DAY 18 - A hand reaching out in the dark (21 DAYS OF RAGE)

This is the 18th instalment of a 21 day writing series about maternal rage and anger.

When I had my first baby, I tried to keep busy and get out of the house a lot. We went to classes and met other mums for coffee, acquaintances that sometimes turned into friendships but not usually. But even if we had a relatively busy day, there was still a long afternoon into evening section of the day, when energy was at its lowest, when I was alone at home with the baby.

Sometimes I’d imagine the other new mums with their new babies within the same square mile, also feeling lonely and trying to pass the time, and think how crazy it was that we weren’t joining forces.

It’s not exactly controversial to suggest that there are fundamental problems with the way many of us live right now. Disconnected from nature, from each other, destroying the natural world, eating foods grown in soil depleted of nutrients, not moving our bodies as much - or in the ways - that we were always intended to. 

I took a quick look at the research on loneliness and came across this:

*According to the National Institute on Aging the health risks of prolonged isolation are equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Social isolation and loneliness have even been estimated to shorten a person’s life span by as many as 15 years. People who are socially isolated or lonely (SI/L) are more likely to be admitted to nursing homes and the emergency room. According to the Health Resources and Services Administration, people who are SI/L may get too little exercise and often don’t sleep well, which can increase the risk of stroke (by 32%), heart disease (by 29%), mental health disorders (by 26%) and premature mortality (by 26%), as well as other serious conditions.*

Maternal rage grows in an environment where we’ve been ejected from communal, collective support and child-rearing. It happens because we’re overwhelmed, not supported enough, frustrated, unseen and unheard. 

On a Brene Brown podcast interview with Vivek Murphy about his book on loneliness, he talked about 3 types of social connection we need - intimate/emotional (having a close partner or confidant to share your private ideas or feelings with), relational/social (the need for quality friendships and support) and collective (the need for a network or group that shares your purpose). Having one or two of these isn’t enough. We can still feel lonely if we’re missing any of these ways to feel connected.

This is a fundamental part of being human. We can understand our triggers and try to look after ourselves, we can be self-compassionate and do our meditation or breathing or yoga or dance class or whatever. But it’s much harder to change the conditions of our lives, to try and make up for the fact that we - as humans - are not living in ways that adequately support us.

Rage and anger are emotions that are unlikely to go away, and indeed we may need them as useful signals a lot of the time. But in a world where bodies do not come together to help, to move and to exist in a more human and humane way, we often find the same challenges come up again and again.

All we can do is keep our eyes open to this. We always have the capacity to learn and we often have the capacity to act, to make some small change that helps us be human, that encourages us to move towards others. Our health and happiness depend on it.