Care Club: A Refuge for Modern Mothers

Posted on 29 June, 2023

There is a great story out there about a gorilla in a zoo who wasn’t breastfeeding her baby.

The zookeepers did everything they could to encourage the mama gorilla to nurse her tiny newborn. One day, a mother who was visiting the zoo with her baby, sat outside the gorilla enclosure to breastfeed her child. The gorilla mother watched intently through the thick glass. The zookeepers were thrilled to observe over the next few days, as this gorilla then went to breastfeed her gorilla baby.

This story moved me deeply, not only because of the intelligence of primates, but because of the reminder that mothering in isolation robs us of the big learning opportunities of observing how others mother.

And while there is no denying the deeply personal journey that is becoming a mother, I felt the consequences of isolated mothering deeply. I felt the absence of the village in the way that I had such high expectations of myself to mother intuitively and instinctively from day one.

In my postpartum, alone a lot with the baby, I became obsessed with how our culture has normalised mothering in isolation. I trained as a birth and postpartum doula to get close and personal to the lived experience of others who are traversing this rite of passage.

I dove into courses and programs that look at the anthropological, social, and cultural history of the mother. What I found was a beautiful story that spanned many cultures over many centuries, of the responsibility that a community has, to hold a new mother, and family, as they traverse a vulnerable and deeply intimate time. That mothering in isolation and being alone at home with a new baby for days, weeks, or months on end, was indeed, a very unusual and abnormal thing, when looking at the full span of the human story.

I looked around me and saw that it was not just me who was struggling with the isolation of postpartum. I was hearing horrific statistics about mood disorders. The rage, the grief, the regret, the joy, all the big feelings, bursting in the hearts of mothers, around the globe, as they sit alone, at home, with their babies. And I had to make the connection that the isolation was surely responsible for so much of this. I felt overburdened with the task at hand, the huge community-wide re-education we all need, to come together in times of vulnerability, and not traverse them alone.

The tender early years of intensive mothering and little sleep are intense for us all.

And when we are out of the woods, clear eyed again, my hope is that we are not coming back into the world as a more bedraggled, resentful, depleted and exhausted version of ourselves, but as charged, inspired, and healthy mothers who have energy not only for ourselves and our families, but energy to contribute to the world in the way the world hungers for women to contribute to it. To have the energy and clarity to contribute to culture and civic life with gusto, and joy.  For the world needs our gusto, and the full force of our ideas and contributions.

Online, in my Instagram community, I learn from mothers around the globe. How they do things. How they make it work. How they feel all their feelings. How they make sense of it all. How they define motherhood on their own terms. How they overcome guilt.

They are artists and activists, writers, comedians, midwives and academics. They are mums, who have their own intimate wisdom to share. It’s been incredibly comforting to me, to have this online community.

This is how my new event Care Club came to be. I wanted to harness this expansive online experience of peer-to-peer learning and make it live. Make it in-person, in this post-COVID world where, I hope, we all have realised how much we need community.

Starting next Tuesday 4 July, Care Club offers a program of six curated workshops with mothers who are making sense of motherhood in their own ways. Thinkers, writers, makers, performers, and activists will facilitate the sessions, bookended by tea, cake and wellbeing practice in the beautiful, light-filled, Flow Yoga space at Fyshwick’s Dairy Road.

The needs of modern mothers are so varied. I hope that by creating a container for us to come together in the spirit of community, we can all take the steps together towards a world where fewer new mums feel alone.

Feature image: Teagan Glenane