The Art of Being a Glorious Disappointment

Because disappointment is the mother tongue of womanhood

Cake by Alexandra Broomer

Picture it: I’m walking out the door to my goddaughter’s first birthday party. Dolce & Gabbana floral skirt. Forest green jersey. White bra, black Birkenstocks, and no knickers¹.

When her parents chose me to be her godmother, they said:

“We picked you because you’re a trailblazer. You’re undiluted. You’ll teach her to stay whole in a world that wants her in pieces.”

What they didn’t say, but knew, was that I’d also teach her how to be a disappointment.

Because if love is anything, it’s the willingness to show up even after you’ve failed. To be a disappointment, and stay. That’s where the real story begins.

Let me explain.

The other day, one of my kids asked how many food shops I’ve done. I nearly lay down in the trolley and howled. Do you know how many trays of beige food I’ve pushed through tills? How much money I’ve spent on food I don’t eat and shoes they grow out of in six minutes? How many activity clubs I’ve lingered in, politely applauding while mentally drafting my will.

I have threatened to throw birthday cake out the window. I have wrapped gifts with sellotape and rage. And sat in my car numb, remembering that this too will pass.

I am not a beacon of maternal joy.

I am the SuperMother of Disappointment.

SuperMother because I am a western white woman with ten children to disappoint. I’m one endless to-do list pinned to a stoic uterus. Ten opportunities to fuck it all up. To not be present enough, self-sacrificing enough, steady enough 24/7 for decades.

Disappointment because, all of the above.

Not the disappointment that makes you misty-eyed and reflective, the kind you process in therapy with herbal tea.

I’m talking about spectacular, industrial-scale, multi-platform maternal failure. The kind that rolls across years and bedrooms and car seats. The kind that wakes you at 2:47am with a fresh, vivid replay of your worst parenting moments, then again at 3:12, 4:05, and 5:19, just for good measure.

I once told a child to “just stop needing things.” I have hissed, “Are you serious right now?” at a vomiting toddler. I have smiled through gritted teeth while applying Sudocrem, fantasising about disappearing into a Travelodge with no forwarding address, and once imagined rolling myself into a duvet burrito and mailing myself to Oslo.

I disappoint because I hope I’ll be different. I thought I’d be more gentle. I thought I’d be her, you know, that mother. The one who looks like a warm scone and talks like a CBeebies narrator.

She’s dead now.

Artist: Mimi Biyao Bai

I thought I’d love the rituals. The crafts. The snacks.

Turns out, I tolerate crafts like a prisoner does roll call. Play-dough enrages me. Glitter is an act of war. I am deeply unmoved by stick figure drawings.

And when one of my children shrieks “Mummy! Watch me!” for the fiftieth time, I watch but it’s the inside of my soul leaving my body.

And yes, I love them. I repeat, I love them. Of course I do.

But love does not mean I want to build a cardboard castle. Or put up yet another swimming pool that sits festering in the garden for weeks² then gets thrown away. By me.

Love does not mean I want to sit on the floor and pretend to be an orphan snail. Love does not mean I find motherhood delightful³. Sometimes love just means showing up with a biscuit and an apology.

Sometimes it means closing the bathroom door and whispering fuck into a rolled up towel.

Love means being willing to be a total disappointment.

But we’re not allowed to say that, are we?

Because motherhood is still a performance art. We are not merely raising children, we’re auditioning. For our peers. For our in-laws. For strangers on the internet.

I swear there’s a leaderboard somewhere, and it’s invisible, but everyone knows who’s winning. Organic snacks. Breastfed triplets (call me a tittie bitch). Mindfulness apps. Carefully staged photos of a “messy” kitchen with one artfully placed banana. Not the husband, I mean an actual banana.

There’s always that one serene woman who confesses to ‘snapping’ as if it’s a glitch in her otherwise flawless performance. I want to walk up to her with a megaphone and say: Sweetheart, try yelling at a kid that being in care is the next obvious place. Then talk to me about disappointment.

Except this is no competition for who is the Gold Medallist in the Disappointing Mother olympics, is it?

We are supposed to wholesale enjoy this. We are supposed to smile through the fucking decision exhaustion. We are supposed to become better women people through it. Softer. Wiser. Tamed.

I am not yet tamed.

And still, I am here. Still disappointing. Still forgetting the sun cream. Still swearing at the dishwasher. Still hating the fucking glitter.

Turns out, disappointment is not the enemy.

It’s the exit route from perfection. The more I live this ‘disappointing’ life, the more it feels like mine.

And the secret irony? The more I disappoint, the more I succeed.

Not by forcing or faking, but by stepping outside the pressure to be impressive, agreeable, good.

Being willing to disappoint IS the exact opposite of everything we’re taught to crave. But the moment I stopped chasing the ‘right’ way, the more right things found me, not optically, not performatively, but at the root. I disappoint, yes. But I no longer abandon myself.

And while I’m telling it like it is: I’m no longer sorry.

I am not sorry for not always enjoying the role I was told would complete me. (disappointing sentence structure, right there).

I am not sorry for wanting more than this unpaid, invisible, martyrdom gig.

I am not sorry for loving my children in ways that don’t photograph well.

And I am not sorry for being flawed, sharp, and, most of all, human.

Call it failure if you fancy. I call it freedom.

I disappoint. I unravel. I reappear.

Somewhere, a girl will learn to hold herself whole without asking permission. Let it be her.

Been a glorious disappointment lately? Welcome, you’re in great company! Join us in the comments.

Spoiler: nobody has their shit together.

1. A sensory aversion to tags and seams rather than a declaration of erotic badassery.

2. I’ve now mastered chlorine, PH strips and the like. It’s been a tough road to get here. Another disappointment 😉

3. Though I do on many days.