In Marxist and Western feminist circles, we often defend recognizing the mother's labor. We speak about the invisibility of domestic work and the 24/7 nature of the work of raising children, frequently bringing to the discussion the importance of mothers in introducing to the world the humans necessary for the continuity of our society's very existence.
Yet, this necessary conversation immediately brings me to exhaustion and hopelessness due to the impossibility of the continuity of life in this capitalist system.
I was sitting breastfeeding Ulysses today, and we shared one of those deep looks in each other's eyes. Ulysses is almost three years old, so the times of breastfeeding and staring at each other's eyes while being in another dimension -- the Baby Realm -- have somewhat passed. The visions we shared in each other's eyes today were very explicit; they spoke of the continuous need for me to find the time to be with him, simply BE with them.
I was starting to blame myself for not making money these days, relying on Marcin to sustain our family financially. I began to call myself lazy, and all sorts of other conditionings that come with equating our worth with money. I found in Ulysses's eyes today what I've discovered many times before in this path of becoming a mother: the capacity to recognize our right to be here, the right for our existence, comes not from producing but from simply knowing that we are in the right place at the right time, that we belong here and now, to ourselves first. A mother is our first place in this existence, the first space we claim, and where we can find the reassurance of "yes, I am worthy of this existence."
To do that, many times of the day, the mother has to sit or lie down with the baby, the child. We simply have to be with this other person who is situating themselves in space and time, in this earthly existence that requires ground, water, warmth, and air. Today, I found minutes to look at the trees outside while Ulysses gave me the gift of asking for "more mamá."
I vowed to my children that I would breastfeed them for as long as they needed it. I wasn't able to keep that promise to Helenka, and I have been very, very tired of breastfeeding Ulysses. It is okay to be fatigued, finding our limits and learning that they are shorter than we thought. It is also liberating to recognize why we are making our limits shorter and how we are limiting and reducing ourselves by accepting the external demands that don't align with our values.
As always, I'm sure that if I did some research, I would find a brilliant feminist who already wrote beautifully about the importance of laziness. If you know her texts, please send them my way. As an academic, I'm still working to change the habit of researching my ideas before writing about them. At my current stage, I also need to liberate myself from this conditioning. I'm learning now that my life experience brings me the necessary knowledge to share with the world. It is a different way of working.
"Laziness" is a charged word, one often used against Indigenous people by colonizers who want to impose a way of working, a way of being, and moving our bodies. We shouldn't be lying down, sitting on the floor, being on hammocks, or crouching in circles. We shouldn't be moving our bodies to dance our feelings and connections with the spiritual world. All that joy and knowledge that comes from bodies that aren't showing off in performance or producing something tradable is pure laziness. By naming laziness, we say: "If you don't do as you should, you don't belong here."
There is a conflict between what society and the child say the mother should do. Most of the time, the shoulds from the child make it look to society that the mother is lazy: the child's shoulds for their mothers are for joy and leisure, for connection and movement that doesn't produce, movement that isn't visible, they are for work that predict and imagine immediate future scenarios. What moves while I'm sitting and breastfeeding the child? Even I, the person "producing" the milk, can't tell you the miraculous internal movements of milk production.
As I write, I question myself: Am I simply using my children to justify my laziness? Even with all the "proof" of physical and emotional health that I have in my family, part of which I assign to my capacity to stop, emptying my academic career to focus on the time necessary for creating children, I still question how much time do I truly need to do this? Couldn't I be doing more? Am I being lazy? Then I'm reminded that part of the true work of being a mother is "Knowing" not in the sense of questioning and answering with proof (the scientific method), but "Knowing" in the sense of remembering, of sensing in the capacity of calming the nervous system and noticing reality: the consciousness that raises through the quality of feelings. The mother's work is in the affirmation, and the first affirmation is "we are safe." We can only be safe if we can BE, which usually involves sitting or lying down; it usually means not making, not producing, not running or rushing, just being.
Thank you, Ulysses, for breastfeeding and for looking me in the eyes long enough for me to remember all this.