How motherhood expanded my views

I remember nursing Zoe when she was just a few weeks old in May 2020. We had just moved into our house after a cross-country move, COVID was taking the world by storm, Zoe had colic and was crying/ screaming all day long, the boys’ schools just shut down and I was exhausted.

When I looked down at Zoe, however, tenderness filled my whole body and despite all the chaos, fear and unknowns in that current climate, I felt a sense of sweet satisfaction and gratitude that our family was complete.

It was in that moment that I realized that birthing and raising these three little humans would be the biggest, greatest and most important thing I’d ever do in my life.

I had had similar thoughts like this before, but somehow, in that moment, I really got it. Do you know what I mean? It felt different, crystal clear, undistracted, and above all, simple. Simple, not in its execution, but in its truth.

As cheesy as it sounds, I realized that being their mother was both, my greatest responsibility and my greatest honor, and therefore, that it deserved my deepest commitment.

BUT, feeling into this realization, the commitment I desired to make to my kids felt more EXPANSIVE than just the direct care of my kids themselves.

Over the last year, I have been thinking a lot about what taking a truly committed and proud approach I want to take in my own journey of motherhood. What is the most expansive and inclusive approach I can take to tending to my children.

Here is what I realized is true for me and where I have already placed and wish to continue to place an increasing and growing commitment:

1. I wish to really know who my kids are as individuals.
   
   What lights them up? Where is their natural curiosity guiding them? How do they respond to stress? How can I help facilitate their abilities to return to a calm, confident inner world?

   
   How can I teach them about joy, connection, optimism, self-ownership and resilience so that it fits their personalities?

2. I wish to take excellent care of myself: physically, emotionally, creatively, spiritually…
   
   When I created Well Mama a few years ago, my whole drive and motivation behind the course was anchored in the belief that “When mama is well, everyone wins!” This is still one of my most important truths for myself as a mother.
   
   Taking care of myself is never a luxury, it’s an essential piece of all of our lives. The benefit here is not only that I actively work on my own well-being, but that…

   
   I am also role-modeling to my kids that taking good care of themselves is important, joyful, fun, and the foundation from which everything else can grow.

   
   What lesson could be more important?
   

3. I wish to do my part in taking care of our planet. A healthy earth is the biggest gift we can give to our children.
   
   Questions I have been pondering and areas we have made changes in include: How can we as a whole family commit to being kinder to the world? How can we reduce our plastic consumption? How can we choose cleaner products and better sources of energy to power our lives? How can we shift where we put our money (and our forks) to avoid cutting down trees, depleting our soils, or raising animals in cruel and unsustainable ways? These are things that matter immensely and while it’s easy to think that all of this is outside of our immediate control, the truth is that all of our small actions add up.

   Collectively we can –and have to!– make a difference.
   

4. I wish to care for the children in our world.
   
   This is a vast and emotional topic for me, but how can we stand up for the safety and well-being of the children in this world. To me this means, donating money to organizations that care for children, getting educating in ways we can detect or see abuse, making sure our children can go to school safely, working towards a world where children grow up with opportunities that are irrelevant of their gender, color, or class.
   
   An organization I have been donating to monthly and am planning to become more involved in is called Operation Underground Railroad, which helps free and rescue children from sexual trafficking.

   This is the hardest of hardest realities to look at (trust me, I know that you are probably uncomfortable right now. I was and am, too!) but we cannot look the other way. These children need us.
   

5. I wish to look at Raz, my husband, in a way that allows him to be who he is and our love to thrive as a result of the space we hold for each other to EVOLVE.
   
   Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, has this thing she says about her husband when he does random, silly, funny, and sometimes annoying stuff: she simply says #justlovehim
   I love everything about that.

   It encapsulates trust, humor, freedom and so much more in just three simple words.

   Knowing that I am married to someone kind and wonderful, I don’t want to sweat the small stuff.

   I don’t want to wrap someone I love into a web of criticism, just like I don’t wish to get caught in someone else’s web of criticism. This is particularly important as a parent: Your children watch your relationship and so much of their feelings of safety, confidence, and independence stem from watching you.

   I wish for there to be plenty of space for mutual, individual and joint evolution in all of my relationships, but especially in my marriage.

6. I wish to choose connection instead of productivity.
   
   I used to be obsessed with productivity and the high I’d get from achieving and checking off lots of things. But being a mother to three young kids during a pandemic as well as growing in my own mindfulness practices has brought me closer to something that feels far more important: Connection.

   
   I want to feel connected to what I commit my time and energy to, because it feeds me back!

   
   I want to go deep instead of broad.
   
   I want to foster intimacy instead of padding my ego for how much I have done. The cool thing that results from this is that I don’t get caught up in doing unnecessary things, but really hone in on what matters and connect to that with all my focus and attention. My work gets better when I choose connection over productivity.

I know this list will evolve over the years but this is what is true for me right now. This is where my commitment is to my life as a mother.

For me, motherhood doesn’t consist in this confined container where only my children exist in isolation of everything else. Motherhood has given me an outlook on life that takes a deeper interest in my own well-being, the well-being of other children, my partner and our whole planet.

Motherhood has made me CARE so much more than I ever have before.

It doesn’t matter if you are a mother or not. I would love to encourage you to take a look at something you deeply love and how that love can be expanded, how the care and commitment you feel can become more encompassing and inclusive.

Love,

Caroline