Mama, Mama coooool. Mama, mama coool.

Before I had kids, I didn't want them. Something which I think had to do with how I saw motherhood. From the outside, being a mum looked awful. Hell, mums looked awful. They looked stressed and annoyed and daggy. They did all of the cooking. And all of the food shopping. And at least half the time they did the bins which were firmly supposed to be in the dad realm.

While my ideas might have you believing I was a child of the 50s, that's not the case. I was an 80s kid. But regardless, these stereotypes prevailed. Even in spite of the fact that my mum was one of the most stylish ladies I've ever known and one of the most chilled. She didn't do the bins anything like 50% of the time either...

I believed that there was something fundamentally wrong with people who talked about having babies with a look of longing in their eyes. That they were somehow weak and pointless, because if you had babies not only did you get fat and frumpy and start talking in third person; you stopped working.

Sure, you might go back to work. But you'd not be as dedicated to your career as a dad would be... I could tell because it was mums who took myself and my friends to the dentist almost entirely exclusively. The only exception being the girl I knew whose dad was the dentist.

You might even go back (shudder) part time. And then there'd be another baby and you'd be off again and how were you supposed to get anywhere or have anyone take you seriously?

No, that was not for me. Mum life was one I was quite happily going to sit out in lieu of a stonking career, lots of money and some Gucci handbags. Hell, I probably wouldn't even get married because that was outdated and pointless too. Because I was a feminist and and I would make my life matter on my own. I would achieve something. I remained vague about what that something was, but I was quite certain that it wouldn't involve shuttling anyone to playdates or netball practice and half a pay cheque.

I see now that the ideas I perhaps once believed meant I was a feminist - that I was going to run the world and display my successes materially and not follow the most uncool of paths for a girl and get married and become a mum - were actually the direct opposite of feminism.

That I had been somehow taught to believe that success was something which you achieved outside of the home and you were paid for. It was indeed, the very definition of success that our patriarchal society fed me and that, if I'm not careful, contributes to my own feelings of inadequacy now that I am a stay at home mum with a micro business.

I've written about the idea of what success is and should perhaps be before, so I won't go into it here. But I will say, that the struggle to find value and validation in what I do every day is real.

It is helped however, by three things I've come to notice of late: The societal shift in how motherhood is portrayed in the media nowadays; Learning properly through other people's eyes who exactly the lady I knew as 'mum' was; And becoming a mum myself.

These days, it seems like being a mum is a whole lot cooler than it used to be. Beyonce is a mum. Pink. Madonna. And in becoming so, they never gave up their careers or dressed any differently. But, more importantly, they did change. They talked and talk openly about their experiences and their struggles and how their dedication to success and creativity is now driven differently.

Beyonce has said that becoming a mother made her realise that she was “...playing a part in a much bigger show. And that’s what life is. It’s the greatest show on Earth." And if this showstopper believes motherhood is more a projection of who she is than her performances as a musician, well, that's pretty interesting. And pretty sweet validation of this little role that seemed to previously be so overlooked.

Pink, singer, songwriter, aerialist and overall legend reminds us that becoming a mum brings a whole lot of new skills too ... like learning to sew spider costumes for halloween.

Madonna reckons it's her biggest struggle - and far out, she's been through a lot. Surely if even the material girl says it's fucking tough, we can start seeing that all those women out there living it every day are a testament of strength and power and not just dull and daggy weaklings who couldn't succeed in the workplace.

Even if you're not a rock star, the rise of a whole slew of mumpreneurs and fashionable mums like @selfishmother's Molly Gunn and @dresslikeamum's Zoe De Pass, parade combining motherhood with fashion and business and generally show that in motherhood you do not lose the yourself of before but add another dimension to it.

Something which, I'm sad to say, I think I missed in my own mum. Of course, I valued her. She was amazing. But I didn't really see her as anything other than my mum until I was a lot older than I should have been.

I knew she ran a business. I had to spend school holidays there, rollerbooting around the rolls of fabric and colouring on the cutting table. But I never really understood what a big deal that was in terms of success until I started my own. And I sure as hell didn't realise it was what she wanted to do until I did it either.

As a kid I figured it was all she could do because of us. Because she didn't (and I assumed couldn't) go back into fashion buying after taking time out to raise my brother and I. And while I valued her work ethic - she worked nights doing all kinds of stuff from when I was just an 8 week old baby - I was never much impressed with her career. Who wanted to work for themselves? People who needed to, right?

Er. Wrong. People who dared to. People who were talented enough and innovative enough and disciplined enough to. People who knew that working within the constraints of a typical 9-5 at the whim of an unsympathetic boss and under the disapproving eye of all the single ladies who thought they were skiving off when they ran out the door at 5:01 needed to be given the finger. People like my mum.

It's only since becoming a mum myself that I understood her choice in terms of it's strength rather than it's sacrifice. And that I understand that inherent in motherhood is not loss but growth. Right from the moment that you endure the physical terror that is childbirth, you emerge as something different. Not necessarily 'better' - especially if you judge yourself by your ability to remain sane and not use the F word in almost every situation - but certainly 'more'.

Sure, some days more batshit. But some days, more resilient, more resourceful and more revolutionary.

#Mum #Motherhood #parenting #Style