From our Heads to our Hearts
One of the things that I wrote about in my very first post for this blog is how I feel passionately about the role of motherhood, not only in our families, but in our society.
So I’ll just come out and say it: It majorly rubs me the wrong way when comments are made that demoralize, devalue and disrespect the role of motherhood. The blatant comments. The subtle ones. The unintentional ones. The sarcastic ones. Enough.
This role is one of honor. Mothers of all kinds, in all the categories, are fed these demoralized ideas surrounding the role of motherhood before we even become mothers. How are we possibly supposed to do something well when we’re constantly being told that what we’re doing isn’t valuable? Most often, I think we are not receiving a blatant message of invalidation, but we’re hearing a more subtle message of how great it is to be doing literally anything else.
Stay-at-home-moms
I’ve been told on more than one occasion that stay-at-home-mothers are just sitting at home wasting brain cells. This is not only offensive, it’s completely untrue. I could rattle off a handful of jobs right now that use far less brain cells than what is required of a stay-at-home mother and homemaker. I won’t because the comparison would be for naught, but I’d love to never hear that phrase again. What is true about most stay-at-home mothers is that these are women who left the workforce to stay home with their children, who were educated for something “else”, not something “better”, and they have sacrificially set those skills and knowledge aside to do a new thing. A new thing that requires stretching of their current capacity, problem solving without a roadmap, and assigned, yet unearned total authority on day one. If you sit and really think about it, switching gears like this not only seems impressive, it seems borderline miraculous.
No other job on the planet requires that you jump in feet first as the ultimate authority on the very first day, with no training and no backup. No other job gives no sick days, withholds guaranteed periods of sleep and pays you nothing.
The sacrifices that these women make every single day is incalculable.
Working moms
Eight weeks after my first son was born, I returned to work for a short period of time to a job that I loved with coworkers who loved me and were sensitive to my new life (I even brought him with me on days I worked the triage phone). So I have a teeny, tiny, semi-taste of how it feels to leave your tiny human with someone else while missing moments, pumping at work, wondering what you’re missing during that very moment and overall questioning every single thing you do during every moment of the day while running on interrupted naps throughout the night. A really, really small taste.
Whether you “have” to return to work or “want” to return, there's a lie circulating that these women come home to their “less important” or “less demanding” or “less...whatever” jobs after work. As if the thing they're doing that matters is their paying job, and the stuff at home is an afterthought. If you sit and really think about it, fitting everything into those few hours in the evening not only seems impressive, it seems borderline miraculous. We all make choices as to what is best for our families and it would be ridiculous to say that all of our families should make the same choice in this area. Yet, I’ve found there to be a narrative circulating that because a mother who works outside the home is with her children less of the time quantitatively, then her role as mother is less influential in her life, or less important. How untrue.
The sacrifices that these women make every single day is incalculable.
Stretching Beyond Capacity
I can remember about ten years ago when I was a few years out of college and working in the American Airlines marketing department in Dallas-Fort Worth. I decided to take classes at night with the goal of applying for nursing school. Changing gears from any career or adding a new role into your life requires a stretching of your brain in new and sometimes uncomfortable ways for most, if not all adults. One of the challenges that I never expected to experience was that noticeable shift in how my brain was required to function during the day in my marketing job versus my evening microbiology and anatomy lab courses. I was exercising different parts of my brain during the course of a single day, and I can remember as a 25 year old feeling mentally exhausted by it.
Typing that out sounds so cute...as if I knew what exhausted felt like when I was 25.
I found this to be true about becoming a mother. You think differently. You process differently. You worry differently. And it can feel a bit like brain stretching.
Thinking scientifically while also simply, we know that as children learn new skills, their brains form new connections. Every new experience creates new neural pathways and repeating those experiences strengthens those brain connections. New neuron creation is the fastest at birth and then slows down over time, which is why our kids can learn and retain things much more easily and quickly then we can as adults. Our brains are quite fascinating, yes?
At least the kid brains are. :)
In the same way, mothers are absolutely required to create new brain connections as they learn the role and required skills of motherhood, however, unlike a well equipped child whose brain is poised and ready for creating new pathways, mothers are recovering from the experience of childbirth, with abnormal levels of hormones pumping through their bodies and interrupted sleep patterns, to name a few.
Moms aren’t wasting brain cells...they’re creating new ones. BOOM.
The task required of a woman when she becomes a mother is incredible. And I see woman after woman rising to this challenge and CRUSHING IT.
Change the focus
So these lies are whispered into all of our ears that this sacred role, motherhood, lacks the value of the other hats that we wear. It’s so disheartening to me when women fulfilling domestic roles are condemned, ridiculed and bashed, as if we are diminishing some kind of progress. The expectations that a woman should be able to do “everything” is killing us. It’s making us discontent, it’s causing us to compare, and feel overwhelmed. It’s telling us that no matter what we’re doing, we’re not doing enough. This...tearing women down for loving and sustaining their homes and families (however that looks)...is not progress at all.
So let’s call these lies what they are….lies.
My hope is that we can all look at the mothers we know and recognize that they are marked by a life of sacrifice. A life that looked one way but was gloriously interrupted by a raspy first cry that captivated her breath, when that baby was first laid on her chest and warmth returned between them and they settled in to imprint on one another while the rest of the room became blurry and far away.
Sacrifice.
It’s pulling on your pants and then stopping before you can finish your outfit to help somebody use the potty.
It’s looking for the parking place that’s near a grocery cart return or a sidewalk, not necessarily the closest spot to the front of the store.
It’s remembering to pack the outfit changes, the sippy cups, the lunchboxes, the pacifiers, the library books and the teacher appreciation gifts.
It’s explaining hard things in words that are simple to understand to curious and naive minds.
It's listening to the same jokes over and over again.
It’s creativity encouraging and enticing mundane tasks into exciting adventures.
It’s dancing in the kitchen to cheer up a grumpy toddler who refused a nap.
It’s remembering the funny and awesome things that your kids did that day and telling them to your spouse so he can live in the moments that he missed.
It’s catching literal vomit in your hands so it won’t hit the carpet.
It’s being the one who is woken up in the middle of the night..Not just for night feeds, but for scary dreams, water cups, wet sheets, or extra 3am snuggles.
It’s watching our hearts literally walking around outside of our chests everyday...and knowing that every year they’ll walk a little bit further.
We’ll never be the same and we wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s a sum of subconscious but sacrificial decisions that rule our lives as we constantly raise, teach, protect, encourage and love the tiny humans who have stolen our hearts forever.