Judgment and motherhood. Two human states that don’t go great together.
I can’t imagine a harder job than being a mom (whether that’s stay-at- home or working) and the constant feeling that every move you take and choice you make might f**k up the future of your child. Eeeeeek.
Not easy to live with that kind of pressure.
But the pressure we often put on ourselves comes from unreasonable expectations and believing we should be flawless human beings.
We relegate unwanted parts of ourselves into some banished wasteland. Out of sight, out of mind; as if they would stay there forever. But the point of having qualities we don’t like is to not ignore them. Instead, start transforming them.
That’s a process of life right there. It’s a necessary process. Donald Trump was recently quoted in the NY Times saying, “I don’t like to analyze myself because I might not like what I see.”
Huh?
You’re not supposed to like them! That’s the point of self-reflection. But you’re supposed to look at them, exercise levels of self-awareness and self-compassion and transform them into qualities that serve us, others and our own evolution.
Impatient? Work on it to see why everything has to happen as I say it has to happen. Reactive when things don’t go your way? What is that trying to teach you? (That maybe you need to work on patience!)
We shame ourselves for simply being. (Well, Trump doesn’t. But most consciously-awake people do). We make mistakes. Lose our cool. Get upset. But we need to also look at the deeper understanding of what those things might want show us. The fact that they’re being triggered is like a warning bell, saying to you, “Hey! Look at this!”
No one in the history of motherhood has known how to do it. There are no rulebooks. No one has a guide for living life. We each ”“ by journeying our own way ”“ make it all up as we go along. That becomes our story. And wouldn’t that be a more tolerant way to treat ourselves? That we each are learning on our own journey?
But our story is so often half-lived because we spend a great deal of it beating ourselves up or punishing ourselves for not achieving some phantom idea of existence that’s not real for anyone, but is pedaled around as if there’s a “magical way” of living.
When I look back at my 20s and see how many times I sat in the shame corner making myself miserable because I thought I was a worthless idiot for being who I was, I’ve come to realize, it’s just an utter waste of time and I simply was in a phase of my life.
There will be many more.
My new friend Johanna ”“ the mother of a 2-year old ”“ told me recently that she has to be a different mother at every phase of her developing child’s life. So who she is as a mom with her child at 2 years old is not the same mom who’s going to react to her child at 8 or 11 or 18, or how she did when he was 7 months. Every year is going to be different.
That’s pretty wise.
Her child’s transforming, she’s changing, the moments are evolving and we learn how to adapt to new circumstances constantly being thrown at us. That’s what creates the learning. There should be zero shame in that. How can you shame yourself for learning something new that has not previously come before it? To apply old ways that worked once for a certain set of factors that may no longer be applicable now is not reason to judge yourself.
With that kind of self-acceptance and tools for self-awareness, you might even be able to look at yourself and actually like what you see.