Health Journal Online

Tag: Motherhood

  • Cultivating Courage and Confidence in Motherhood

    Cultivating Courage and Confidence in Motherhood

    My memories of motherhood are filled with moments of self-doubt. No mother alive doesn’t go through some self-doubt. Given all of the ideas of what is best for children, it is easy to doubt your decisions. From the mundane to the seemingly “big decisions,” it is easy to spiral into negative emotion doubting ourselves. 

    A client of mine spent some time talking with me about the fact that she and her son and husband didn’t have a ritual for dinner together. It made sense for her family and their schedule that her son ate before her husband got home, yet nearly every day she would have thoughts of doubt about whether that was really okay. Turns out it was just fine, as now he is a wonderful young adult and they are very close. It seems silly looking back that we can get so hung up on things like this but it’s easy to do. How do we know it’s going to be okay?

    Magazines, newspapers, and websites often produce stories out of research findings that show how some action or behavior is linked to some outcome, even when there is no definitive evidence that it was the cause for the outcome. The best test of how something works for your family is how it works for your family, over time!

    How nice it would be to have a crystal ball to be able to know for sure that any given choice would be the “right choice,” and that everything would turn out okay. The mind can blow things way out of proportion and make the risk to their development and well-being seem enormous. In our grasping for certainty and our fear of our doubt, we may create a lot of optional suffering. It is helpful to kindly remind yourself that kids are resilient and that you can be too. You can always make new choices after seeing the outcome.

    When Fear Is Present

    Like self-doubt, fear is another major topic in parenting. From the barrage of news reports about terrible things happening to children, mass shootings, catastrophic weather events, wars, etc., there is plenty to fearfully focus on. Add to that “time travel” in the mind, thoughts of what might or could happen, and that’s a whole lot of optional suffering in motherhood. Using mindfulness, especially a regular practice of mindfulness of thoughts and feelings, can help you step out of autopilot to see if you are actually suffering unnecessarily.

    You can shift the focus of your mind at any time. Fear is not a sign that the feared outcome is going to happen. Trying to imagine how you would face something you are afraid of that isn’t happening right now is often a waste of energy and can lead to self-condemnation. My favorite mantras, “Just this moment,” and “Just here, just now,” really help me to get out of my mind and get back into the flow of life. When you find yourself trying to “think it away,” you have to choose to redirect the mind to just be with now, to be with what is right in front of you and let fear fade into the background. It may arise again, and you can refocus again.

    I have come to understand that when fear is present, I must dig deep to move toward the thing I value. I don’t need to be rid of the fear to get through it.

    I have come to understand that when fear is present, I must dig deep to move toward the thing I value. I don’t need to be rid of the fear to get through it. I can decide to dig deep anyway, giving myself positive self-talk along the way.

    Uncovering Your Courage 

    Being brave or having courage is often described in a way that looks like having no fear. Motherhood calls for courage from the very beginning. We may go into it with sweet ideas, but we soon come to see how much we are needing to face that’s frightening or intimidating. Just like with appreciation, it is useful to stop and recognize where you were courageous. Acknowledging when you were afraid and did stuff anyway helps grow a sense of confidence.

    A client of mine was worried about whether she could be brave in the face of helping her four-year old daughter through a surgery and an overnight stay at the hospital. She noticed that she often took her fearful thoughts to mean that she wouldn’t be brave. They were some kind of bad sign. If she thought these things now, how could she do it?

    Anxious anticipation can undermine any of us.

    She also felt terrible about herself for dreading it. I encouraged her to validate herself, when she noticed the dread, by saying, “This is really hard. It’s okay.” She found it really helpful to acknowledge that simple fact, rather than to indict herself as a bad mother for all of the fear and negative thoughts. No one wants to go through hard things, and there is so much that is hard. It’s really okay to acknowledge it.

    Choosing to Be Brave

    I will always remember one of the more profound moments when I decided to be brave; where I showed myself that I could be courageous. I was finishing up the bath with my toddler son when I heard my toddler daughter fall in the other room. I ran to see her and found she had fallen and split her chin open. Blood was everywhere and I was freaked out. Here was one of the moments as a mother I had feared I wouldn’t be up to when it finally arrived. I was terrified.

    Despite the urge to cry and run the other way, I soothed her and cleaned her up anyway. After calling the pediatrician’s office who recommended I take her to the emergency room to see if she needed stitches, I called my husband to tell him to drop everything and come home. I told my husband he would be going to the ER with her!

    We can choose again and again to turn toward what we want for ourselves or our child, regardless of the mind’s first reaction.

    It dawned on me a few minutes after I hung up with him that I wanted my kids to see me be strong. I wondered what kind of message I would be sending my daughter, who was leaning on me and my soothing, if I sent her off with her dad who had just come home from being gone all day. Certainly, it wouldn’t have hurt her, but I realized here was an opportunity.

    So, as much as I dreaded it, I asked my husband to stay with our son and I took her to the ER. A few stitches and several hours later we were back home and doing fine. Courage and confidence are not something you have or not. Remember the growth mindset. We can choose again and again to turn toward what we want for ourselves or our child, regardless of the mind’s first reaction.

    When we string together moments like that, those choices lead to courage and confidence. Another gift of motherhood! Where I once went running away, I tamed my fears of spiders, bees, and snakes as well! Motherhood can show us how brave we can be.

    Excerpt reproduced with author’s permission from Just This Moment: A Guide for Moms Who Want to Enjoy Parenting, Raise Great Kids and THRIVE! by Elizabeth Torres, Psy.D. ABPP. (2019). 

    Mindfulness for Kids 

    When we teach mindfulness to kids, we equip them with tools to build self-esteem, manage stress, and skillfully approach challenges. Explore our guide on how to introduce mindfulness and meditation to your children—at any age. Read More 

    • Mindful Staff
    • June 11, 2020

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  • All of That: Reflections on Motherhood and Letting Go

    All of That: Reflections on Motherhood and Letting Go

    My mother died suddenly in 2013 at just 67, when our older daughter was two and our younger daughter was an infant. Before that, my mom helped watch the girls while I worked. I’d drive to my parents’ nearby home and work upstairs in their cozy loft while they read, snuggled, and played with my girls. In retrospect, it was this beautiful stolen season: I got the support I desperately needed, that feeling of being a part of the village so long a part of our shared human history—and I also got to walk downstairs each day and eat lunch and have coffee breaks with my own dear momma. It was the experience of motherhood I had hoped for.

    After my mom died, everything unraveled for a while. I felt so alone. Motherhood was a vast dark ocean, and I was clinging to the sides of a rickety little dinghy.

    Other than a brief stint working on-site part-time for a contract position, I’ve always officed out of our home (I still do). In those early years of being a new mom, depending on the season of life, I worked between 10–40 hours per week, with varying degrees of success and sanity on a day-to-day basis.

    The romance of working from home wears thin when you realize that working and parenting are not really things that can happen simultaneously. This realization sinks in approximately 14 minutes into your first day of working from home while trying to care for one or more children.

    Between the feedings and the diapers and the naps and the fighting and the I’m huuuuunnngrys and the spilled everything everywhere and the Can you fix this? and the scraped elbows and the When are you gonna be done, Mom? — any amount of real productivity felt purely accidental, or was the result of desperately putting on Scooby-Do episodes at 11 in the morning and locking myself in my room.

    Many days, I said no to doing things with my girls because I had a deadline to meet. Or I said yes to them, because I felt guilty, or because I genuinely just wanted to be with them — and then was left frantically working until 2am, long after they’d gone to bed, to get in a workday that had started at 9pm.

    I often felt like both a sub-par parent and a sub-par employee. Some days, I was. I cried in frustration, and beg-yelled to please be left alone so I could just string together a few connected thoughts. I slept through early morning Zoom meetings, forgot to get cupcakes for my kid’s birthday at school, mixed up due dates, was late for every damn thing, and zombied my way through assignments and tea parties alike. That’s the reality.

    There were wonderful days, too, moments of grace and revelation and transcendent connection. Some moments I loved in an otherworldly way, like my whole body was made of warm light. Other days felt like I was falling from an airplane with no parachute. My children are the most effective teachers I’ve ever had in my life. And when I say effective, I mean like in the way that doing 100 squats a day will give you an amazing butt: the triumph comes with some brutality. Like most personal growth, it has mostly all occurred in the trenches.

    Saying the real things out loud

    I resented being a stay-at-home mom sometimes. I know this is a generally frowned-upon thing to say. It’s almost always followed up solicitously by some version of, But kids are amazing, for sure. So amazing. Best thing that ever happened to me. There is this expectation that we temper our messy feelings with a sweeping declaration that negates what doesn’t feel or sound good.

    I don’t think I need to balance out my real human experience with less-messy narratives. So I will let the first statement just be its own reality: I resented being a stay-at-home mom sometimes. At times, I was swallowed by the fear that I was losing the very essence of myself. My creativity, time to write, time to take care of my whole self, my hunger for solitude and silence, my friendships—all of it was getting subsumed under this identity of Mom that so often felt like a too-big coat draped around me.

    There’s a robust body of mindfulness research (I know, I know) that says our greatest joy is found in living fully in the moment. And yes, that’s real. This is also real: it was so hard to be with it all sometimes.

    Yes, there are women who genuinely love full-time motherhood. They make of it an art, feel themselves called and enlivened and energized by this job. They are amazing to watch, and I honor and salute them. I love to see people living enthusiastically into their purpose.

    Me, I have often felt like the guy in those 90s commercials wearing the white coat. You know the one: I’m not a doctor in real life, but I play one on TV.

    Meaning, some days I was really feeling the role, absorbed in the storyline. I was so connected with the character of Mom that I was Mom, like on the inside, too. A lot of other days, I was reciting lines and looking frantically around for stage direction and waiting for some benevolent off-camera Director to call, Cut! And…that’s a wrap, people. Good work today. Why don’t y’all head on home and get some rest?

    Some days I felt out of control, desperate, and deliriously exhausted. I’d watch some mornings, nonsensically enraged, as my husband biked off, unencumbered. He only had one job to do for eight whole uninterrupted hours, surrounded by things like other grown-ups, recognition, annual bonuses, and health care.

    Blissfully-retired people would come up to me, probably just returned from a 10-day Scandinavian river cruise, and coo and congratulate. There I’d be, with my brand-new baby, my teething toddler, my hair unwashed and my clothes wrinkled and smattered with dried spit-up, my body aching—and they’d tell me to “just enjoy every minute.” I knew they meant well, and I get the amnesiac power of nostalgia. But also, part of me was just like, Geez lady, read the room.

    I don’t know what kind of mom that makes me, other than not alone.

    I don’t think it’s necessary for me (or any mom, any woman) to regard these moments of exasperation, unfulfillment, or longing as wasted time. These aren’t feelings I shouldn’t have had, or something to be ashamed of. They just…are.

    I don’t think it’s necessary for me (or any mom, any woman) to regard these moments of exasperation, unfulfillment, or longing as wasted time. These aren’t feelings I shouldn’t have had, or something to be ashamed of. They just…are. They’re as natural and human as my moments of contentment and elation. They have seasons and things to teach. Under this huge umbrella experience called Motherhood, they all belong. I know that wrestling with this complicated identity has never meant that I love my kids any less.

    Even today, when I see new moms at church or in our neighborhood, I always ask how they’re really doing. I always say, “Parenting is a beautiful gift, and it’s also okay to not love every single minute.” Sometimes they laugh knowingly, and sometimes they start to cry. When we’re struggling in silence, even when that struggle is the most normal, near-universal thing in the world, we can feel so defective for not feeling how we think we should be feeling.

    Saying the real things out loud can be a form of tender medicine, I’ve found.

    Saying the real things out loud can be a form of tender medicine, I’ve found.

    Crossing a threshold into a new form of motherhood

    In 2018, for the first time in eight years, I found myself facing the prospect of whole days to myself again. I know there are women who have done it for longer, and bless ’em — but eight years is still a long time. In Introvert Years, it’s like 100. I couldn’t believe that much time had passed. I had a second grader and a kindergartener. The river-cruising retirees where definitely right about one thing: it all went by like I was holding a scoop of water in my hands.

    Before I had kids, I spent hours a day alone. I quite liked it. It was jarring to have that open space suddenly shrink down, to have every spare minute and square inch of my body taken up, occupied, demanded. It was equally as jarring then, nearly a decade later, to have that space reappear. Only now I was a totally different human being. The whole world was different, and I had to figure out how to be in silence again.

    The night before our youngest daughter Stella’s first day of kindergarten, we snuggled up in the dark before bed. (For the record, before-bedtime snuggles are probably my very favorite ritual.) We talked about her first day of kindergarten, and how we were feeling about it. She had been buzzing all day long, spontaneously jumping up and down with excitement as she’d talk about finally going to school. We talked about the last five and a half years together.

    I got to tell her I was so grateful for our time together, because I was. And I got to tell her I was happy for her to go to school, because I was.

    I got to tell her I was so grateful for our time together, because I was. And I got to tell her I was happy for her to go to school, because I was.

    I asked her how she was feeling. She said, “I’m feeling nervi-cited, Mom.” My girls invented this word to describe that mix of emotions that comes with treading unknown but anticipated waters: nervous + excited.

    The next day, as we dropped her off, I watched her bouncy energy suddenly drop as she entered the chaotic classroom. Our girls attend an immersion school, and the teachers spoke to her in Chinese, which of course she didn’t understand yet. She didn’t know anyone. Everything was big and new and unfamiliar. She looked shell-shocked, like she might start crying — not out of sadness, but just out of not knowing what the hell was going on.

    She looked like I had felt so many times in my life, so many times in the previous eight years. My chest welled up with that tidal wash of empathy.

    I knelt down by those tiny tables and chairs. “How are you feeling, kiddo? What’s going on in your heart right now?”

    She looked down at the table, staring hard. “I’m feeling nervi-cited. And a little shy.” I assured her this was normal on such a big day. She nodded.

    She was so quiet, so unlike her usual bombastic self. “Mom?” she said, still looking down, willing herself to be brave. “There’s something else. With the nervi-cited and the shy. It’s miss. I’m going to miss you. Nervi-cited-shy-miss. All of that.”

    Yes. All of that.



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