Are you living an erotic life?

What a 1970s feminist taught me about pleasure, guilt and power in motherhood.

One of the best things about living in a creative community is the wacky people and conversations you come across. So picture this. I’m at the Margate Bookie, a hipster literary festival, which takes place at the Turner Contemporary with gorgeous floor-to-ceiling views of the sea. There I was fantasising about one day hosting my own book launch in that very room when of the authors, Jacqueline Crooks, turns to the audience and implores us to live a more erotic life.

Cue confusion, a bit of polite laughter and some shuffling of programmes.

Stay with me.

She was talking about Audre Lorde a feminist powerhouse who, back in the 1970s, challenged women to reclaim their pleasure as a source of power. She went on to explain that erotic is the opposite of pornographic - doing something for our own pleasure rather than that of others. She went on to talk about bringing pleasure and joy into our daily lives.

Motherhood isn’t always joyous

Yes we have some wonderful moments, but those of us who go into it believing the Hollywood version find those expectations seriously challenged. The average day of triplet motherhood doesn’t allow much space for joy.

Of course my boys bring me enormous joy. They make me laugh every day. But loving your children doesn’t mean you have to love every minute of looking after them. And I think we need to be able to say that without feeling guilty.

The truth is a lot of the domestic load is pretty joyless for me. I’m not a Mrs Hinch. I do not get any kind of kicks out of cleaning, scrubbing stains out of school uniform, or bleaching the toilet that has been inaccurately used by 3 boys all day long. But it has to be done, so I get on with it.

Sure, I make everybody else happy but what am I really doing to bring myself joy?

Why have we made something as fundamental as experiencing pleasure feel like an indulgence that mothers have to earn? Something that we’ll get around to once everyone else’s needs are met and all the jobs are neatly ticked off the to-do list.

Can you choose joy?

Last year I did a TEDx alongside Vanessa Belleau, who spoke about how losing everything in a fire led her to find joy in painting, something she’d never done before. She urged us to “choose joy” even though it doesn’t “fix anything”. Painting didn’t help her deal with her burned down flat, but it gave her a slice of joy amongst the trauma.

So I have been in the audience whilst two brilliant, creative women urged me to choose joy and bring more pleasure in my life, and I’m thinking they have a point.

Why are our pleasures guilty?

Confession time, my “guilty” pleasures involve UKG (the soundtrack to my London youth), Agatha Christie adaptations and M&S chocolate biscuits. Are any of these things cool? No. Should I therefore be made to feel guilty about them? Also no.

So why are we calling them guilty pleasures in the first place? Since when did enjoying something harmless become something we ought to feel ashamed of?

In the conversations I’ve been having with mums recently, mums know what would be good for their wellbeing, what would fill their cup. That’s not the problem. It’s the mum guilt that stops them actually doing it.

“We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings." Audre Lord

Telling mums to do more self-care isn’t going to solve the deep-rooted conditioning of the martyr mum. (The more a mum suffers, the better mother she is.) It’s BS and that’s why actually prioritising your own joy is a radical act of rebellion.

If I still haven’t convinced you, listen to the wise words of Harvard psychologist Dr Martha Beck. “Your children will not treat themselves as you treat them, they will treat themselves as you treat yourself.”

That one normally gets an audible gasp when I deliver it on stage.

We need to stop demonising it and start believing we are deserving of it. Remember, as I’ve said many times, no one else will hand this to us on a plate; we have to step up and take it for ourselves.

So what do we do?

(Pic: my latest creation. A self-portrait in the style of Frieda Kahlo which I’m calling “Living My Life Like I’m Golden”)

Partly, to see if it is possible to “get your pink back”, and tbh I’m still pretty sceptical about anything going “back”, I have been making an effort to do things for me. I started going to an art class for carers run by Emma O'Rourke.

Once a week we have a cup of tea at her studio, get given a pile of resources and each work on our creations with amiable chat and a few biscuits. I’m not doing this to become an artist. I’m just doing it for joy (and those of you who have been reading carefully will have twigged I get a bonus joy from the biscuits). Sometimes I like what I create and sometimes I really don’t. That’s OK. It’s not about that. It’s about making space and time in my week to do something for my soul, mum-guilt free.

Over to you, what do you know would bring you joy if only you could find space for it in motherhood?

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