You could make this place beautiful
An ode to Maggie Smith, to motherhood, to our past selves and to growth
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I have all these plans for what I should write to you, how to give you helpful content that shows you who we are and what we do as an organisation whilst encouraging you to get involved. There’s a scribbled down content plan somewhere deep in a journal, carefully thought out and planned. Then I sit down to actually write it and something else altogether comes out. Sorry about that!
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Today, I wanted to share with you some of the postpartum stories I have collected over the last two years. I wanted to write about my own experience and build a space for these stories here, on Substack, as they slowly get lost on my Instagram feed. I wanted to do this to celebrate my daughters third birthday - the catalyst for all of the work I have done since.
But, every time I’ve sat down to write it, it just hasn’t felt right. I’ve also been hyperfocused on reading
’s new (ish) book ‘You Could Make This Place Beautiful’ and it’s brought out some other things I want to share. Mainly because I’m learning that the things that I want to write, that feel good to write, are the things that often land best with you, the reader. But also because, as I follow more and more motherhood type content creators on Substack and over on other platforms, I still just don’t see myself. Not myself as a mother right now, but myself back then at the beginning, almost ten years ago. Myself when I was first walking through the flames of early motherhood, unsure what was on the other side.And so this is my ode to her. And to Maggie Smith. For unknowingly guiding her forward to be me, in the here and now.
I first found Maggie Smith in June 2016, as did many, when her poem, Good Bones went viral. I read it, all alone, in my dark house; sleeping toddler in bed. It was our second Father’s Day since his dad had left. I had just turned twenty five.
Friends were going on week long trips to warm places, nights out and bad decisions that would turn into happy memories as I sat in my two bed bungalow, with a two year old child, a dog, two cats and a heavy mortgage. Portioning off money into pots, calculating how much I could spend on food if I decided to go to that play group next week.
It’s not that I don’t like watching the slow-lived, goddess hair flowing, ethereal depiction of motherhood play out online. Or even the more back to basics, cooking tea and doing dishes, going to work and juggling it all antithesis. It’s just that that has never been my experience and I can never fully see myself in those stories. I had my first baby when I was still a baby myself. Together we’ve grown, like some ornate tapestry. Our trauma, our grief and our happiness all woven together in a way that can never be separated.
Even seven years on, I can still go back to those years and feel tears forming. Indeed they fell as I reread Good Bones in Maggie’s memoir, two nights ago. I hadn’t seen the words in so long and then there they were. I’m different now. I’m not sure I felt how much had changed until I was lay in bed - my now almost-ten year old still tucked in close -rereading those words from all that long ago.
There are moments from that time of my life that still feel spiky, that still hurt to touch. And reading Good Bones on my second fatherless Father’s Day is one of them.
I remember us going out for the day. Just him and me, tiny hand in mine. I don’t remember where we went. I just remember the families. So many families, smiling and laughing and enjoying each other. My sadness felt dirty and wrong. Pushing my baby on the swing all by myself felt like I was doing something private, for home; airing out my dirty laundry in public.
Afterwards, I read that poem, bone tired from the endless work of my life, and I sobbed.
Then I wrote it out on a scrap piece of paper and stuck it on my kitchen wall.
This place could be beautiful, right?
You could make this place beautiful.
My home, my life. I could make this place beautiful. And I have, I did what you asked Maggie. I made my life beautiful. And I have also, largely, kept the process from my children.
It’s weird because, reading the context around the poem, it was never written to be about separation. But it rang so true for me back then. And reading Maggie’s words now, reading about her divorce, about her own grief. Reading her words brought me full circle - sitting in my big house, with my husband (a different father), and my children and a different dog. Reading her words now when I can buy a coffee at the park cafe without checking my bank account first. There are so many parallels with her words and how I felt back then. But huge differences too.
In the book, Maggie talks about her and her husbands life before kids, the impact having kids had on them as a partnership. She talks often of ghosts and midlife crises. Going through this experience in my early twenties, I can’t relate to any of this. But I can hugely relate to the words she shares around loosing her future, or at least the knowledge of it. For me, I think this was the hardest part. Realising at 24 that nothing was permanent. That the plans were just dreams that were never promised to us. Holding a baby in my arms whilst moving through that realisation. It was brutal.
I’ve been wondering if I’m grateful. Grateful maybe that this all happened to me so young. Grateful now for the ease of my thirties as I move on from the bin fire that was my twenties. Grateful that whatever comes next can never be harder. Pregnant and birthing in a pandemic - not even close.
I’m not sure what the answer is to that but I can’t see a life any other way. I don’t feel I so much chose these things as much as they happened to me by some divine hand. There are no choices I can see that I could go back and change. Not like Maggie. And those experiences made me who I am, I didn’t just come out of that with my eldest child. I came out of it as a full fledged adult woman. But then there’s a certain sadness, a heaviness to my adult life that will always have been there.
I don’t have any of the before moments Maggie talks about in her book. Not any train rides in France and trips to special holiday homes. My marriage now has been forged in the cracks leftover from motherhood. In the small spaces in between bedtimes and the childcare juggle. Forged alongside primary school applications and childhood transitions. My husband and I have never known a life without all of this extra work. Sometimes I think that is pure magic, a magic that has allowed us not to fall for the traps of unequal responsibilities and power plays of doing it ‘the proper way’. Sometimes I wonder what will happen to us when the kids have finally left. How will we find what we mean to each other without that layer of parenting?
I suppose any time will answer that.
I think that the thing that stands out most in Maggie’s story, in mine, is the hidden resilience you have to foster as a woman. #notallmen but it is largely mothers who do the caregiving, the keeping together or picking up of the pieces. The hidden work that many men just don’t see. And all of this work and inner resilience is silent. Pushed to the margins of society and certainly never discussed in board rooms. This is why public policy is never reflective of our needs. Why childcare provision is such a huge mess. Why the maternity services are slowly falling apart. Why I need to be stood here shouting about women’s health at all.
Because the people making the decisions don’t see the work we do, the value and strength we hold. That we’re often made to hold.
But it’s not all doom and gloom, is it?
Because I’ve had my life blow up, set on fire, fall to pieces. Whatever the metaphor, I’ve seen the beautiful flowers that grow from the nutrient rich soil of burnt dreams.
And, as it out, this place really can be beautiful.
It’s really beautiful to read more of your story, Zoe ❤️❤️
I found this book to be a huge comfort too. A reminder to let the light in ✨