Years ago, I read Walden by Henry David Thoreau and I was struck with a longing to live like this. I too wanted to disappear into the woods I had always loved, to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,
to front only the essential facts of life,
and see if I could not learn what it had to teach,
and not, when I came to die,
discover that I had not lived.-Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Someday, I said, I would.
But in the meantime, I was a mom. There were little boys who needed food and clothing and education and friends. It wasn’t in the cards to disappear into the woods. However, I wondered if I could create a Walden lifestyle in the middle of my suburban, motherhood life. Intrigued with this idea, I set out to do this.
What this meant in reality I didn’t consider for too long. I am a girl formed in a culture that values productivity above all else. So naturally this became my modus operandi. It started with a simple living ideal and slowly morphed into a camel-sized load of healthy living, small living, analog living, and mothering trends. All given to me by many and varied online voices.
I planted gardens. I made sourdough bread and kombucha. I worried about EMF radiation and toxins in detergent. I made homemade everything for my boys, while trying to restore the body that had carried, birthed, and nursed them. I worried about the impact of big businesses on society and shopped small, second-hand, and sustainable as the influencers commanded. I homeschooled my kids, pursuing impossible classical education ideals and continually feeling like a failure as I read articles written by men who weren’t balancing a wheelbarrow-load of domestic work and women who seemed to never take time for creative pursuits or rest.
I stepped away from the harsh disciplinarian methods of the preceding generations and tried to learn to give my sons space to express emotions, to make mistakes and messes. At the same time, having never been given this space, I had to learn to give it to myself as well. Their strong emotions and sibling disagreements frequently triggered fight or flight responses in my body and I did a lot of nervous system faceplants. I dissected the religion of my childhood in an effort to know how to teach my sons about the Divine, and I unearthed a lot of hurt and anger and confusion that resembled a giant tangle of yarn.
I worried about my children’s hearts and souls while struggling to heal my own. I worried about their bodies and brains while finding it hard to nourish my own.
I was exhausted. Bone-deep exhausted. I missed my books. I missed writing. Trying to do everything according to various healthy living, motherhood, education ideals didn’t leave any time for the reading, thinking, and writing that actually made me feel alive. I had traded the Walden ideal for a tradwife ideal. It’s pretty prevalent in the motherhood atmosphere these days.
I knew this wasn’t me.
I returned to Walden, but this time with more experienced eyes. I began to wonder who did the man’s laundry. When I read that his mother did his laundry for him, I was so irritated with Thoreau I wouldn’t read him for awhile. Thoreau, with his spiritual elitism, writing about his pious luxuries that a busy mother could never afford.
But how can you hate someone who wrote I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion? So I sat on my solitary pumpkin, figuratively, and did some thinking.
I knew I didn’t want to live like this anymore. The load was too much to carry. It felt like trying to reverse the course of the Titanic with only my hands. I liked some of the ideals I had chased, but some I could do without.
I started to see which ones needed to go.
The woman writing of second-hand shopping ideals from her quiet chair wasn’t the mom dragging two little toddlers into a store, perusing racks of clothing that may or may not fit a body changed by childbirth and nursing, and struggling to try it on in a tiny changing room with a baby having a hunger meltdown. The woman writing of minimalist wardrobes filled with items from quality, organic, sustainable, smiling companies wasn’t raising three active boys while juggling physical tasks, risk mitigation, and damage control.
Side note: a mom of boys develops reflex instincts that rival bat sonar. These instincts have saved many a window, meltdown, and bone. In this season, the five hundred dollar sweater would be at imminent risk of being burned, ripped, or permanently stained by bloody noses and would need to be kept in safekeeping. So I ordered what I needed from evil Amazon, dropped the guilt, and moved on with my life.
As this paring away what no longer fit and moving forward with what did fit continued to happen, I began to find a way of living that was slowly becoming more and more authentic. And then I realized that this was exactly what Thoreau did and I understood Walden in a new way.
I didn’t retreat to a cabin in the woods but I retreated deep into the analog living of motherhood. Nothing immerses you as deeply into the physical aspects of life as motherhood. You are confronted with the fragility of human life, the constant dependence on food and water, the endless work of hygiene. You are confronted with the need for supplying mental food for growing minds. You are confronted with the fluctuating emotional challenges of maturing energy systems adapting to a crazy world environment amidst changing hormones. You are confronted day after day and up close with the nature of humanity in all its kindness and cruelty, courage and selfishness, laziness and ambition and self-sacrifice.
I did front the essential facts of life. I did live deliberately. I discovered what it takes to live as a human in this part of the world, in this time, as a woman and a mother.
Thoreau left the cabin by Walden Pond and returned to society changed for his experience. I left the cabin of mothering young children and healthy living experiments changed by it. I kept some things that I found essential (good bread, good books, and time to write) and left the non-essentials (homemade bone broth and classical education ideals). We found a school for the boys and I discovered the weight that lifts from a mom’s shoulders when there are others taking on some of the education responsibilities. I began to breathe again.
I began making art again.
I had to create a world of my own,
like a climate, a country, an atmosphere
in which I could breathe, reign,
and recreate myself when destroyed by living.
That, I believe, is the reason
for every work of art.Anais Nin
