This weekend, i's time for me to reveal my party-loving side and pass on some music festival survival tips to the next generation, writes Angela Barnett.
“Have you been smoking?” asked my mother as I leaned in to kiss her.
The lie came easily. “No!”
Even though I was familiar with her remarkable ability to smell a durry from 400 metres, I needed to deny this side of myself.
Eighteen years old, and it wasn’t just smoking, I was well on my way to binge drinking too –teenage baptism when you grow up in Taradale in the 80s – and I knew instinctively I needed to hide these parts of myself from my parents. I didn’t even say the word “bum” around my mother (bottom being a more acceptable word).
Growing up, I thought my parents and society wanted the Good Girl. The pleasing side. The goal-oriented side. The help-out side. The don’t-always-say-what-you-mean side. And the rest of me, my wild party pants, my dirty smoking, my hands-in-the-air dancing until midnight, my one-night stands, even my bulimia, were things to hide away.
Secrecy is isolating
Part of this is a rite of passage into adulthood, the long slow cutting of the cord so you move away, grow up, and figure out who you are. You develop your own life. But what does hiding really do? It isolates. Disconnects. And the worst case, it creates shame, secrecy, and mental health challenges.
You compartmentalise, you chop yourself into palatable segments. You shape-shift around different people. Like Humpty Dumpty, you fall off the wall into a thousand pieces and wonder if you can ever put yourself back together again.
As a daughter, I didn’t think anything of the shape-shifting but now I have a teenage daughter and son I question this technique, wondering if I have missed a beat when it comes to being real around my children, so they can be real around me.
Recently, I was buying tickets to this weekend’s Splore festival at Tāpapakanga Regional Park and my 15-year-old looked over my shoulder.
“Ooooh can I come?”
The response came easily. “No!”
I hadn’t been to Splore for six years – when my partner and I went sans kids – and it was my turn to be free. I wanted to not be a parent for the weekend, to dress up, to don my old party frocks, to suck on my friend’s fruity vape if I felt like it.
But what was that “no” saying?
That I can only show my children the Good Mother, the one who cleans (sometimes), who Ubers her children around (all the time), is polite to other parents over text, and is always wanging on about tolerance and moderation.
From Good Girl to Good Mother
My kids are not demanding the Good Mother yet I always feel I should be her. Like the Good Daughter I tried to be. But in hiding my shadow self from my family when I was growing up, I missed out on connection with them during a time when I could have done with some.
The hiding was not my parents' fault – they raised my brother and me with aroha and care – it was self-imposed. I thought that presenting only the nice acceptable sides was how I should exist in my whānau. It was very Colonial of me – maybe other societies would question this technique. My belief now is that families should be a soft place to land, a place where you can come home and take off the masks, not pile on more.
Children don’t have to know everything we do but intergenerational hiding or hiding our emotional states around our kids is not healthy because they learn to hide too.
What happens if my kids go to a bar or party at some point in their future and get wasted and wake up in a strange apartment with no shoes and little memories and are scared – will they feel comfortable calling to ask me to pick them up, or will they feel they need to hide this side of themselves and cloak it in a shameful walk home?
When my youngest first went to high school, she told me she couldn’t be herself around me anymore, and I asked what she would do if she could.
“Swear more,” she said.
Without realising I had turned into the mum who wouldn’t allow bum.
So after saying that swift “no” to Splore I decided this might be our chance. Once my daughter is 18 she will be off, going to festivals with her friends. She’s already talking about it.
How will she learn how to do a festival safely unless I show her? Of all the festivals, Splore is the one to learn at. There’s plenty of shade. The ocean to cool down in. It’s not just about mosh pits and getting munted, there’s art and performance and live music and interesting food and workshops and yoga and crafts if you want it. It’s a well-oiled machine.
I want her to know about pacing, eating well, drinking lots of water, avoiding queues in the blazing sun, using the toilets provided no matter how stinky, and absolutely, categorically no drunk swimming.
But mostly, I want her to feel free to explore her different sides, and find her edges.
It’s time to break the intergenerational hiding, be myself, dress up in crazy outfits and dance until midnight if I wish but do it with my daughter nearby.
The campsite’s booked, the sequins are dusted off, the gold eye shadow is packed and we are both meeting friends there.
If I can bring myself to shed my Good Mother mask for one weekend, I might even say “f*** yeah”.
Angela Barnett is a writer and the founder of Pretty Smart, an organisation that promotes body confidence in teenagers.
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