Guess what? Turns out I have a fan base – small, yet loyal, and urging me to write more. There must also be a dedicated bot out there reading this blog as my inbox is regularly assaulted with “accept this comment” emails. With excitement, I open the email eager to see that a reader has engaged with my content, only to read: “Try your luck! Just remember to keep it fun, don’t chase your losses.”
Unsure how this comment relates to travelling and/or motherhood, I curse the spam gods.
We’re back in Adelaide, Méabh and I. It wasn’t really an adjustment returning to the City of Churches. After 6 months away, you’d think it would be. However, what I realised while I was away was how much I’d been running from. I used travel as a means of escape, hoping my problems wouldn’t follow me.
Turns out, you can’t really run from motherhood – especially when you take your 4-year-old with you (funny that). Similarly, you can’t outrun your life – even when it’s set against majestic waterfalls, fascinating cultures, and epic scenery.
The worries and doubts that plagued me before leaving only grew in strength. When you run, you hope it will quiet the noise in your mind. You long for distraction, an “out” – unknowingly avoiding what ultimately must be faced. Sheesh, I sound like a sad sack, don’t I?
So, what was I running from? What was I so afraid to face here in Adelaide? What is the actual point of this blog (yet to be determined)?
Those who know me know the immense amount of pain I went through following a work incident. Semantics aren’t necessary, but what stands out clear in my mind is how this one thing completely derailed me. This was coupled with a partner away in the airforce and being thrown back into full-time motherhood.
It is really hard not to play the victim in circumstances like these. What felt like a betrayal within a friendship took a lot of work to redefine. What felt like injustice and bullying in the workplace also took work to accept. What appears unfair, perhaps, is sometimes just a business being a business.
When you build your identity around work or use it to hide from life at home – motherhood – it rattles you like an earthquake when it finally comes crashing down. And just like that, I felt thrown back into the perils of postnatal depression (three years on), something I had failed to properly address. Shame, guilt, anger, resentment, and a significant loss of identity were emotions I was trying to run from, and travel was my crutch.
In Norway, it was compost toilets, yurt-living, hiking, the midnight sun and overpriced food that shaped our adventure. In Sweden, we slept on a boat where the smell of sewage seeped through my nostrils, making sleep almost impossible. Ireland was our base, where family bonds grew strong. The Netherlands taught me that simple living wasn’t really for me, while Belgium was a brief stop along the way. In Greece, we reunited with Eanna and slowed down, winding through the white-washed streets of Mykonos. While these adventures aren’t an everyday occurrence, and something I will always be grateful for, there was often this underlying sense of dread. Sounds selfish doesn’t it? In a time where Europe was my 4-year old’s playground, I still could not get past my challenges in motherhood and the guilt, exhaustion and self-questioning. Adventures, as beautiful as they were, couldn’t erase the responsibility I didn’t want, the pressure to perform and the persistent voice telling me I was failing.
As a previously jaded mental health nurse, I would likely have judged someone’s public admission of failure or struggle. That said, I was burnt out – highly critical of people’s attempts at attention, while failing to recognise my own shortcomings. I do think the pendulum has swung too far, and the ways mental health is discussed these days are sometimes glorified, even monopolised. However, there must still be a space to acknowledge vulnerability without shame. It’s about normalising mental health, particularly in motherhood, without it becoming performative or inauthentic. Whether this is that space, I’m not sure yet.
I’ve returned home, made several significant mistakes, hurt the person I love most in this world, and am still grappling with overwhelming shame – an emotion so difficult to shift. Yet, I hope I am more self-aware now, confronting hard truths and trying to accept that while life is fucking hard, you cannot run from it.
