine going has been bloody impossible. At first, I was okay with that. In the wake of both funeral and fungal lessons about enjoying life and loved ones before we're gone, I was on a mission to go with the flow, and be present for my family, and do my best to enjoy whatever life was asking of me, rather than fighting it.

After a while though, I realised part of me was avoiding coming back to my Mama Dentata work. I didn’t know how to pick it up again. Felt maybe I couldn’t, or shouldn’t. I had stacks and stacks of ideas, but I wasn’t processing them into posts. Maybe I just wasn’t smart enough. Maybe I didn’t have the right personality for writing online. Maybe there was another endeavour I’d be more capable of. I spent some days sketching out and working on alternatives. But the more I cast around for what I should do, the more lost I felt I was getting.

But for all the chaos of my thoughts, and all the other things pulling at my attention, I kept coming back to the simple fact that there isn’t anything that matters more to me than motherhood, and all the things that make that role simultaneously impossible and unsurpassable. And I am not ready to let this obsession go. It’s too important. Instead I have to ask what I have been doing wrong. Why do I have such resistance to doing the work that I care so much about? How can I make it less overwhelming, and more enjoyable, and hold myself accountable?

Paid Mode

This work feels like a calling. But I also need it to be a job. I need to treat it like a job, and show up for it reliably. Which means I need to not do other work. Which means I need to get paid for it. I am acutely aware that I’d be ridiculous to ask anyone to support my work when I am producing so little. But that creates a catch-22, which I need to finally break. And the only way that I can is see to do that is to finally start writing, as Cheryl Strayed famously advises, “like a motherfucker.”

Luckily, I think I’ve found a way to solve two problems at once. Part of why I don’t write enough here is being distracted by topics that don’t seem like an obviously fit for Mama Dentata. But I’ve realised that I get to decide what Mama Dentata is about. So I pulled all the books from my little home library, and sorted them. And while many interests were represented, three categories dominated:

• MAMMALIA: the physical and cognitive development of mothers and children. In each new mother-child dyad, and throughout our ongoing mammalian evolution.

• MAMA NOMICS: the resources and logistics of caring for a family, and making a home, and the networking of homes into communities and nations.

• SACRED MOTHER: the intense spiritual and creative dimensions of fostering new life, and how those can be reflected in art, philosophy, and mythology.

I have assigned a row to each on the bookshelf beside my desk.

I think all of these things have been part of Mama Dentata since the time of The Naming, but it is helpful to me to set them out clearly, and in doing so, realise that practically all things of interest to me can fit into at least one of these categories. Which I believe will let me bring all of my focus and enthusiasm to this space, as I ought to, and offer you much more.

Speaking of which - I sent out a reader survey back in February, when the feature was first added. I got some very nice, helpful, illuminating responses. The survey is anonymous, so I don’t know which of you to thank, but if you are reading this and did answer, thank you! However, if you are reading this and didn’t answer, and would like to, you still can:

I have thought about your feedback; what you like about Mama Dentata, and what you would like more of. And I have thought about what I want, and what I am actually capable of. And I have thought about the many new features Substack keeps introducing (at a slightly worrying pace). Here is what I am aiming to deliver:

• More Posts: Nearly everyone who answered the survey said that they mainly just want more essays to read (as opposed to videos, podcasts, group chats, etc.). And that’s the main thing I’d like to have here, too. I have a list of about thirty essays I’d like to get up. So my main focus will be on doing so.

• Surveys: I am very excited about the potential of this new survey function. Substack has a little map that shows where your readers have subscribed from (see below). So I can see that Mama Dentata readers are distributed across 46 countries. Most of you are in the Anglosphere: the US, the UK, Canada, Ireland, and Australia. That’s no surprise, given the platform and language we’re using. But there are more than forty other countries on that list, ranging from Sweden to Sudan, and Argentina to Indonesia. That is fascinating. I try to keep an international awareness in mind when I write, but at the end of the day my experience is limited to, well, my experience. I would love to know more about what life is like, on the ground, for you, as it relates to any and all topics covered here - or that should be, and haven’t yet. I would love to be able to share your insights. Again, the surveys are anonymous, so your answers would be, too, unless you’d be pleased to be quoted directly. Which leads me to…

• Interviews: One of the other main things survey responders were in favour of was interviews. I would like to make that happen. I think interviewing readers via the surveys is one piece of that. But proper, long-form interviews are another. Once I get a bit of steam going on the other stuff, so that I have a robust publication people might be glad to be featured in, I will start working on those.

• Audio Essays: I am going to have a go at reading out my essays. I have had very little experience with speaking in public or on mic, and my voice sounds very weird to my own ears. Nonetheless, I think it is a great feature for publications to offer. It can be very hard some days to find ten straight minutes where you have you hands and eyes free, which makes listening sometimes much easier than reading. Substack also offers the option of hosting a podcast on your publication, but creating a whole podcast by myself seems daunting at this point. So let’s just start with one toe in the audio water, and see how that goes.

I haven’t turned on paid subscriptions yet. But I plan to do so soon. When I do, I’ll announce it, along with what extra features I’ll offer for paying subscribers. One thing I have no intention of doing is paywalling my posts. I want this readership to grow as much as possible, and can’t imagine putting up restrictions on anyone reading my work. So if you like that work, and think it has value, I hope some of you will consider signing up, and help it grow and become sustainable. Though the best way to do that is to simply share it freely with others.

a picture Arlo drew for me while I was finishing the final edits on this post :)