Balance

She has it!

And she almost has it!

Do I have it? Oh god no. It's been a year and I am still struggling to balance the rights, wants and needs of myself with those of my children.

Our rights are, as I see it, equal. Their needs have to come first - of course, this is without question. Their wants, however, cannot and should not always come first. That I genuinely believe.

That said, neither can or should mine, or mine and Noel's. It's all a balance.

I cannot pretend to be close to having it right all or even most of the time. There is so much joy, but I also have periods of feeling overwhelmed, exhausted and quite despairing. Much of this relates to my own internal balance - or lack of it.

Putting two young children and even a very minimal amount of work on top of this, not to mention wider family, friends, and it's often game over for my wants and needs.

(That's not to say it's particularly a win for anybody else, mind. It's just often how life is.)

Of course without due care and attention to my own wants and needs I cannot be the parent I want to be, the mother my children deserve, and the person in whose skin I feel comfortable.

But I do have it right some of the time, and that's something I can, and am going to, feel good about as my younger daughter prepares to turn one.

I can look back on a year of two children, four months of it with the notorious TWO UNDER TWO, and think that while this has been without question the hardest, sometimes the most soul-destroyingly relentless, year of my life, there are many times in which I really have got it right.

Yesterday afternoon I took both girls to the park. Sometimes I feel I need to be free of both children physically for a short time - just to have a few moments to myself without one or both of them clambering over me or asking me to lift, carry, push, move or generally assist them physically.

Taking them to the playground doesn't often solve this problem as both instantly want to be pushed on swings. Which I did, because this is their right to want, if that makes sense.

But it's also my right to want to prioritise my needs once in a while. So after ten minutes, I got both of them down from the swings and said 'I am not pushing, carrying, lifting, moving or helping either of you for the next ten minutes.

'I am going to sit down and I am going to watch you and drink my coffee.'

Off they went, Cherry going round and round and round on the climbing frame with that ferocious toddler concentration, Violet crawling about in the sandpit bashing sand and saying 'did did did' a lot, smiling her head off.

I watched them, and I drank my coffee. Every last full-fat drop.

Why Chasing my Village?

It takes a village to raise a child, so the old saying goes.

With my first child I thought this was complete nonsense. My husband and I had chosen to have a baby, why should we expect anybody else to help or support us?

For 20 months I combined a very successful career as a freelance copywriter, creative, journalist and author with raising our little girl Cherry full-time, slapping myself on the back as I did so largely without any childcare, help or support other than from my husband.

Then along came baby V, 8lb4oz of straw that broke the camel's back.

I largely missed the shock and awe of becoming a parent first time around. I was determined not to let new motherhood overwhelm me - and through sheer force of will, not to mention falling hook, line and sinker for modern parenting and all the associated scaremongering about IF YOU CUDDLE YOUR CHILD TO SLEEP THEY WILL DEPEND ON IT UNTIL THEY ARE 95, it didn't.

But as it turns out it got me all the same. It was waiting for me, lurking in the wings. A hippy, green, earth-mother outlook, a principled mentality, an attachment-based approach, a longing for a community, an awareness that in my current state I was mentally and emotionally incapable of being the kind of parent I deeply wanted to be.

An abrupt realisation that it does indeed take a village to raise a child, and here's why.

We are all responsible for the shape of our future. Children embody that future. Our own children and other people's children.

If we don't nurture it - every single one of us - then we have no future as a species.

My two children opened my eyes to the possibility that if I didn't do something about it, I would be unable to give them the childhood I so wanted for them.

We aren't made to parent alone or in couples. We do it, because we do a great deal of things we aren't made to do. But it's hard, and as Robin Grille so astutely identified in his amazing work Parenting for a Peaceful World, Westernised society is one of the only societies that considers parenting stressful, exhausting and disappointing.

If we raise our children stressed, exhausted and disappointed then we will end up with stressed, exhausted and disappointed children. If we raise our children joyfully, we will end up with joyful children.

We need support, so our own needs are met, so we can meet the needs of our children joyfully, not resentfully. We need each other. We need a village.