I am a mum. Now I know this is going to really rock your boat, some of you, but I am actually not a mummy blogger!
I know this can be challenging to understand, that a woman can have children and do a thing and NOT actually just be a "mummy *insert career/ skill set, ect*".
So I wanted to address this preconceived notion right off the bat. I am just a female of the species who has children but it does not make up my entire identity.
If you find this difficult, just think about it as if I were a male writer and musician who also just happened to have children as well. No need to be a 'daddy blogger', just because you're a male writer with children.
I actually very rarely blog about my kids. This is actually a music blog where I share issues that are common to all independent artists so that we can all feel less lonely and find connection and support in each other.
So, now that that's out of the way, there is something I want to share about being a mother and a working musician, because I feel that it's something we could talk about?
For a while now I've wanted to make music my full time job. But taking the plunge into that is risky and hard and so much harder when you have to consider kids.
People don't realise how crazy it becomes.
Taking a job becomes complicated. Can I actually get there in time after I've gotten the kids to school? Will I make more money than I spend on daycare and after school care anyway?
Trying to find an employer that can accomodate the fact that you might not be able to get there at 9am on the dot, and you might have to leave at 2:30 sometimes, and if the family gets sick you might have to take 1,2,3 weeks off to look after everyone including yourself (haha, as if, you just drag your sick arse to work so that you don't get fired).
I've taken my kids to class, gigs, work, I even took both of them to a live radio interview because I had no one who could help me with them. They were awesome, they sang with me and were so well behaved. For this I was told that I was self obsessed, career obsessed and a negligent parent, because if you work hard at something you love you are neglecting your kids, but if you don't work and you are a 24/7 mum you are just a lazy doll bludging youth.
People aren't really interested in the extra emotional and mental weight that you deal with everyday compared to people without kids, it's not really in fashion to care about it.
The only reason I am in the situation I am in, where I can take some time out to really pursue my music is because I have an amazingly supportive partner. It hasn't always been this way.
I've been up shit creek, alone, sick to the point of hallucinating, no money and at one point no home, all with two kids in tow. If in those times you'd told me I would one day be able to work as a musician I doubt I would have believed you.
I guess it's also not very fashionable for me to say this because all women are meant to be bullet proof machines who eat men for breakfast and need to be ex communicated from society if they dare admit to "needing a man", but I feel so lucky to have him.
I know what it's like to do it all on your own, and I doubt I could make ends meet while I pursue music full time if it were not for him.
So this goes out to all the mums/ single parents/ dads who are doing it on their own and still going to extra mile to chase their dreams. Inside you, with all the chaos, is the ability to calve out a way forward. I only know this because somehow I did, and if it's a thing that can be done then anyone can do it!
Where there's a will there's a way xxx