Pictured: Crazy Mother Country
March 8th "Women's Day", now more known as "Goddess Day" and "Queen's Day". On this day, almost all women want to leave work and life behind and dress up to have a carnival. In particular, mothers who have been struggling on the front line of family and child-rearing all year round hope to seek a free and comfortable spiritual resting place.
The ultra-high requirements of modern society for women make it more and more difficult for the social work of "mother" to reach the "standard line" of the world. Therefore, in order to become a "qualified mother", "strong" mothers are often "sensitive", "anxious", and even "crazy". An American publisher and children's book writer amplified her "madness" when she first became a mother, created a crazy mother who "escaped from life and pursued herself", and created a story intertwined with reality and fantasy - "Crazy Mother Country".
This story is not to call on mothers to "abandon their husbands and children" and "steal joy alone", but to hope that mothers will have themselves in their not easy lives, love themselves, and will better love their families and love life; they also hope that fathers and children can really understand and understand mothers, they may not be perfect, but they are worthy of our good love.
Let the book "Crazy Mother country" take mothers to sprinkle wild for a while, not only on March 8th, but on every day.
Goddess Day, dedicated to mothers who yearn for a short spiritual rest
Katie Blackburn/
[English] Sholto Walker/Painting
Xinyue/Translation
Are you a crazy mom who lives beautifully and freely?
◎ Cangran
I have a good friend, Cai Chaoyang, who is a very famous children's book critic and a father. He once wrote an article about the image of a good mother that we all know in history, such as the Meng mother and the mother-in-law of the mother-in-law in the three migrations of Meng Mu, and the story of the Yang family's twelve widows going out on a campaign, and all the mothers and wives in the Yang family will later become lonely, because their sons and husbands almost all died on the battlefield.
These images of mothers represent a social role in Chinese culture or tradition that the mother is usually thinking of sacrificing her feelings. I do what kind of mother society needs, or what kind of mother a child needs to be a good child. Some of the very symbolic images of mothers in these traditions have influenced Chinese society for thousands of years.
Our current cognition of mothers is often "selfless" and "obedient to the overall situation", will cover up their surging feelings and emotions to pursue and construct the image needed by children or society, such behaviors and concepts of mothers have always been rooted in the minds of many of us, and everyone has always felt that mothers should be such a perfect mother.
But in the development of psychology to the present, such a mother image has gradually been overturned by many theories or many intuitive views. One of the most representative views is that this type of mother is not a mother who forgets me, and is not a mother who has no needs at all. On the contrary, in the so-called "what kind of children society needs, I will do what to achieve a good child", in fact, there is a greater self-need within the mother.
This self-need is that I want my family and my children, and even myself to be celebrated, to be recognized by society, to be recognized by society, to be considered right by external society, and I need to create such an image, regardless of the individual's feelings, the individual's feelings.
Personally, I have to make a lot of sacrifices to build a good family and achieve good children. There are even people who think that this type of mother is actually a mother who hides a lot of narcissistic emotions.
So how do you tell if a mom is a narcissistic mom? For example, is your mom a lack of empathy for your feelings? Does your mom just support you in doing things that make her seem like a good mom? Did Mom care too much about what other people thought? Will Mom refuse to acknowledge her personal feelings?
These are all indicators of whether a mom has narcissistic traits. After becoming a mother, we can also use these indicators to judge ourselves, whether we are also a mother who is too demanding to be perfect, and even requires that everything be carried out according to our consciousness.
Mad Motherland is a children's book written by Katie Blackburn of the United Kingdom, and the presentation of the book is very interesting from the cover, especially like Maurice Sandak's popular picture book "Beast Country".
The book is also a tribute to the Beast Nation, very moving, about a tired mother, she decided to come to a general strike, so she left her husband and children behind and went upstairs alone.
She shut herself in one of the most hidden places—the bathtub. I've seen a very resonant topic online about why moms always stay in the bathroom and toilet the longest. However, it is true that we find that all moms lock themselves in the bathroom or washroom!
The mother locked herself in the bathroom, her eyes closed, soaking in the bathtub.
From the very beginning, this "Crazy Mother country" cuts very directly for the reader into a very rare angle, that is, this mother is already full of frustration, she wants to lose others, she does not want to stay in the family anymore.
But in the same way, she knew that she could not and could not completely let go of her family, so she found a unique refuge in the home.
In traditional culture and stories, mothers are tender, strong and indomitable, and need to be on call. For thousands of years, mothers have been the bridgehead and the strongest line of defense of the family, must be tough, required to be "ready at any time", "tough", "always smiling", "responsible", "never turn their backs", is a haven, is a lighthouse, is a warm arm bend that opens, and is a giant in the sky. As long as you want to be a qualified mother, you can't say that you have failed, you must be a giver and a victim.
The mother in "Crazy Mother country", she failed at the beginning, she declared that she was going to strike, "strike" means that I will not be a mother for a while. So in my mother's imagination, the bathroom was covered with all kinds of wild fruits, and the walls disappeared without a trace.
The story thus begins to change. This mother, who has experienced a sense of failure, enters a situation where imagination and reality are superimposed. At this critical moment, she is purely with her body and mind, nakedly united in body and mind.
The bathtub is actually an image, it symbolizes that the mother is back in the human womb. By this time she had abandoned her mother's social role, and she was already a simple person—at the lowest point, her mother was an independent individual.
Her fantasy journey really unfolds and the story continues.
The sea breeze sends a distant call, and the waves gently lap against the shore. Summoning her mother to face herself as an independent individual, she let go of herself and came to the crazy mother country.
The mothers in the Crazy Mom Country are dressed beautifully from head to toe, shaking their heads when they see her, twisting their butts and stomping their feet. All mothers who have experienced free time will be very able to understand this scene, the mothers "abandon the family" and enjoy the good time as women to steal the joy alone, the mother and other mothers will dance the most enchanting dance, and then toast each other.
This mother became Her Majesty the Queen of the Mad Motherland. She said let's start partying! A wild and wonderful event with all the moms.
Until Mom says "Enough!" At this time, Mom felt a little tired, a little sad, and then like magic, Mom felt that outside of the ocean, someone needed her. Her family, her favorite children.
Mom said she wasn't going to be the queen of the Crazy Mom country anymore. Although all the crazy mothers were keeping her, but the mother only smiled slightly, she crossed the ocean, traveled through time and space, and returned to her own bathtub.
A cup of tea was waiting for her. Everything was fine.
This cup of tea represents her family and everything is fine.
The mother in this book puts forward her own needs, what are her needs? Her need is that mom will fail and will be angry and sad. The sense of failure is an important subject in intimate relationships, and the most important test taker of this question is not others, but all the mothers who have taken every step very difficult in the trivial life of a chicken feather. We are always trying to maintain, but we always feel defeated day after day, feeling that "we can't do it".
Most of the time we want to hide, subconsciously to hide this "can't do", because we will think that in the good mother's love, dedication and sacrifice are taken for granted, and saying "can't do" is like sorry for this beautiful love. But only if we accept ourselves and accept that "we can't do it", will our fate, the fate of our families, turn around.
Only by admitting that I am not a perfect person, and only by saying out loud that I also have my own needs, will my fate turn around. This story illustrates that moms also need to be physically and mentally united, and have their own time as an independent individual. From another point of view, she is already a mother, and her inner self attributes have changed, so she has voluntarily handed over the scepter of freedom.
And at this time, a cup of tea was waiting for her, and everything was just right.
At this time, my mother smiled, and she was already physically and mentally united. She once again understood that accepting this life was the life I had chosen, and that such a life full of frustration was still very meaningful.
The story of "Crazy Motherland" ends with only the words "she's at home" and a steaming cup. These four words have a profound meaning, not only the mother at home, but also the mother's needs at home, and the mother who is physically and mentally united at home.
In this story, we go through a thrilling, wild journey of a whole book with this young mom, where reality and fantasy intertwine. In fact, in everyday life such a journey is silent, secret, and lonely. For the family, every day is ordinary, and every ordinary day is the journey of the mother to forge herself.
What sustains the family's daily years? It is the tempering of the mother's body and mind. In the storm behind such a day-to-day ordinary day, all the journeys that have been traveled, only mothers have a sense of understanding, which is why I like this book very much.
It truly portrays a mother who has been defeated, a mother whose body and mind are hollow, a mother who has a sidekick, a mother who struggles to live in a sense of failure... And such a mother is still a "good enough mother".
That's the biggest point of this book. A good enough mom is different from a "perfectionist mom", but it is the most real existence. Prior to this, all the advocacy of "perfect mothers" not only deprived the child of growth, but also ignored the mother's self-growth. In the final analysis, only by accepting the frustration of the mother can the child and the family move towards a new life.
We need to let children know how real we are, how we are failures, and we want to call on children to help. It is not that we bear the growth of the children, but that we and the children support each other and grow together.
Only by understanding that the mother also has the needs of the mother, and the mother also needs to be seen, can the child assume the observation and responsibility for the family and others that he should have, and then become a mature person who understands his own acceptance of others and assumes his own responsibilities and destiny.
Katie Blackburn
Katie Blackburn, the story creator of Crazy Motherland, is not only a best-selling author, but also a veteran book publisher. In her series of works, "Crazy Motherland" is a more special one, because part of the inspiration for the book comes from the sleepless nights when she accompanied her son after becoming a new mother. It can be said that this book is dedicated both to herself and to women like her who have been crazy about trivial life.
Sholto Walker
Sholto Walker is a well-known Illustrator and Picture Book Writer in the UK, who has been painting and illustrating for more than 20 years, and his painting style is rich and varied, full of vitality, humor and wisdom.
As for Scholto Walker's creation of the book, author Katie Blackburn said: "Scholto uses art to interpret a new kind of Wildness, and creates another ultimate beauty. He was a genius. I like the rich colors he uses. I also like the way he unfolds his story – as the night goes by, the ordinary women show their hidden and repressed side of their daily lives. They seemed to have a good time. I also want to go there. ”