The Gift of Motherhood
Motherhood has been a lesson in tolerance. We’re constantly walking that line of how far our nerves can be pushed, carrying the guilt that we have sorely ruined our children while releasing the woman we left behind in search of the one we now are.
In 2014, I was at my second appointment for my second baby needing ear tubes, and the ENT told me working mothers were the cause of antibiotic resistance. He was unaware, obviously, that I’d spent the past ten years working in animal nutrition to promote alternatives to antibiotics in livestock. Let’s say it hit a nerve.
I left his office seeing red and never looked back.
There are gifts we’re given that allow the course of our lives to radically shift if we listen. Despite his insensitive and archaic comment, I did take a closer look at the choices I was making: dosing up on Zoloft because I had to catch a flight for a sales meeting and forgetting a pump accessory leaving me to hand express my baby’s hard-earned milk supply in the Atlanta airport bathroom stall.
Calling my inlaws again, begging them to help with the kids because we’d exhausted all other resources, and our jobs were on the line for missing so much work. Or driving my 8-week-old and mom to Chicago to make the mandatory sales meeting.
It was insanity and I was over it. I was so out of alignment with where my focus needed to be I could do nothing other than stop.
This came with the possibility of losing our home. I never said I didn’t fear the risk, but my faith is more substantial. My faith says that life easily falls into place if I work in alignment.
When we become mothers, we give up who we’ve been and slowly have to rediscover ourselves through trial and error. I can say from my experience so far faith has been my greatest asset along the way.
My faith means trusting myself to do the next right thing, trusting the Universe to support these choices, and finding grace when I mess up, which is often. I firmly believe that I’m being held, that there is a power greater than me in charge, and that I have access to that whenever I need it, whether it feels close or not.
This is important because we can so quickly lose ourselves as parents. There is the constant responsibility for another you would give your life for. I hear this from mothers now that like to tell me, ‘Your job as a mom is never over.’
When my babies were little, people would pass our chaos out in public and offer, ‘It all goes so fast’ with great sentimentality. I needed to hear at that time, ‘It gets easier.’
And it does. And I’m starting to watch it fly by.
I experienced a conscious awareness last year of the first of the last when my oldest graduated 5th grade and would longer ride the bus with his brother and sister together again. It had been a world of firsts up to that point, and the emotions available to me in that experience were deep, and r and, and I honored them fully.
It was also the same time as the Uvalde shooting. We can not allow ourselves to be desensitized to the atrocities and must work locally to create the change we wish to see.
I don’t believe there’s a secret to being a good parent. There are excellent resources, and I encourage all parents to seek out what resonates. I follow Dr. Becky Goode on IG and appreciate her perspective on behavior.
I also think we’re karmically connected and came into this world to learn from our relationships, those with our parents and children being the most outstanding teachers.
This is why parenting is a lesson in tolerance and unconditional love. How do we take responsibility for our projections to cause less harm? What does a safe and kind boundary look like? How do we listen and share the role of the teacher with our children? They have so much to contribute.
One of my favorite gifts in parenting came from a psychologist friend who told m we all mess up our kids. If we can find acceptance in that, it allows us the freedom to ask ourselves how and lessen the load of shame and blame. Removing these blocks allows us the flexibility to learn from our karmic lessons,s, so we stop repeating them.
After my second son got his tubes, I left the corporate world, had a third child, and built the Louisville Salt Cave, all within a year. The fact that Halotherapy thins mucous and relieves sinus congestion had less to do with my drive than it being novel, preventive, and created a beautiful place to meditate. This mama needed peace at that time. Either way, my third child has only had one ear infection her entire life. She’s now eight, and our family has never been healthier.
