Iesha Madden is based in Alberta, Canada. She works as a career coach at a community college and has a three year old. I came across Iesha on Instagram where she is one of the people talking about motherhood more realistically.
You describe yourself as a mom advocate. What does that mean to you?
There are a lot of things out there about taking care of the baby, but I’m really concerned about taking care of the mom. That’s been something that has been heavy on my heart since I became a mother myself so I like to try and share the good, the bad, and the ugly of motherhood because a real experience includes all three.
How well prepared were you for what motherhood is like?
So I don’t think I’d advise anyone to do this but I didn’t prepare for motherhood at all. I didn’t read any of the books or take any classes. I prepared quite intensively for labour, because at the time, I thought that was going to be the hardest part. I spent a lot of time researching breathing methods, how to make the environment calm, how to make the labour easier for me.
But motherhood? I wasn’t prepared at all.
What effect did becoming a mother have on you?
Motherhood definitely exposed all the things about me that I needed to heal. I wasn't prepared for that. I had a lot of difficulty with the gap between my expectations and what the everyday was really like. I’ve had to really tackle some of these things- through therapy and lots of self reflection.
I think motherhood has shown me that it's OK if things change and it's OK if who you are changes. That's a beautiful thing and something you should embrace instead of something that you fight.
It took me quite a while to get to this better place though. At first, my inner perfectionist was placing all these expectations on me- that I should know what to do in every situation and achieve some made up version of motherhood perfection.
I think some of this came from my childhood. I was always a bit of a ‘golden child’ and being encouraged for all the things I did right. I think I equated that to people liking me because I did things right and my mind just took that to another level: I’m only loved if I’m doing the things people like about me, when I have it all together, when I’m taking it all in my stride.
I also gave birth during the pandemic and none of my or my partner’s family were able to come and visit so it was just us by ourselves. It was a very difficult time but I think the therapy helped a lot and I will never regret it because I think I had to go through that to be in the better place that I am now.
What do you wish people would say more openly about motherhood?
I think we need more honesty. More people are opening up now which is great but a lot of moms still set themselves the kind of unachievable expectations that I did. We need to come down to earth and show our humanness a bit more- we all go through a whole range of emotions and the quicker we accept them, the quicker we can move past them.
Motherhood is not always happy. You won't always be happy. You won't always enjoy every stage. There will be challenging days.
I think that just needs to be shared more and more and more because a lot of the messages we pick up in society or when comparing ourselves to others is that everything seems to be OK with everyone else. Why are they so happy? And I'm not happy! The reality is that we don't really know everybody's personal life. We don't know what it took to get certain pictures or how people are really feeling behind the facade.
I think it's also important that we realise that motherhood is what we make it.
It's our motherhood, it's not somebody else's experience. We don't have to mirror anybody else.
We are in control of the way we embrace and experience our own individual motherhood journey. We are all unique people and we shouldn’t try to be what anyone else is or hide what we are feeling
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