I saw a post the other day as I was cruising through IG and it said, HOW TO BE A GOOD MOTHER:
- Inspire your child to live their live to the fullest
- Always be there for your children
- Be a positive role model for your children
- Teach them how to love unconditionally
- Teach them how to make mistakes and learn from them
- Teach them how to manage their emotions
I couldn’t quite place what was wrong with this message, but I knew something didn’t feel right. I mean, I’m not saying DON’T do these things. They’re great points. But if we’re talking about how to be a good mother, this message lacked something.
It’s talking all about children and missing the more important factor here: YOU!
There’s nothing in this list about you as a woman, about how to nurture and nourish yourself. How can you expect to be a good parent if you’ve completely lost touch with the woman inside? It’s easy to lose yourself under the new role as ‘mother’. Investing everything in your children and leaving no room for you will create a tired, burnt out and resentful mother.
I can tell you from experience, I completely lost myself in the role of ‘perfect mother’ after my first birth. I was always comparing myself to other mothers, some I didn’t even know but followed on IG! It was impossible to catch up to the:
- clean house moms
- playful moms
- creative moms
- patient moms
- chef moms
- business moms, and so on…
Then I took a yoga course about Motherhood. It gave a different perspective about how motherhood should look. I liked this view much better.
The facilitator explained something I’d never heard before. She said when you become a mother, the woman in you doesn’t disappear, there’s just a shift into the ‘mother role’. That shift isn’t stagnant either. These two parts (woman + mother) are on a pendulum that swings back and forth between the two roles. Neat eh?
Looking back at my experience, I realized my pendulum got stuck on ‘mother’. That’s what I thought I needed to do to be a good mom. I was wrong.
From then on, I’ve always loathed parenting tips that suggest you put your children first. That sounds kind of harsh, I know, but hear me out.
Put YOUR needs first! Take care of both sides of your pendulum and your children’s needs will intrinsically be met.
Step into your life as a mother with strength and confidence by nurturing the woman-side of you too. Don’t forget about her as she’s an important player in this venture called parenting. Don’t lose yourself under the large hat of ‘mother’. You’re more than only a mother. You’re a woman too. And that magnificent being should always be present.
So, I re-wrote HOW TO BE A GOOD MOTHER to include:
- Take care of yourself
- Put your needs first
- Invest in yourself
- Show compassion to yourself
- Surrender to the chaos of your beautiful life
- Never compare yourself to any other mother! You do you!
Lots of sweet love,
Salina
