How we grow throughout motherhood
A few weeks ago, my oldest son turned 5. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that it’s already been 5 years since he made me a mom! From an objective perspective, 5 years is a long time. It’s enough time to find your routines & habits, to become an expert in what you are doing.
If you hold a job for 5 years, you often know it inside out. Depending on the job, it will (hopefully!) keep you on your toes. But there are the projects that come around every year, the colleagues you work with that you’ve gotten to know very well, the weekly tasks. Part of it might even get boring because you are used to it.
When I think about motherhood from this perspective, I realise I’ve been a mother for a long period of time already. I’ve had time to wrap my head around this role, find my place in our family.
Yet when I think about how I feel about motherhood, I still feel like a beginner.
My best friend recently gave birth to her second child. I remember when I was in that position. I had imagined how it would be like to have a second child - I would feel so much more confident, after all I had done it before! I admired the friends with older kids because it felt that they had it all figured out! When a friend gave birth to their second child, it didn’t feel like a big deal - after all, they had been through this before. Little did I know before having a second child how big this transition can be, how having two kids can sometimes feel like having 10 and how being a mom to two means that you spend a lot of time trying to find a balance between everyone’s needs.
Now, I’m that “more experienced” mom with two kids, the one whose kids are 2 and 5 years old. And if it was me 5 years ago looking up to the mom I am now, I would have thought that she has it all figured out! She knows what she is doing, how to fulfil the needs of her kids and how to find a balance in her life.
Yet at times I don’t feel any closer to having it all figured out than that day when my second son was born and I realised that I was once again a beginner on this journey I’m on.
Is this what looking at life with a beginner’s mind is like? Looking at your kids and realising that you’ll never really have it figured out because the moment you think you did, they come up with something to surprise you? Remember those first baby months where you tried to find some kind of rhythm? Then you finally figured out a routine that works and life got a bit easier for a couple of days - and then another leap hit or they got sick and the whole rhythm got thrown over!
The thing with kids is that they always keep us on our toes. Our tasks as parents may be the same to a certain extend - supporting them, feeding them, keeping them safe - but they grow up a little bit every day. They learn new things and have new needs. They might not need us anymore to feed them or to dress them, but they will then be confronted with some big emotions at school that we need to support them through or face an unpleasant situation with their classmates.
Parenthood is a journey that keeps evolving - and I feel like I am learning something new every day. Sometimes it’s about how to accompany my toddler with his big feelings, other times it’s about helping my 5-year-old figure out a situation that has been bothering him at school, listening to him and trying to get to the bottom of what he is trying to tell me with the words that he knows. Their personalities are different and our role as parents keeps evolving with the phases of life that they go through.
Amidst all this, I also need to (re-)define my role as a mother but also as woman in all of this. What are my needs in this season of life? How can I look after myself? When the kids were babies, 30 mins of yoga or a rest were already helpful. Now the kids are more independent, they can spend some time alone with their dad or their grandparents because I’m not breastfeeding anymore. This gives me more freedom to plan activities that fill up my cup so I can show up even better for them.
If you are still feeling like a beginner in the journey of parenthood that you are in, know that you are not alone! At the same time, I’d encourage you to look back at how far you’ve come. I remember the days when I was counting the minutes until my husband got back from work because it felt so exhausting to look after a (screaming) baby all day by myself. Now I realise that on the days I am alone with the kids, there will be fights, some screaming, tears and unhappiness. But there will also be moments of fun, joy and laughter. Both can coexist and in order to have a good day, it doesn’t mean that we need to have positive experiences 100% of the time. The way I deal with more difficult emotions (mine and the kids) also impacts how the day has felt for me - and now that I’ve accepted that and have managed to find some gentle and mindful ways to accompany big emotions, I feel more confident when I am on my own with the kids.
We grow and evolve every day alongside our kids - and they will always keep us on our toes with new ideas or experiences so that we’ll most likely keep feeling like a beginner in the journey that we are on. And that’s ok! Because looking at life through a beginner’s eye also allows us to see all the magic that is around us, the little moments of joy and the fun things that our children do.
If you’d like to (re-)define your role as a mother in the season of life that you are in, I’d love to offer you a FREE online 45-minute coaching call where we can look at your current situation and needs and find ways for you to fill up your cup. Just drop me a mail at lynn@thecreativespace.ch and we can set up the session.