Finding your JOY in Motherhood
Being a parent, especially a mama, is such a special opportunity. It is an opportunity to share wisdom, guide, protect, discipline, and provide for a little tiny human and stand by their side as they grow into each new stage of life. The amount of responsibility that comes along with being a parent is greater than being a CEO of a large organization. Not just the moral and legal obligations, but parents today are faced with social expectations that feel heavier and nearly impossible to achieve.
Now, I am not saying we shouldn’t try to be the best caretakers in the world for our little babes. I believe encouraging each other to be better and sharing information on how to provide good, healthy habits for our families is valuable.
But, the most important part of motherhood is being ignored and replaced with social “norms” that need to be erased.
As a little girl, I imagined being a mom nearly every day. I dreamed of being a mom who would play with her kids all day, every day. I knew that I would be the mom who would get dirty, not care about my hair or make up, jump in the pool, play in the mud, and laugh until it hurt.
But being a mom in the 2020’s is HARD. We have been given so much conflicting information and we have been questioned so many times that our motherly instincts feel to scary to trust. We believe deep down that if our child is meeting milestones at different times or our parenting styles differ from our friends’, that somehow one of us is right and one of us is wrong. We feel this overwhelming pressure to not make mistakes, so much so, we have lost our confidence in our ability to be a mother.
With this unreasonable pressure, I have watched some of the funniest and most entertaining friends of mine become lost in motherhood - but in all the wrong ways. The constant battle to meet all of the societal norms is anxiety inducing, hard, and not what we are called to do.
After battling intense anxiety/panic/depression for the past 2+ years, I have finally began to hear an answer to my desperate cries for help.
Instead of losing yourself to meet the unreasonable expectations we hear and see all day, every day - I encourage, no I BEG you to commit to lose yourself in love. Showering your children with the joy and peace and love that they so desire, with a genuine heart.
I can’t say that my 8 year old self would give me an A+ for my mom skills, because she didn’t see the value in having healthy meals, a clean house, sleep, shelter - you know…all of the necessities. BUT, I think my 8 year old self would be proud of who I am becoming.
Today, I choose to play pretend without limits of what I know to be “possible.”
Today, I choose to run fast and fall hard.
Today, I choose to splash in the puddles, catch the lizards, and flip my hair upside down in the pool to pretend to be George Washington.
My hope and prayer is that we can all find the time, energy and peace with letting go of all our expectations, and just be free. Have a slumber party with your kid, jump on the trampoline and fail miserably at all of the tricks, get dirty, and laugh. Let your kids, who are growing up in a world with more pressure than we ever experienced, see you prioritize joy. If they see you resting in the truth that there is more to the world than work, a clean house, hectic schedules, and exhaustion - I just HAVE to believe we will begin to raise up a generation who can find comfort in the uncomfortable, make solutions during the chaos, and enjoy the bigger things in life.
PS. Pictures are of my best friend since I was 5 and her two boys just being a mom and showing her kids that her childlike joy is present, and important!
