Episode 283: Wholeness in Motherhood

Wholeness in Motherhood

Let’s jump into talking about wholeness in motherhood or, how to be a mom and do other things too. This is such an interesting topic because I don’t know that it’s something that I have struggled with a whole lot and maybe that’s why I get questions often from people who watched my instagram stories or have read my blog.

How do you do it all?

They reach out and say, how do you do it all? How do you run a business and see your kids? How do you get sewing projects done and not feel guilty for hiring a babysitter? How do you travel with your friends or with your sisters and leave your kids behind? The question that I hear so often is how do you manage to be a mom and do other things? Well, the answer to me feels really simple, but I know that for a lot of people it isn’t very simple and so I want to discuss a few different points that maybe will help.

If you’re struggling with this, with the idea of being a mom and doing other things that you love, hopefully this episode will shed some light and maybe inspire you to explore a little bit more. What might work for you?

“The answer for me is: I am a better person when I do the things that I love.”

I love to work. I love to travel. I love to, so I love to read. I love to go on runs. I really need to exercise. I really like to spend time with my friends. I like to travel with Dave or with my sisters or with friends alone and so I feel like I should do the things that I love. I also love being a mom. I love my children. I love spending time with them playing. I love helping them with homework. I love reading to them and teaching them new things. I love playing games with them.

A couple episodes ago I talked about taking my kids by myself on a month long road trip. I absolutely adore spending time with my kids.

“Something that just needs to be cleared up right now from the gate is that you can love your kids to the core and still love other things. You can love being a mom and love working. You can love being a mom and have hobbies. These things are not mutually exclusive.”

I don’t know exactly where we got the idea that they were. I believe that I am a whole person independent of anyone else, independent of my husband, independent of my children, independent of my parents. I myself am an entire person. I am a whole person and there’s not anything that can be added to or taken away from my wholeness whether or not I choose to believe that and live into it is another thing. I believe that we are each unique entire people when we come to the earth.

“We are born with wholeness. We have lots of things to learn. We have lots of things to improve on. Absolutely. Lessons and skills and challenges to go through, but our worth is intact and inherent from the time we are born.”

Think About Yourself As A Child

I want to begin thinking about myself as a child. I want you to think about yourself as a child. You were born to a family, you were this little person, and as you were learning and growing, you developed some skills. You developed some talents, you have different pieces of your life. At some point you went to school, maybe you played on a sports team or you learned ballet or an instrument, or you just have an affinity for reading all of those things that make up the person that you were as a child. You were invited as you grew up to develop yourself in different ways.

Pie Chart of Life

I remember learning about how I needed to work on development in some different aspects of life, physical, mental, social, spiritual and intellectual. There were these five things I remember oftentimes, maybe it was just my schooling. Maybe it was church, maybe it was my parents. Maybe it was a combination of all of those things.

I remember often drawing sort of a pie chart of my myself and I would draw this circle and I would divide it up into the different things, the different aspects of my life and I would create some goals or reflect on what I needed to do for improvement or the things that I was doing well that built up the person that I was. I had an entire pie chart when I was in elementary school. It looked like gymnastics and violin lessons and you know, being a sister and being a daughter and being a friend and going to church and developing my faith and that was about it.

So that was my pie chart. It was me and all of the things that I did and the things that I, you know, was the ways that I identified with myself. That was my pie chart.

And then I moved on to maybe say I was a in high school and it had a lot more slivers and they had to be a little bit smaller because I had a lot more things going on. I played on the tennis team. I was on the drill team, I was on the dance club, I was the president of Community of Caring. I was a daughter, I was a girlfriend, I was a sister. I still went to church. I was learning at school and actually needed to go to school and so I had all of these things making up my pie chart, which was really full and it all just, they were all just different pieces of, of who I was and the things that I did and the things that I loved and what I was learning about now.

Fast forward to when I got married, my life at that point looked a little bit different. I was going to nursing school full time. I was working as a nurse assistant. I was also working part time in retail. I was a wife and I was a new daughter in law. I was still a daughter. I was still a sister. I had friends, I was doing some volunteering. I was still going to church and had my faith and so my pie chart was, was full and, and different. But still just all pieces of this one life.

I think up to that point a lot of you can relate. And then, and then I had my first child and I think what a lot of people assume happens when you have your first child and you become a mom, is that your pie chart gets wiped clean and there are no longer divisions.  It’s just “mom” for whatever reason.

Being A Mom Does Not Define Me

There’s this idea pervasive in society that once you become a mom, that that is your defining characteristic of your life and that the things that you used to do are no longer relevant and the things you used to enjoy, you need to just say goodbye to for a while. And I don’t believe that.

I believe that my children are a piece of who I am. Absolutely.

“My children have changed me and continue to change me, but my motherhood does not define who I am because who I am has been whole from the beginning.”

Is motherhood sometimes all encompassing? Yes. It can feel all encompassing and it also can feel all encompassing when we have the perspective that we have to do it all ourselves. I think that those two things come hand in hand, that if you believe that your motherhood is all that you can do, that becomes who you are.

It Takes A Village

Once you’re a mom and there’s nothing else that you are, that you need to pursue in your life, then you believe that you are all important in your child’s life, that you are the only one who can do it. Who can change diapers, who can feed, who can teach, who can rock, who can comfort, who can love you believe that you are the ultimate and I think that that can be dangerous.

We are not meant to raise our children on an island. We’re not meant to raise our children alone or as a couple. There’s that old saying that “it takes a village to raise a child”. The reason that it takes a village to raise a child is because all of the people involved all are also being people themselves and teaching that child in different ways. The idea that you could be 24/7 mom all the time, with nothing else in your life is a little bit ludicrous.

Even people who choose to stay at home with their children and be all involved in their children’s lives can’t be on all the time. It’s impossible. It reminds me of a blog post that I wrote years ago about mom life balance.

Mom Life Balance

We hear so much about work life balance for people who are working that you need to have balance between your work and you need to have breaks and you need to have hobbies and you need to be a whole person. But no one ever talks about it for moms. We sort of assume that there doesn’t need to be this mom life balance. That motherhood is just what there is. I’m trying to share the idea that motherhood is a piece of life. It isn’t life itself.

Even in, you know, in any job there are requirements for taking breaks and for having time off and having days off. There’s no better way to feel fulfilled in your job. Then when you’re doing other things to support it, other things that are unlike your job that stretch you and develop you as a person, as a whole person in different ways so that you bring all of that learning and understanding and an insight and inspiration back to the job that you were doing.

I think that we would all agree that that happens for, you know, someone who’s a dentist who needs to have something else to do so when he comes back, he’s fresh. Someone who is an attorney and spends all day sitting at a desk or a doctor, you know, in the hospital. You have to have time away from that to develop yourself and to feel whole and to feel happy and to learn and grow.

In fact, one of my favorite ways to get over a block when I have a creative block, either in work or at home, is to do something totally different. To go on a walk or to go on a hike or they take a couple days off to go on a vacation. To go somewhere new, to try to learn something different. Take a class because what those things do is develop ourselves as people.  They help us develop the skills and understanding and enthusiasm and energy that we have as people.

When we have that inside ourselves as individuals, we take it with us into all of the different things that we do. So if you liken that to motherhood, when you are working in your motherhood, you’re actively engaged in being home. All of the physical things that come with young motherhood, changing diapers, feeding naps, you know, playtime, tummy time, all of those things.

And then your kids grow up a little bit in, it’s a little bit less physical. It maybe shifts a little bit more mental where you’re trying to instill values and teach lessons and have conversations and get to know your kids. And then you have to help with homework and manage kind of the logistical, strategic part of it as well.

That is all one thing, this is this incredible job role of motherhood that is a role that is a piece of the pie that is a piece of your wholeness.

Sometimes the very best way to do a really good job at that job of being a mom is to spend time away from it doing those other things that you enjoy to inspire and energize and fulfill you. Once you’ve done that, you fill yourself up. You come back fresh, you come back excited. You come back with new ideas, with greater appreciation and within heightened ability to be an even better mother because you are becoming an even better person. Let me see that concisely.

“When you spend time doing the things that you love outside of motherhood, you become an even better mother because you are becoming an even better person.”

Four Truths About Wholeness in Motherhood

I want to share for ideas to help drive this idea of wholeness in motherhood home. I just quickly want to mention without going on sort of a soapbox about this, that it is unique to motherhood. That we feel this way, that it should be all encompassing and that you are not able to do other things.

I have never ever heard a father feel guilty about going to the gym because he needs to be home watching the kids or feel guilty about going to work every day because he needs to be home watching the kids. This this idea that motherhood should be all you do is unique to mothers and fathers and I think that we as women do a lot of the perpetuating of the idea of the mom guilt by judging each other or by judging ourselves instead of recognizing that we are all individuals with whole lives that need to be lived and that can be developed.

And as we allow ourselves the grace to pursue the things that we love in combination and harmony with being fantastic, incredible mothers. We allow other people permission to do the same.

1. Wholeness is inherent.

This goes back to what I was talking about in the beginning of the show and as a principal that feels eternal and divine to me. Whether or not you believe in a higher power or you believe in a divine maker or a God.

“I want to invite you to consider the idea that you are unique, and that your worth has nothing to do with anything that you do or do not do.”

That who you are right now is enough, and you can grow and develop and learn. And you can try new things and you can meet big goals and you can have all types of success and accomplishment, but none of those things add to your inherent value as a human being.

Just using a visual example. You can think of your wholeness as that circle, that pie chart, and it doesn’t really matter what you put inside it. It’s still whole. All of the things that you do and choose to pursue, get to take up pieces of your time and your energy and your effort, but none of those things add or take away to the actual circle itself.

It all is within the wholeness of who you are when you arrive, and all of the things within the circle are just choices that you get to make. How do you want to spend your time? How do you want to spend your energy, with whom do you want to associate? What are the things that you love and that you enjoy? You get to choose what goes in your circle, but that entire circle is there no matter what you choose, so that’s number one. Your wholeness is inherent.

2. Our goal should be to be centered, not to be balanced.

Now, this is a concept that I love the illustration of that I just read about in the new book from Rachel Hollis. I got an advanced copy. I know I don’t know how I got on the list, but I’m happy that I did. I’ve been reading Girl, Stop Apologizing. That will come out in March and I think they should all get it when it comes out, it’s fantastic.

In this one section she’s talking about the idea that I’m sharing right now. One of the things that I love is that she talks about how being balanced is just a myth. I hope that we all agree right, that that balance, the idea of doing everything perfectly all the time like that nothing ever feels out of whack in your life. That’s just craziness and it and it’s just not real.

That shouldn’t in fact even be the goal because we can never give the same amount of attention to each different thing in our lives because they require different amounts of attention at different times. Rachel says this in this chapter on page 45, she says, “I don’t think the goal is ever to be balanced. I think the goal is to be centered. Centered means that you feel grounded and at peace with yourself. Centered means that you can’t be knocked off balance regardless of how chaotic things become.”

I adore that. That is my new visual reference. When I think about all of the different aspects of my life that I’m juggling, yes, I am a mom to three incredible kids. I’m a wife to a husband that I adore. I have a dog. I’ve got four chickens. I have a house that’s currently in crazy reconstruction after our flood. I have a business that I run, products that we offer, a podcast that I love recording. I have a book that I’m working on. I have other courses that I’m working on. I have decided that I want to sell more this year because I miss it and I love it so much.

There are so many things happening in my life and similarly in your life, although all of them may be different. Being centered means that all of that chaos will knock you off balance. That you feel grounded and at peace with yourself regardless of all of the different things that are happening.

“What would it be like if you decided right now that balance is a myth that you do not have to achieve, and you decided instead that you are going to find that grounding centered anchor within yourself.”

One of the ways that this shows up, this idea shows up in real life in my life right now is that I understand that I need to be fully present when I’m working to do a good job at work and I also need to be fully present with my kids when I’m in, when I’m, when they’re home and I’m being mom.

I am understanding that different pieces my life get highest priority at different times.  Also that nothing can be given a high priority if I haven’t prioritized filling myself up, taking care of my health, my mental health, my physical health, my wellbeing, my spirituality, so that I’m able to accomplish any of the things that I hope to accomplish and feel fulfilled at any of the things that I want to enjoy.

I get to ask myself, “What is the most important thing right now?”

For those those of you with really young kids, I know this can be tricky because they’re so needy when they’re little. My kids are now all in school five days a week, so between 9:00 AM and 2:00 PM Monday through Friday I can kind of turn off mom mode because my kids are taken care of. They’re at school and they’re being handled. I mean, of course if they need something, I can drop whatever I’m doing and be there.

I understand that when kids are small that it is a lot harder because there isn’t necessarily a really clearly defined line unless you’ve made the choice to have childcare or a system in place and I highly recommend that you do that. From the time Milo was one year old, even younger than that, I started back to work as a nurse when Milo was four or five months old. I don’t think that everyone should work as a mom. That’s not everyone’s path, but it was for me.

I loved what I was doing. I was working as a nurse, a diabetes educator, and I worked a couple days a week and I would leave Milo with childcare while I went to work. I did an excellent job at work. I was so good at my job and I loved every minute of it. I would come back to him and he would have been well cared for and excited to see me and I was thrilled to see him and then we would move on with our day.

I got to do both because I had chosen and then felt good about it.

When he was one, I started hosting a playgroup. There were five of us. We would exchange children once a week for an hour and a half. All the kids would come to my house one week and then all the kids would go to someone else’s house the next week and that meant four weeks out of the five I had this hour and a half that I wasn’t at work and I wasn’t being mom because Milo is being taken care of and so I got to do whatever else I wanted and I would use that time to go to the store by myself or to work on a project at home that I felt like was really hard to do when he was toddling around.

These things don’t just happen, you have to choose them.

3. Guilt does no good.

Guilt does not serve you or any of your family. If you really, really want to go back to work and you have kids, but you feel guilty that you’re not going to spend every single minute with them, I would invite you to evaluate those feelings.

If it’s something that you love, your kids will not be worse off for you spending some specific time away. Maybe you don’t want to work, but you have a hobby or a project that you would love to get done, but you feel bad hiring a babysitter. I don’t know why. I don’t know why you’d feel that bad hiring a babysitter, but people do feel bad because we for whatever reason think that we are the only people that can do everything.

This goes back to what I was talking about earlier, we think that we’re the only people who can do it. We believe we’re the only people that our children need, and that is incorrect. Our children need to learn how to be with other people. They need to learn how to socialize and get along with other kids and with other adults. That is part of becoming a little human is that you learn about other people and you learn about how to go play and how to have a babysitter. The importance of teaching our kids how to interact with other people is a lesson that often gets overlooked by virtue of we need to be with them all the time.

It is so helpful and so wonderful to have a child who can easily go into the daycare at the gym so that I can spend time working out. Because the first several times that we went and they cried because they didn’t like it or they didn’t want to be left alone, we got through it. That was something they needed to learn and then they learned it and then they had an excellent time and we all benefited because I got to have a workout and they got to spend an hour playing with new friends.

“Every single mother is going to do things a little differently. Every single mother is going to make different choices and feel differently about things. Every single place you look, there will be a device and articles and unsolicited tips about how to be a better mom and all of them will conflict and all of them will tell you things that make you feel like you’re doing it all wrong. You’re not doing it all wrong. You’re doing the best you can.”

Even having the feelings of, “I would love to do something else, but I feel bad because I also feel like I should spend all of my time with my kids.” As a mom means that you love them so much that you want to be the best mom that you can for them. I can tell you from my experience and my experience will not be your experience, that I am a better mom because of the time that I spend pursuing my dreams.

Not only then do I get to them and read to them and teach them and go on walks with them and play with them. I also get to show them what it looks like to choose the things that I love and to actively include them in my life.

I can tell my kids all day long that they can do whatever they want when they grow up. That they get to choose the job that they want to have. They get to choose the hobbies that they pursue. They get to choose the adventures that they want to go on, And then I show up for my own life as an example of the person that I hope that they will feel like they can also be. That they can also choose what they love and do it. That they can make goals for themselves and pursue them that they can, not at the expense of but at the benefit of their family, become even greater people through pursuing the things that light them up and build them up and teach them.

I believe that my children came to my family because I am the type of mother that they need. I am a mom who works who exercises, who plays, who travels by myself and without them and with them and who goes to movies by myself and with them and who has an office uptown that they get to come hang out in. And sometimes I leave him home with a babysitter so I can go to work, and sometimes I leave them with their dad so I can go to work and sometimes they they come with me and we get to work on projects together.

I am the kind of mom that they need.

“I believe that you are the kind of mom that your children need, and the things that you do for your own self development and your own passions are also a piece of what your children need. They need all of you. They need you loving your life. They need you learning new things that you want to learn. They need you spending time pursuing your dreams because it gives them permission to pursue theirs as well.”

4. We Must Have In Order To Give.

The final thing I’m going to touch on today is that we have to have in order to give as a mother, as a person. That energy and vibrancy and enthusiasm and inspiration that we bring to life and share with others comes from within ourselves. This is age old and you’ve heard this a hundred different times, but it is true that if you don’t take care of yourself and your needs, not in a selfish way, but in an intentional way.

When you build yourself up and you maintain your health and your mental health and your intellect and your physical health, you are better able to serve those around you. When you spend time and energy and effort and intention to develop yourself and to learn and to light yourself up with the things that you love. That light will be infectious and contagious and you can’t help but then share it. You can’t help but then be enlightened.

You become the very best mother that you can be by first becoming the very best person that you can be and who that is looks different for all of us. The things that you love, the ways that you need to take care of yourself, the sleep that you need, the right diet for you, the right ways that you spend your time. All of those things are so individual and this is another reason that we can’t judge.

You know, I was just gone a lot in December. I basically traveled the first full two weeks of December and I’ll admit I was a little bit worried about it. I looked at the calendar and thought my gosh, that’s a lot of time away from home. That’s a lot of bad times I’m missing. That’s a lot of school dropoffs and not going to be there for. And I wondered are my kids going to be worse off because of those two weeks that I’m not, you know, ever present in their lives.

The answer my friends is no, they were not worse off. They were so excited for me and we got to face time and they would ask me about how Chicago was and how has Portland and how his uncle Taylor and how did the workshops go and while I was out working and teaching and doing some of the things that I feel really strongly called to do.

They were at home getting to spend extra time with dad, getting to talk about how mom was off teaching people all over the country and I came home to excited wonderful kids who I missed while I was gone and who missed me, but we’re no worse off. In fact, they were better off because of the time that I spent doing something that I loved and sharing it with them and I hope when they grow up and they have big dreams and they are really excited about something in their lives that they will remember my example of setting off and doing the thing that I wanted to do. Despite the obstacles. Despite the challenges and despite lots and lots of voices that would tell me that I probably shouldn’t do it because I need to stay home as a mom.

Recap

To quickly recap, my Four Principles of Wholeness in Motherhood are these:

1.  Wholeness is inherent.

2.  Be centered, not balanced.

3. Guilt does no good.

4. You have to have in order to give.

I hope that some of the things that I’ve talked about today have resonated with you in some way and if you’re struggling with mom guilt or struggling with the idea of wanting to be a mom and all of the other things that you may have swirling around in your head and your heart, I invite you to spend some time thinking and planning and choosing and to stretch out and try.

As you become the best person you can be automatically spills over into you becoming an even better mom for your kids.

Thank you so much for being here. I have loved sharing this episode. I hope that something has resonated with you. I’m going to invite you, as I always do, to subscribe. If you’re not subscribed, you don’t want to miss any episodes, so subscribe, share this with a friend, take a screenshot, put it on Instagram, leave a review. If you haven’t done that yet. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here.