Learning to Push Yourself

With love...

Photo by Jade on Unsplash

I saw something the other day that said “I’m so scared that I want to be so many things, that I’ll end up being nothing at all.” It struck me because, I feel that I have that same fear on a regular basis. When you are a creative person, your mind is often filled with all of these things that you want to do. So much so, that you get overwhelmed and do none of them. You tangle yourself up in all of these ‘things’ that eventually you just put them all away.

Imagine christmas lights, at first they are twinkling on the tree. They bring joy and excitement, then one day you have to unplug them. You try and promise yourself that you will put them away properly, but eventually they all become a tangled mess. You shove them in a box or cupboard and say “Oh I’ll deal with it later!” Then later becomes a whole year, and you’re faced with this heap of tangled mess that you have to patiently unravel before the excitement can set in again. That’s what being a creative can be like.

I constantly feel like I am treading water to keep up, then all of a sudden a wave of comparison will hit me. I regain my composure, then a bigger wave of self deprecation slams into my body. I feel disoriented but manage to keep swimming, but then I eventually drown when the wave of ‘lack of time’ takes me out. So I put it off, constantly regurgitating the narrative of me being ‘time poor’ as an excuse not to push myself. I can’t do that anymore.

When I first started The Mother Cooker, it was because I wanted to be my own boss. I saw it as a place to filter my creativity and passion after becoming a mother. A mother who had completely and utterly lost who she was. I was a shell of my former self, I will openly admit that. Nobody ever really talks about how a child drains you of all that you were before your new identity.

You go to playgroups and you’re known as so and so’s mommy. That then filters to school gates, your child is all people ask you about. Your family only ask how your child is doing, or when they can see them. You are lost. Eventually, you realise that the only person that can find you again, is you. The only person who can save you from drowning is you, you have to swim.

The Mother Cooker was my life raft.

Over the years I have had so many ideas to expand and drive my brand forward. I’ve written them down, I’ve drew them out, I’ve printed off inspiration and plans and timelines. But then half of them never materialise. I procrastinate, compare, over analyse, make excuses. I fail. The thing I found was that I wanted everything to be ‘perfect’. I wouldn’t make video content because my kitchen didn’t match the aesthetic I saw on the internet. I wasn’t pretty, or thin enough to be on camera. All the women that do well on Tik Tok or Instagram are these glorious, shiny haired women. Nobody wants to see a normal, frazzled mother cooking food. Surely?

I often feel like I am so far behind others, even friends that I have watched for years. I’ve championed them, supported them and watched them grow. Whilst I’ve slowly faded into the background. Never with an ounce of jealousy or spite but I’ve often wondered why I didn’t make it to the dizzy heights of social media fame. Then I look inward and realise I simply didn’t ‘do’ enough for myself. I simply didn’t believe that I could.

Now I am 38 years old, a new wave has arrived to contend with and it’s called ‘popularity’. Seldom are the days of high school thought about, but it’s always there in the back of your mind. Wanting to be a Martha Stewart in the days where Meredith Hayden is the glorious, modern day embodiment of such can be difficult. She is the queen and I am only but a mere mortal here to congratulate the purchase of her new beautiful Hamptons estate.

But then I have to remind myself that the world is a big place, I don’t have to swim in the ocean. I can choose a lake, I can find fellow wild swimmers. That is what this Substack is to me. A place to find my people, a place to find my creativity again, a place to remember who I am.

As I always say, “Of course I can do it, I’m The Mother Cooker.”