You’re not broken
Fuck this parenting gig is hard!!!
Yes, that’s right, I just started my first blog with the F word… I’ve taught my kids that swear words are not inherently bad… they just need to be used in the right place, for emphasis! When my 6 year old stubs his toe and says “shit!” I have to admit I feel a twinkle of proud. I’ve been parenting for 13 years now (where’s my medal?) and I wish I could say that its gotten easier…
But truth be known, I still struggle with it most days. It’s like this relentless, arduous initiation into levels of patience we didn’t know we’re possible. This clumsy improvised dance of when to hold and when to let go….When you’re pushed to the outer limits of your capacity, trying to find your deep breathes amidst the volcano of emotions (theirs and your own) and sometimes we just can’t hold it all and we do explode! I’m honouring all those beautiful lids that get blown, because in a world of social norms there is this unspoken expectation that we should appear to have our shit all together. After 13 years of parenting I’m brave enough to admit that I don’t have all my shit together!!
I think most mothers feel the same way, some just hide it better than others. You see, we weren’t meant to do this alone. One mother wasn’t meant to hold all of this… the routines, the discipline, the domestics… One little family unit isn’t even able to hold all of this. Mothers are meant to be spending their days with a community made up of Sister, Mothers, Aunties, Grandmothers and other children, all learning by example and helping each other. Why are 10 different mums each struggling to cook a meal at night after ALL the things, when they could be cooking one meal all together, sharing stories, caring for one another, whilst the kids all play.
My heart goes out to all those mothers who I can feel out there each day, at home alone with their children, wondering how they are gonna get through this day. This long week rolling out before them, punctuated by piles of washing and dishes whilst juggling the kids (or keeping them from beating each-other up in my case).
My heart goes out to those mothers that have been on duty all night, who deserve a nap more than anyone in the whole world, but have to keep going.
To the mothers of Neurodivergent kids, holy shit!!(emphasis), I bow to your resilience. My heart goes out to those mothers with newborns whose arms are never free and who can’t even find space to have a shower by themselves. (It does get easier, my 6 yr old just started to fold the laundry for me!) If we were living in an intact community, that baby would be passed from loving arms to loving arms… Aunty would recognise that a Mother was ready to blow her lid, and would come in with a different energy to break the loop.
There is a meme I saw a while back that planted itself in my heart. It said “When we shout Self Care at a person who actually needs Community Care, we fail that person” . Truly….When a mother is trying to balance and tend to the needs of her family as well as herself, she doesn’t need another thing on her to-do-list! Even though yes, we should put ourselves first on the list and it is our responsibility to CHOOSE nourishment. We should do things that build capacity, like breathing and ice baths.
But telling a mother who is totally depleted from giving to her kids all day that she should give herself a massage at the end of the day, when all her soul craves is somebody to touch her with nurturing hands, swaddle her, hold her! I’m thinking about the women who I treat in my clinic space I see that the women who most need nourishment are the mothers who also need someone that can take care of their kid while they receive the treatment, and who may not be able to get beyond rent and food costs to receive the ongoing care that they really need.
In an intact community, Aunty would hold your baby while Grandma massaged your tired shoulders and Sister massaged your aching feet and Mum made you a cup of tea. And this would happen every day through all the seasons. And women wouldn’t be struggling with overwhelm and labelled with “mental health” issues, because the real issues exist in isolation and in lack of community.
I wish I could offer a solution here for how to bring back the village. So many of us hold this dreaming in our hearts. Perhaps it is about not yearning for it like it’s something so far away. But remembering it in the very fabric of our being, so that we stitch like a golden thread into life in the here and now. Surely, since it is such a vital element to our survival (this need to NEED one another) we will inevitably return to the simplicity of common-unity.
I pray we can come out of independence & into inter-dependence. Out of SELF-sufficiency and into Collaborative communities, centred around Generosity Culture. I pray we can start to value CARE as currency. Perhaps we humans only shift when things become really dire, and the more extreme need pushes us to shift… I think we’re getting getting close to this with the housing crisis & the cost of living. We actually NEED to work together to be resilient through these times and to get beyond survive to thrive.
My current hero is a woman called Kimberly Ann Johnston (look her up) who works with somatic experiencing, trauma and the nervous system. Something she spoke of in a podcast hit home for me yesterday, when I reached a point of total overwhelm with my 6 yr old… She talks about “Source Regulation” instead of “Self regulation”. We are sold this ideal that we should be self regulated all the time, and if we’re not we feel like total failures… Source regulation is about reaching for Source energy in those moments where we are reaching our tipping point; Connecting upwards to Source (spirit/god) and downwards to the Earth and opening up for these energies to help regulate us. I am finding this to be a tremendously supportive and accessible tool in the moments where I’m struggling to self-regulate through breathing because I actually want scream and throw things (and sometimes I do this too).
Every day is a journey with Mothering. Im realising we can do a lot in little ways to set things up. Like waking up that hour before the kids invade, to greet the day in your authentic own way… It may be to smudge the house, or say a little prayer over some water…It may just be to sip that sacred cup of tea in divine stillness. I have to remind myself every single day “Rushing doesn’t make things better”, “Today I’m gonna do it a little bit better”… And some days we have wins and I’m cheering inside, and other days we have fails, and I’m practicing sending compassion to the parts that were overwhelmed and struggling instead of sending them judgement and guilt. Our struggles are the little green shoots busting through the hard shell of the seed.
Here’s the thing… Mothering is THE most important work there is. Traditional cultures understand this but our modern day culture lost this bit too. We can blame it on the patriarchy, or say “THEY” don’t value us… But it all starts within ourselves as Women. How can we teach what we don’t fully understand within ourselves. We are the bringers of life, just as important as the Earth herself… The more each woman realises her immense power and carry’s it with the deep omnipresent knowing that the Earth holds, just by BEING Mother Earth… the more this world world will shift and come into right relation 💙💧🦋💎