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I talk a lot about the power of focusing on and rather than or in my work on maternal ambivalence. It’s the idea that we don't need to limit our thinking and our feelings to the binary by splitting and constraining ourselves to one way of being or the other. As mothers, at all stages of our mothering, when we open ourselves up so we can appreciate all our feelings, the light and the dark ones, and when we recognize the difficult ones as an opportunity for growth, we can learn about ourselves and our children.

Often, as moms, we get trapped in this binary way of being. We see ourselves as happy or sad, full or depleted, angry or calm, exhausted or energized. We often don't make a place for our full range of emotions, the and, the possibility that oppositional feelings exist together and that this is our truth and our reality. This is for all of us, and this is normal.

I am always looking for ways to refigure and revitalize this idea, to extend it in new ways and give it deeper meaning.

My colleague Belinda Blecher, a psychologist who works with children, has just released a new children’s book, Not That Question Again, which brings into focus how our everyday exchanges can thrust us into binary thinking and how this impacts us. It takes the story of 5-year-old Jack to challenge us, to get us to rethink our language, and to suggest a novel way to think about our truth via a question that he is perpetually asked and that he fears.

This overused and seemingly innocuous question becomes one that, for Jack, is soul-destroying, annoying, and frustrating.

I have personal experience with this. Last year, I had the audacity to ask my 9-year-old grandson, “How was your day?” when I picked him up from school. He set me straight right away: “Don’t ask me that question.”

So when I saw this book, I was already on board.

Jack is imaginative. He is a thinker and a creator. He asks questions about space, the earth, and dinosaurs.

One day in the car on the way home from school, he gives his mom a painting with many squiggles and colours. Then he knows what’s coming. That feared question, the one he was hoping to head off. The one that vaults him into a split world, that is for him a place of nothingness, of frustration…

The question that forces him to choose between good and bad.

He is frustrated, and he asks himself, “What am I meant to say?”

That it was a good day? But it wasn't only good.

That it was a bad day? But it wasn't only bad.

He is wise beyond his years.

Then he says something so profound, “Part of me felt happy. Part of me felt sad. Part of me felt angry. That’s why it’s so hard to talk about it.”

Jack can’t put all the colours of his days into words.

The questioning continues on his way home. When his father asks the question, Jack crunches his painting up. Then he’s harassed by the lady at the shop and the next-door neighbor.

Finally, he finds comfort from his grandpa. Jack warns him not to ask “that” question. He wonders about the expectations placed on him: “Was I meant to feel happy all day?” His grandpa smooths out his painting. He listens. He explores. They find their answer together.

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Grandpa realizes the answer lies in Jack’s painting, which is messy and colourful. It’s the way a day is meant to be. They figure that to get the right answer, the question has to change.

Jack exclaims, “Ask me if I had a colourful day”.

The real truth is not in the answer. It’s in the searching. It’s in the metaphor of Jack’s crumpled drawing. It’s in the grandpa’s wise response. It’s in Jack’s realization that his painting reflects how his day is meant to be, messy and all full of different colours and feelings.

The book is full of colour and drawings that remind us of a child’s world.

This book is not only for children.

It has a particular message for us as mums. It defies the narrative that our life, our days, fit into categories of good or bad. It shows how the outside world and its commentary and expectations can shrink us and narrow our feelings and our focus.

It reminds us how, like Jack, we need to find a safe “grandpa” space where someone can reach us, listen to us, and help us to process our confusion and aggravations and to help us to find meaning, especially in our chaos. Someone who understands messiness, who abhors the rigid ideals, who accepts us fully, and is on our side. Someone who can help us to find meaning by uncrumpling our paintings, who remains calm when we are annoyed, and who can find colour, truth, and value in all our feelings. Someone like grandpa, who is vulnerable and can normalize feelings. “Jack is surprised. He didn’t expect grown-ups to have scribbly, mixed-up, all sorts-of-colours days too.”

For us as mums, it is such a burden to have to feel we must choose between two possibilities. This eats away at us, our inner soul, and our meaning. We need to challenge the temptation of being forced by others, the ideal, or ourselves into the world of or. This mindset traps us.

We need language for our multiple experiences. We need words, we need days full of colour and imagination like Jack. We need to connect with, rather than split from, our multiple feelings, no matter how painful they may be. Jack’s experience challenges us to free ourselves from limits, from expectation, from rigidity. It gives us the freedom to pause and to reflect. To be fluid with thoughts and feelings. To hold onto our own childlike wonder and innocence.

The messiness is where the energy and real life lie.

This opens our language. As the back cover announces, “the healthiest and most beautiful kind of day contains a messy, rich and dynamic range of emotional colours.”

In the end, Jack reports to his grandpa that he had a colourful day, which makes him feel orange and warm inside.

Out of the mouths of babes.

© Psychology Today