Adele is Now THE Voice in My Head

Natasha Chiam

Our-Pact-super-sponsor“Hello from the other side.” 

This is a line from Adele’s much awaited new single and video released last month.

In a teaser before the release of the video, Adele also wrote a letter to her fans and posted it on Facebook. She is calling her new album her “make-up” album, the one where she is making up with herself. I find myself going back to her words again and again and wondering why I can’t stop crying every time I hear this damn song.

And then it hit me.

Adele is singing this song to me, but it’s not her voice I hear, IT’S MINE. It is me calling myself, wanting to talk, wanting to connect, wanting to say, “HELLO, I SEE YOU. I know it’s been hard. I know you’ve sacrificed and given so much of yourself to this thing you do, this mothering. That in the making and raising of these little humans, there has been some breaking of you.”

And I am sorry.

I am sorry that the message for mothers all over the world is that we have to break to be considered one of the “good” ones. That we have to leave behind all that we used to be, that keeping ourselves in the picture is secondary to everything. I am sorry that somehow our modern idea of motherhood, and our all-consuming engrossment with connecting with our babies means that for some of us, we lose our ability to connect with ourselves.


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I want us all to take a page from the 25-year-old-who-has-the-voice-of-a-bloody-angel’s song-writing notebook and take the time to make-up with the most important person in our lives. To answer the call on that damn flip phone from 2006, stand in the wind in THAT COAT, in a scene straight out of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, look across that lake, see your own beautiful shining Patronus, invite her over, and have a good heart to heart.

If you can’t do this just yet, it’s OK, I understand. It has taken me many years to be able to answer that call. And it’s hard. It’s heartbreaking to realize what the sacrifice and breaking does to us, or to even admit motherhood actually does break us. But it does. And I am here to tell you that you are going to crack, you are going to fall down, and at times, you are going to feel so broken and shattered, that you may want to throw it all away.

Don’t do it.

Because this is also what I have learned and am bringing to you from the other side.

Nothings lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect. I’ve taken this life philosophy from the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, or “imperfect beauty.” It is often applied to pottery and the joining of cracked or broken pieces with gold or silver. This method or restoring or reconnecting the broken pieces is meant to celebrate the history of these objects, to stand in awe and reverence of what was and as a testament to its history.

Reconnecting with ourselves is about doing the same thing. It’s not about being the perfect mother, or perfect spouse, or having a perfectly kept home. It’s not about wishing for the person we were in the past, or that we could have or should have done things differently. It’s about looking at ourselves right now, filling all the cracks, connecting all the pieces together and standing in awe of what we have become, even when we didn’t realize – because life happened.

“I am sorry for breaking your heart,

but it don’t matter, it clearly it doesn’t tear you apart anymore.”

~ Adele, Hello

No, because I am putting myself back together.

WITH PURE GOLD!


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Adele is singing this song to me, but it's not her voice I hear, IT'S MINE.


 Adele is Now THE Voice in My Head was written by Natasha Chiam exclusively for BonBon Break Media, LLC.


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Natasha Chiam started writing online in 2008 as part of her e-commerce baby-wearing and natural parenting website. On a fateful night out with friends (and wine) not long after she closed the store in 2012, someone called her a “stay at home feminist,” and the moniker stuck. Now she writes about life, motherhood, feminism, and social justice at The Stay at Home Feminist. She has been twice nominated for Best in Family and Parenting in the #Yeggies Awards in her hometown of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She has a strange addiction to rainbow socks, is an excessive selfie taker, and fancies herself a bit of a disturber of the status quo.