[the_ad id="5357"]
[ad_1]
This article was originally published in Issue 113, the Inspiration Issue.
“But better than joy was calm. Imperturbability could be depended upon. And from her great and humble position in the family she had taken dignity and a clean calm beauty. From her position as healer, her hands had grown sure and cool and quiet; from her position as arbiter she had become as remote and faultless in judgement as a goddess.
“She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone.” – The Wrath of Grapes, John Steinbeck
Mother. There’s so much meaning in the word. Creation. Support. Nurture. Loneliness. Strength. Continuation of life. For Steinbeck the idea of mother had achieved almost mythical status. In the Grapes of Wrath, Ma Joad is shown as the fiercely dedicated matriarch of the family, their driving force on the brutal pilgrimage to California where they hope to find jobs, dignity, land and a brighter future. Ma is a rock, with Steinbeck shining a light on the responsibility and importance of her role. But this notion of motherhood is not reflected in all facets of our world today.
The sporting sphere is one area of society where becoming a mother has not always been a cause for respect, or celebration. There has long been a stigma that motherhood and elite sports are incompatible; for years female athletes have lost support and sponsorship when they became pregnant. Lizzie Deignan, winner of the inaugural Paris-Roubaix Femmes in 2021, blazed a trail in 2018, when she announced she was expecting her first child, and her new team, Trek-Segafredo, threw their weight behind her. However, there was still outdated speculation about her ability to come back, in an undeniably traditional sport that the British rider says is “often left behind”.
“My first pregnancy shocked a lot of people,” says Deignan. “I think when people don’t know what to say, they often say the wrong thing. For me, it was an emotional time because I just expected people to be happy for me and not everybody was. Not everybody understood that I was still going to come back to the sport.”
Now more than three years since the birth of her first child, Orla, Deignan is speaking to me through her headphones as she pushes a trolley down the aisles of IKEA. A few months ago she announced she was pregnant for a second time and would not be racing in 2022. Her…
[ad_2]