Motherhood is genuinely one of the toughest experiences I have ever had in my entire life.
And when I ask myself “what makes this so tough?” I actually am able to break it down and understand what makes this experience so challenging.
I wanted to share this with you because often we stop at phrases like “this is so hard” or “this is so overwhelming”
Keeping us in a cycle without getting to the root of what it is
And sometimes getting to the root often leads to the opportunity to change what it is we are experiencing
The things that I feel makes motherhood challenging:
1. The drastic energy change. From the moment you give birth you are in a full blown energy shift just like a newborn, your thrown into a life that just keeps going. There is no true moments of rest because there’s this person who 100% depends on you even when you’re tired, something you’re not used to. So this energy shift that you cannot see, outweighs soooo much and it takes time to grasp what you feel
2. My life being no longer centered around me. Which triggers my inner child who was raised as an only child. In the beginning I could not for the life of me understand why i felt so triggered around sharing my time and doing things for my husband and daughter, it was simply because this need for my time and energy triggered me to feel selfish. It triggered my unhealed wounds and unmet needs. Until I took the time to look inward and tell myself that I have to be the first to validate and make sure these needs and wounds are known and explored, I would’ve stayed feeling triggered around just how much I had to do and show up for everyone outside of me
3. You are always on. You’re never not on mom duty which is honestly probably one of the hardest things for me. Creating a mental and emotional shift from “gosh why am I always having to do this” to “Being a mother is the greatest privilege and it is up to me just how much I enjoy and appreciate this lifestyle because I’ll never NOT be a mother for the rest of my life.” No, I do not enjoy every aspect of motherhood, but I also do not allow myself to get caught up in the lack. This is my life and I do not want to not enjoy the rest of my life as a mother. I chose to be a mother, so I feel I owe it to myself to heal, to grow, and cultivate a life under this new lens that suits me and my family
4. CHANGE IS CONSTANT. When you think you’ve learned one thing about yourself or your child, they grow or evolve and you’re back to square one. So what I’ve learned to do, is to surrender. I have grown to find power and strength in surrendering the need to control everything. Because that is just so exhausting and it doesn’t allow anyone to grow in happiness. Control stunts my growth, my child and husbands so I’ve learned to heal and find a calmness amidst the change that comes every single day. To flow like the wind, ride the waves and show up in love. The change will never stop on this journey as a mother, so I felt like I needed to learn how to allow the change to work for me instead of against me (SHADOW WORK IS SOOO NECESSARY HERE)
5. Fighting conditioning. I found myself really having to fight the way I “thought” things should be and how they really were. This was probably the absolute hardest for me and still is because there’s so much noise around motherhood and raising a child that when you look at your life you often find all the things that are not going right because it’s so easy to focus on the problems
Everything doesn’t happen the way it does for everyone else and that was really hard for me to accept
If there’s anything that motherhood has taught me, it’s that I still have power, I just have to journey through the noise to find it. I really have to put myself and the love I have for myself as a priority to even see this journey as being extremely important and valuable because at the end of the day this is still MY LIFE. I didn’t trade it in to become a mother. I chose to find a way and a balance of living my own life while raising my child as they live their own
A lot of healing, relearning, and unlearning is a part of this motherhood journey and I wouldn’t trade it for the world
You’ll never find me speaking about motherhood from a place of not seeing this as an opportunity for deep healing because for me, this is where I truly found myself and what I’m capable of. Because of the challenges I have faced (and will continue to face, it’s life), I see my strength in my humanness, my vulnerability and love for myself and my family. And i lean into that daily so that I can experience in some way, the life that makes me happy.
Motherhood is extremely challenging but it’s up to us to choose if it’s worth reclaiming our power and making it something we find joy in
It’s possible, but it comes with a lot of inner work and shadow healing. But it’s 100% possible
What have you found to be the most challenging for you when you actually think about it from YOUR lens? What have you done to shift this for yourself? 👇🏾👇🏾
Comments