Taming my jackal
When my first daughter, Charlotte, was born, I had a vision in my head of the type of mother I wanted to be. It was kind of Earth-Mama-meets-Gina-Ford: a loving, warm and highly organised mother who breezes through each day, baby on one hip, vacuum cleaner on the other. The type of mother who reads her child stories whilst simultaneously preparing delicious home-cooked organic purees.
These were high, unrealistic (and, I realise now, totally misguided) expectations. Unsurprisingly, I struggled to come even close. I always tried hard. I’d get up each day, full of good intention, telling myself that today was the day I’d get it right but by the end of the day I’d fall into bed, feeling worn out, fed up and guilty.
Thankfully, I soon realised that strict routines and minute-by-minute schedules were not for me. Gina’s book was consigned to the bin. We muddled through those early months and somehow got to the point where Charlotte was sleeping through the night. I learned to let go of my desire to control every minute of the day and started to go more with the flow.
Fast forward a year and I decided to quit teaching to start my tuition business. I wanted to spend more time with my daughter and I believed that running my own business would give me the time and the freedom to do so. Oh, how naïve I was back then! The business took off pretty quickly and I was soon struggling to juggle work, motherhood and life in general.
Determined to ‘be a success’, I worked harder than ever before and was soon tutoring every evening and all over the weekends. I was seeing Charlotte during the weekdays but I was rarely fully present as I’d constantly have one eye on my emails and I’d be multi-tasking where possible – simultaneously looking after Charlotte whilst planning lessons, dealing with enquiries, marketing or whatever else was pressing for that moment.
Back then, I used to experience uncontrollable rages. The anger would come out of nowhere. One minute, I’d be feeling perfectly calm and then all of a sudden, the red mist would descend. I would seriously lose the plot: I’d shout, swear, stamp, slam doors, throw things. It was not a pretty sight.
And then, as suddenly as it had started, it would stop. The anger would flood out of me and I’d be left feeling ashamed and contrite.
Desperate to get my anger under control, I signed up for a mindfulness and meditation course. It helped for a while. (Although I kept falling asleep during the meditations which was a bit embarrassing). During those early years, I read self-development and parenting books and signed up to online courses. I would think for a while that it was working; that I was ‘cured’. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, I’d have another meltdown.
Then I trained as a practitioner in Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP). This totally changed my outlook on life and transformed my business (and that’s a whole different story.) But…I still continued to battle with the red mist. In many ways, it was worse than ever – not so much the extent of the rages but more due to the extreme guilt and shame I would feel whenever it happened. The fact that I’d done so much training and yet was still behaving in this way served to make me feel even more of a failure.
A few years later and daughter number two, Ava, came along. After a six-month maternity leave, I was back to running the business and the work-parenting-life juggle. By now I had a team of people and the business was thriving. It was an exciting few years - we won several awards and I started to feel like the ‘successful’ businesswoman I’d set my sights on.
BUT I was barely seeing my children; my husband, Alistair, and I were like two ships that passed in the night and I was not taking care of myself. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find the balance that I was craving. I was either all-in, head down focused on work OR on being a mother OR on looking after myself…I just couldn’t manage to get the juggle right. And in spreading myself so thin, I was dropping some of the juggling balls. I’d forget things, deadlines were missed, I’d double book myself. I was dashing about like a headless chicken, feeling frazzled and grumpy and succeeding in doing nothing particularly well.
Each evening, in my quest to be super-efficient and strike that elusive balance, I’d write endless ‘to do’ lists for the following day…only to re-write the same list the following evening with a few more items added to it. In an attempt to make myself feel better about my ever-growing list of incomplete tasks, I often resorted to adding tasks I’d already completed (such as brushing my teeth and getting dressed) just so that I could cross them off and feel like I’d actually achieved something.
I felt like a failure:
I was failing as a mother.
I was failing as a wife.
I was failing as a businesswoman.
…And I was failing at life.
One of the things that used to really set me off was getting out of the house. No matter what strategies I used, we’d always get to the point where “We absolutely have to go right now or we’ll be late!” In an attempt to get the kids in the car, I would cajole, bribe, plead and then, when those strategies failed, I’d demand, threaten and blame. These incidences would often end with me yelling and the kids in tears. (And we were usually late.)
Bedtime battles were another common occurrence. On one particularly notable occasion, when Charlotte and Ava were about eight and four, their bedtime delaying tactics were in full swing. My cajole-bribe-plead strategy had failed yet again and I fast-tracked to anger mode. I was so angry at their refusal to cooperate with my demand that they go to bed that I totally lost the plot. The red mist descended. I shouted. I swore. I picked up the nearest thing and threw it with all my might. It made a loud ‘CRACK!’ as it made contact with the opposite wall. The girls were watching on in horror – it was one of their toys.
Full of remorse, I ran over to pick it up. It had shattered into pieces. Thankfully, it wasn’t anything too precious. Just a plastic loom. But it belonged to them and I’d broken it.
The girls were shocked. I felt terrible. I realised then that this had to stop. Of course, I apologised...I always did apologise when I lost it…but that wasn’t the point. I needed to change. I couldn’t keep on with this cycle of rage-reaction-shame-remorse. It was wearing me down, it was wearing my family down…and I was worried I was psychologically scarring my girls for life.
A few weeks later, I was talking to a friend about my parenting woes and she told me about nonviolent communication (NVC). Intrigued, I watched some YouTube videos of Marshall B. Rosenberg PhD – the founder of NVC. Then I bought his book, ‘Nonviolent Communication – A Language of Life’. I was hooked. I signed up for a weekend foundation course, persuaded my parents to look after the girls and dragged my husband, Alistair, along with me. What I learned that weekend transformed the way I thought about communication and relationships forever. I signed up for several more.
During those courses, our trainer illustrated the basics of NVC using two hand puppets: a giraffe and a jackal. These two animal metaphors are often used in NVC to represent the two key ways in which we communicate. The giraffe represents compassionate communication; the jackal is the judger and blamer of the pair.
Always a sucker for a cuddly toy and keen to introduce the basics of NVC to my daughters, I invested in my own giraffe and jackal puppets. Over the days that followed, I talked to the girls about what it means to behave like a giraffe or a jackal. We named them Geraldine Giraffe and Jeremy Jackal.
A few weeks later, I was having a jackal moment: going on at the girls about the mess in the kitchen and the part they’d had to play in it. Mid-moan, Ava walked out of the room and returned a few moments later with something in her hand. Without saying a word, she placed it on the table in front of me, looked up at me with solemn eyes and then walked back out again. It was Geraldine.
In that moment, I remembered that I had a choice. I could carry on in jackal mode, moaning and complaining (and alienating myself from my children) or I could put on my giraffe ears, give myself some empathy and change my behaviour. So I took a few deep breaths, picked Geraldine up off the table and told the girls I was going to rewind the past few minutes. I walked out of the kitchen, had a chat with the puppet, got in touch with my needs and then walked back in again.
This time, giraffe puppet on hand and speaking as Geraldine, I calmly announced that I’d spoken to Jeremy to find out why he’d come out just then. I explained that he’d been feeling frustrated because he could really do with some cooperation and support right now and I asked if they’d be willing to help clear the table. This was all spoken in my best giraffe voice. We all laughed, the situation was diffused...and the table was cleared. After that, I started to take Geraldine around the house with me – as a visual reminder to harness my inner giraffe.
Fast forward to today:
We are still work in progress. Both Jeremy and Geraldine continue to keep me company. They serve as a really good reminder to us all to show up each day with our giraffe ears and words. And both of them appear on a regular basis when we are faced with a family disagreement. Geraldine is very good listener and Jeremy’s humorous rants have helped to dissipate many a fraught moment. They’ve helped us to resolve all sorts of issues: from tea-time tantrums to bedtime sulks (and not only mine!)
The girls do still remember the day ‘when mummy broke our loom’. It gets referred to quite often. Thankfully, they remember it not due to the long-lasting trauma it inflicted on them but as an amusing anecdote. Also due to the fact that the very next day, mummy went out to the toy shop and bought up every loom band kit in sight!