As I ran

P
U
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As I ran


A chance encounter at the station encouraged me to write this first blog post. My nervous system heightened, sleep deprived, fog. All day at the first PGCert workshop I had carried my baby carrier with me, because in the rush for the train in the morning, I forgot to leave it behind. It got shoved clumsily into my bag, remaining hidden and private. As strangers on the course shared photos of their cats, I kept silent about my three young children. I keep silent a lot. 

At 4pm sharp as I ran for the train, the carrier back on, this carrier became my connector. Another PGCert student came up to me on the platform of the train. “I have a little one too, how old is yours?… It’s hard doing all this isn’t it”. A deeply affecting, caring and political conversation ensued all the way to Catford.

So I think this first blog post is about who we are, who’s in the room with us, and what remains invisible between us as we learn together?

People have been having babies for a while, so why when I meet a mother so ready to look deep into my eyes and share their vulnerabilities before even knowing my name, why does it feel so precious so rare and so significant. Because parenthood – motherhood – can be very lonely. The Institution of Motherhood (a term developed by the feminist poet and essayist Adrienne Rich in her book Of Women Born1) has turned Motherhood into a ‘modern institution’ with its own rules, structures and expectations. All of which, as Lucy Jones so tenderly outlines in her book Matrescence2, is “a set-up where mothers are destined to fail”. I know I am not alone, but I feel it, because I have not yet authentically found ways to bring my true, complex and evolving identity as a mother into my professional life. And I genuinely don’t know how all or any of this is possible.

But as I ran from my first PGCert session, exposing my baby carrier, and full of worries about this logistical / emotional / financial / physical juggle, I did feel alone. And as I sat on the train with another tender and towering force of a mother, I felt connected, seen and hopeful. 

So a question for me starts with, how does the evolving intersectional positionality of our students (care-givers or otherwise) influence my teaching, how we connect deeper with who we are with and what we are hiding in their bags? And how does the evolving intersectional positionality of us as educators show-up with our students, and to what extent should it?

Am I a fully regulated adult whose job it is to unflinchingly hold the needs of others as they learn, or in higher education is some more truth required about who we are. Does (as Adrienne Maree Brown outlines in their book Emergent Strategy3) “adaptation and evolution depend upon more critical, deep and authentic connections”.

“Sorry this Write up sucks I’m still mentally totally a wreck after baby for some reason. Like my iq is down about 50 points and words seem weirdly difficult”  – Grimes, Instagram, 2020

References
Image Credit : My 5 year old making mud footprints in the bath

  1.  Rich, A. (1976) Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
  2.  Jones, L. (2023) Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood. Penguin Books Limited
  3.  Brown, A.M. (2017) Emergent Strategy. AK Press.