Redefining Motherhood

I was driving my kids to school this week and we turned on the radio to a popular Toronto radio station. They were running a contest in honour of Mother’s Day: Crowning the Queen of Tired. Essentially, people were calling in to share their stories of how frazzled, overwhelmed and tired they were in motherhood and then, based on their story, they would be conferred the “crown”. While this made for entertaining and light radio and undoubtedly, was a segment created with the intention to highlight the bigness of motherhood; it got me thinking about the narratives of disempowerment we perpetuate in motherhood and how they serve to keep all of us stuck in the belief that this is just the way it is.

Women bonding over the frazzled, overwhelming nature of motherhood is often perceived as authentic connection. What’s wrong with women stating out-loud that they are tired, overwhelmed, stressed out, and juggling so much? Inherently, nothing. That kind of truth can be refreshing in an age when everyone is so focused on performing perfection on social media. However, when that truth is used to perpetuate the condition that in order to be a good mother, you must be exhausted; it’s problematic.

It’s problematic because it reinforces the belief that there is no other way and keeps women stuck in patterns of self-sacrifice, self-denial and self-abandonment as they desperately try to hold it all and be it all. It’s taxing because it leaves women feeling isolated in the bigness of the calling thinking this is how it’s supposed to be because this is how it’s always been. It’s troublesome because if we accept something as just the way it is, we don’t allow ourselves to voice the actual truth: we want it to be different.

What if true empowerment in motherhood began with women admitting that while they can do it all,
they don’t want to?

What if true authenticity in motherhood was every woman deciding she was done with trying to be everything to everyone and instead she was going to work on being who she was, as she was and letting that be enough? What if the next iteration of motherhood was one that was done in true partnership and community; where the masculine was valued as the provider of not just monetary support, but of safety, strength and shared responsibility? What if the invitation for all of us women was to release control and lean into greater trust of the capacity of others to show up for us? What if we learned to own and ask for what we needed instead of silently resenting those closest to us for not sharing the load? What if, we brought back the village in the raising of our children?

Authenticity in motherhood is being able to have the conversations, to acknowledge the bigness that it calls us into without making the difficulties the defining factor. There is a difference in acknowledging a hard season versus perpetually living from that perspective. And this nuance translates directly to our children, their nervous systems and their understanding of their place in the world. If we operate from a frazzled, overwhelmed, exhausted, prolonged stressed state, our interactions reflect this and our children attune to this.

A family is ONE nervous system and the nervous system it attunes to is that of the most dominant personality.

So, if we want to do it differently, it truly does begin with us.

Now, let me be clear, nothing in this post is meant to instill any sense of guilt in the reader. On the contrary, it’s meant to remind them of the power they hold within them to rewrite any story they no longer want to align with; including a commonly accepted collective narrative that organizes around depletion, sacrifice and martyrdom. Further, this is not denying the complexities and nuances that come with motherhood, but rather to see those complexities and nuances as invitations into greater clarity about what is most important and the contribution we want to make in the raising of the next generation. And lastly, nothing about this perspective is meant to shame women into silence. We need safe spaces and relationships in our lives: places we can go to speak vulnerably about the weight we carry.

None of us were meant to do this alone.

But, it’s how we speak of the difficulty that is most telling. If we see ourselves as victims, we will never feel we have the power to change something. If we see ourselves as capable, we are more likely to find solutions.

When we begin asking questions such as: does this serve me and the life I am wanting to create we move into power.

When, we as women, are willing to decide what we do and do not align with, we stop leaking energy.

When we take radical responsibility for the opportunities we have to redefine mothering for the next generation, we are called into action: what am I putting down? What will I no longer perpetuate? What inherited stories am I rewriting?

This is the ultimate invitation into self-leadership and offers us the greatest opportunity for personal transformation. Being in leadership is more than just being in leadership in your job, it’s being in leadership in your life. It’s choosing to stop perpetuating the story of the tired, frazzled mother who tries to do it all and rather, to begin fuelling conversations about the vital mother, the energized mother, the whole mother, the woman who does not do it all herself, the woman who understands she needs support and learns to ask for it. The woman who chooses to create the support if she doesn’t have it. The woman who understands that her energy LEADS. The woman who chooses to leave her children the legacy of a regulated nervous system and the memory of seeing their mother truly happy and in love with her life. The woman who leans into the sacredness of the work she is called to do: because the raising of a next generation is not work to be taken lightly.