A touch of kindness
In the past few years, I’ve been on a journey of discovering who I am through journaling. So many interesting things have come up - like the fact that I always felt that I needed to DO something during my holidays and rarely took the time to rest, yet felt stressed out whenever I got tired. Or that I often didn’t feel very confident, be it in my job or in my relationships, and therefor took on work loads even though I didn’t have the energy to.
Most recently, I’ve been discovering human design and the concept of highly sensitive people. Like a lot of things in life and in coaching, it’s a process, a journey, but I am curious where this will take me.
While I truly see the benefits of the transformation and changes I have made in the past few years for myself and for my family, I keep stumbling in real life across a concept that I somehow feel that society has forgotten. A concept so simple that we can find most days an effortless way to show it to other people, yet we simply don’t.
Kindness.
Now don’t get me wrong - I’m surrounded by many lovely and extremely kind people that I’m really grateful for, be it the neighbours in our area, other parents that I cross at Kindergarten or nursery, friends near and far dropping in more or less often, our families who support us when needed and those who have become like family in the past years.
Yet I feel like in our society, we’ve come to forget the basics of kindness. Take the people you don’t know. Those who I cross on the street. The parents with a stroller. Old people. Young people. The lonely ones and the busy ones. Random people who just happen to be at the same place as me. A few days ago, I crossed a mom with a stroller on my way back home. I was with my 2-year-old in the stroller. When I saw her, I smiled a little smile, then quickly turned away - because that’s somehow what society has thought us to do, just not be too obviously, be invisible, fit in. When I caught my thoughts and turned back to her, she had already passed by - but I could still see a small smile on her lips.
It’s the little things like saying hello, helping someone off a train or a bus, paying for a friend’s coffee or making a loved one a present simply because you felt like it. There are simple acts of kindness that just belong to society, like helping an elderly with their shopping cart on the bus or giving a mom a hand to get her stroller on the train. And then there are those acts that are intentional and go beyond just doing your duty as a human being. Like volunteering, chatting with a random person just because you can, buying someone (a friend or a stranger) a coffee or complimenting a stranger on something. It’s about making someone feel seen and valued, showing them that they matter.
But kindness doesn’t have to go as far as the person next to you. What we have a tendancy of forgetting is the ways that we can be kind to ourselves. As mothers, life is always busy and we are ridden with guilt if we spend some time away from our family. Yet, that might just be what we need to have a rest and recharge our energy.
It’s the thoughts, not only the actions. Thinking that you are not good enough, that it’s your fault your child is crying or that you are failing as a parent. Thoughts that I’ve had so many times. Kindness is the realisation that as mothers, we are doing our best, for us and for our children. That the expectations laid on us as mothers, as women are high. We are judged no matter what we do, we work too much, we work not enough, we educate our kids the wrong way, etc. And the funny thing is, everybody feels that they have the right to share their opinion! We don’t have the village that our parents and grandparents had when we were little and at the same time, here in Switzerland, childcare options are expensive and work hours not flexible enough. Yet we are supposed to accomplish the same tasks as 70 years ago and more - because though women have gotten more rights, which is amazing, the expecations towards them have not changed that much.
So here is a little reminder to take a moment to acknowledge this and ALL the things that you have done for your family today. You are doing your best - so please show yourself some kindness today, let go of the negative thoughts and expectations and look at how far you’ve come! You’ve got this, mama!