Sometimes the snow tells you what kind of day you’re having.
clusterform
“Under Pressure, Under Pressure….”, my seven year old son is being Freddie Mercury. He sings with impressive pop-star intensity into the karaoke microphone we gave him last Christmas. He understands this song. He likes the video that goes with it: crowds of people pouring through the streets, tower blocks exploding, bridges collapsing. It seems to serve as a way to release some of the pressure in him, to sing into the mic in front of the blue sofa in the living room, as if he were onstage facing thousands.
Meanwhile, I’m feeling under pressure. There are the immediate pressures of clearing up the supper things, making sure the Valentine cards get in the post to arrive on Thursday, getting the children into bed at a reasonable hour, writing this blog in time to send out on the next MWM newsletter. Then there are the bigger background pressures – the need to finish my novel and get it published within the next two years. The need to apply for further funding for Mothers Who Make, the decisions about where we go next. And then there are the even bigger-picture-pressures: the need to stay alive for as long as the children are children and longer, if possible; the need to save the world.
This weekend Lizzy, Mothers Who Make’s producer, has been filling out our Arts Council ‘end of project’ evaluation form. We have to give the stats - numbers employed, reached, spent. I am slightly amazed by them. Over the last year we have opened 15 new hubs. We have reached millions through the media interviews we have done, commissioned 7 artists to make work, launched a new website. All held by two mothers, working one day a week, during a year in which, between us, we also moved house, suffered a miscarriage, fell ill, had many sleepless nights and managed multiple meltdowns (mainly, but not exclusively, the children’s.)
As we wrap this funding bid up, we are feeling the pressure of deciding what next - how do we follow this year of success and big number activity? It is easy – the forms invite it – to fall into the narrative that the higher the numbers, the better things are going,that we just need to keep the numbers going up, make them even bigger, become more of everything.
However, this kind of thinking gets me into trouble. It is not that I am dismissing the potential importance of the numbers but as soon as they become my main focus I feel the pressure mounting. How much will it cost? How many people can we pay? How many can we reach? How much time will it take? How can we fit it into our already full lives? Almost every mother/ maker I meet struggles with these or similar questions. We are up against a scarcity of time, space, money, support – the quantifiable things – so starting with these makes me panic. It also runs counter to the spirit of Mothers Who Makewhich involves giving value to countless small, invisible, unpaid acts of care and creativity happening every day and night across the land.
“Under Pressure,” my son bears down on the microphone and the phrase implies a force pushing down from above. As a counter to this I want to remember the other force, the one that holds us up from below, our radical roots – this is a tautology since the word ‘radical’ comes from the Latin word for ‘root.’ A root is radical. It is a hidden resource, hard to count or quantify, unlike the produce, the flowers and fruits. It is an amazing secret stash of goods. It’s what I hope I can give my children – some underground stores, deep in their hearts and bellies, that will enable them to grow and which we desperately need for the times ahead. Our roots are the invisible, incalcuable resources of care, responsibility, passion, the things which mothers and makers have in abundance, the things buried like bulbs, that can last the winter even when everything is scarce.
Mothers Who Makeis a peer support network – an entire root system. I have always included myself as a participant and ask everyone who facilitates any MWM meeting to do the same. I need to trust the radical, extraordinary power of being peer to peer, not to concede to the pressure to grow visibly bigger, better, grander, more. I need, as ever, to listen to my children – my son leans into the microphone and sees the song through to its end:
Why can’t we give love that one more chance?
Why can’t we give love, give love, give love, give love
Give love, give love, give love, give love, give love?…..
This is ourselves under pressure
Under pressure
Pressure
My son sings to the invisible multitudes in our living room, in favour of giving love a chance. It is a good call on the eve of Valentine’s day. Love, represented by all those fat red hearts, like odd-shaped bulbs. So give love one more chance and ask yourself this: What are your resources?
Name them all - the ones you can count and the ones that you can’t.
Take a moment to write them down. A resource can be fundamental and tangible: access to shelter; water, food; and it can be intangible – access to knowledge and understanding; the ability to talk and write. Right now I feel under-resourced in terms of confidence and sleep, but I can feel my stubbornness pushing me along, and this quality is a resource too. Make a list too of your children’s resources – see how they overlap and differ to your own: the ability to cry, to play, to wonder. Make your lists an alternative to the ‘evaluation form’ full of stats that we have just had to complete for the Arts Council – a spread sheet, not of numbers but of sources of strength and support. Make sure you include all the ‘in kind’ support, that huge, intricate root system of kindness that lies under and between us.