Over the years many people have asked me if I was planning to write a book about parenting and my response was always: I will never write that book because nobody is an expert on your child. I maintain that stance today. And yet, while I don’t have answers, I do have a lot of thoughts, tidbits of wisdom that I have gleaned over these past nearly twenty-two years of mothering. Here are a few of them. (Note: Most of these also apply to fathering,  but since I am a mother and I work mostly with mothers, I will be writing through that lens.)

 

1. We’re not meant to mother alone.

We were never meant to mother alone. We were meant to mother with other mothers, with our sisters, cousins, neighbors, and friends, with our own mother and grandmothers. The collection of this community has come to be known as the village.

Most of us don’t have a village, and if I had to whittle down our struggles around motherhood to one source, it would be this absence of community. It’s what I say to my clients who are mothers of young children every week. It’s what I reminded myself of in the younger years when mothering felt like a Herculean task and not only was I drowning under the piles of dishes and laundry, but more so under the piles of loneliness, overwhelm, and despair. I longed not for answers, but for camaraderie, to sit with a cup of tea with another mother and talk about anything and everything, not only our children, but the separate self that still shimmered beneath the every day rubble of mothering.

 

2. There’s no such thing as perfect mothering.

Society has always placed the burden of mothering on women. But it’s only in recent years that we’ve been expected to do it all: to work outside the home while attending to every element of our kids’ lives, from scheduling doctor’s appointments to showing up at soccer games to managing their emotions to sitting on the floor with them while they play.

Not only is this an impossible task, but quite often the boredom in those younger years pushes us to the brink of feeling like we’re losing our minds, for we were never meant to sit on the floor playing with Legos and trains and slipping into the imaginal world of our children for hours on end. Again, if we lived in community many of these tasks would be naturally assumed by other people.

Not only is it impossible to mother perfectly, it’s not even a healthy goal. Do we want to model perfection to our children? Or do we want to model the human experience of messing up over and over again and then making a good, healthy repair. For the fact of the matter is that we are going to mess up a thousand times, if not more.

We’re going to yell. We’re going to shame. We’re going to misattune to our children’s emotional needs. We’re going to inadvertently take sides in a sibling argument. We’re going to argue with our spouse in front of our kids. We’re going to swear. We’re going to lose it. In short, we’re going to do all the things we know we shouldn’t do.

Part of this might be exacerbated by the first point: perhaps if we were mothering in community, we wouldn’t feel so overwhelmed. But part of it, I suspect, is just the way it goes between parents and children. It goes this way because we’re imperfect and we’re human. And when we show up imperfectly, our only task is to make a repair, promise to continue to work on our wounds ,and somehow find the support that we need.

Rupture and repair is the cycle that defines our closest relationships, including the one with our children. When there is real love, there will be ruptures, and as long as there’s a true desire to take responsibility, we’re often moving toward repair. And through that process you’ll teach your kids that having healthy relationships doesn’t require being perfectly healed (that doesn’t exist); it just requires being imperfectly human and being willing to see our flaws so that we can make repairs and do better.

 

3. Our primary task is quite simple.

If we’re not supposed to do this perfectly, what are we meant to do?

I believe it comes down to one thing: to accompany our children through this sometimes painful, sometimes beautiful life. Our task is to meet them where they are and walk alongside them as they experience disappointment, heartbreak, joy, celebration, and loneliness.

Despite everything we try to do to prevent them from suffering, they will suffer. Just as we don’t want anybody to try to give us answers or attempt to fix our pain, so our children only need to be witnessed and received when they’re suffering.

If you have a more private child, sometimes what’s needed is to step back. If you have a more relational child, what’s needed might be to step in. How do we know what is needed when and with whom? We pay attention. We listen. And we trust that our good enough is enough.

Again, we’re not going to do this perfectly. We’re going to step in too much when our child needs space. We’re going to give too much space when our child needs more connection. We’re going to berate ourselves when we mess up, but then hopefully we will return to self-compassion and a trust that attentive mothering is enough.

When our firstborn was a baby struggling with digestive issues, I did everything I could to ease his suffering. I was bewildered and disillusioned that suffering could begin so early in his journey on earth, especially when I had a hope that we would be able to raise our kids in a way that would create as little suffering as possible.

But here we were, just a few weeks into his life, and he was already suffering. Perfectionist and overachiever that I was, I went into overdrive to try to solve the problem: I removed every problematic possibility of food from my diet. I learned baby massage. We pumped his little legs and bounced him endlessly. Did any of that help? Maybe. But maybe not. Maybe all he needed was time and our quiet trust that this was normal and his digestive issues would resolve on their own.

Now, I’m not saying that there isn’t a time to step in with interventions. One of the challenges of parenting, as with life, is knowing when to step in and when to standby. Despite what the experts say, nobody has that answer.

But when we listen and attune both to our children and to ourselves – and when we’re able to share some of our stories with a group of other mothers – we find our inner voice of guidance for how to proceed next. We don’t need to know the whole plan. We can’t know the whole plan. All we need to know is what to do next. And that information is always available to us.

 

4. When our children are struggling, we will torture ourselves with regret.

There was a time a couple of years ago when both of our kids were struggling with the same thing. To protect their privacy, I won’t share what that was, but it was pronounced enough that it kept me up at night, and in my nighttime rumination I sometimes fell down a rabbit hole of conviction that one of the major choices we had made in our life had caused their struggles.

Thankfully, both of them have moved through that particular struggle and, consequently, I no longer question that particular decision. In fact, now that they’re both in a stage of thriving, I’m convinced that that same decision has played a hand in their well-being!

I doubt either line of thinking is true: one decision rarely determines the struggle or well-being of a child. And, more importantly, my attempts to assign this decision to their emotional states is an indicator of how deeply we believe that we are responsible for both our kids’ pain and joy.

Yes, how we parent matters… a lot. And also… Our kids have their own temperament, outside influences, chemical makeups, societal challenges, and ancestral downloads that contribute to how they walk through this world. We matter and there is also a bigger story, an unfolding of their lives that is separate from us.

 

5. Our role as a mother changes, but it never ends.

I’ve been surprised by how little information there is about mothering adult children. When Everest turned to 18, I thought: We’ve done it! He’s a thriving, well-adjusted young man and he has launched into the world. When he came home for his first break from college, I was bewildered by how different he and our relationship was, and that the task that was being asked of me had radically changed.

Did someone forget to give me that memo?

When I checked in with my best friends who had same age kids, we were all experiencing the same thing (ah, the sweet relief of normalization that only comes from connecting with other mothers). The era of “don’t forget your jacket” parenting was over. In other words, there was no more advice-giving or even gentle suggestions for how to remain safe and healthy. Our kids were officially adults, and they were letting us know, in no uncertain terms, that the relationship had changed.

But that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped needing us. They don’t need advice, and they certainly don’t need our worry. What they need more than anything else is our trust in their capability to be adults in the world.

As I wrote in this blog post, Everest starting making it clear to us when he was about sixteen that, contrary to what my long line of ancestral worriers believed, worry does not equal an expression of love. Whether he was piloting a plane, traveling to Africa, going up in a hot-air balloon, or studying for finals, Everest wanted us to celebrate his joy, join him in his excitement, and, most of all, impart belief in his capacity to make good decisions. .

Mothering in Community: At the Gathering Well 

There are a thousand more thoughts on mothering I could share, but I’ll leave it here for now. Mothering is often the hardest, loneliest, and most joyful thing we do, and all of this is meant to be shared. I’m sure you can see a through-line in the points I’ve made above: when we’re connected and in community, the path of mothering is less painful and more joyful. We’re meant to hear other mother’s stories, and we’re meant to bring our stuck places to a trusted guide.

As such, for the first time ever, I will be offering a brand new group for mothers of children of all ages, from babies to adulthood – a “gathering well” where we will be exploring the two abiding questions for mothers that can spin us into anxiety:

• Are my kids okay?
• Am I a good mother?

Within the safety of a cohort of other mothers, you will receive the comfort and guidance that will allow you to reduce the anxiety of mothering and find more joy.

You will have an opportunity to bring your questions and worries to the power of a safe vessel, where you will find your self-trust and a bigger trust in the unfolding story of your kids’ lives.

We will gather not only to share challenges and stuck places, but also to celebrate milestones and joy. Motherhood is everything to the nth degree, and all of it deserves to be witnessed and held in a loving and safe community: the pain and worry and also the pride and excitement. When the width and depth of the emotions are witnessed, something inside of a mother breathes more deeply, for we’re not seeking answers as much as the felt experience of being held by others and trusting that we’re not alone.

This will be a small, closed group that will form a safe and reliable cohort over nine months. We will be meeting regularly over Zoom, and if you can’t make a live meeting, you can listen to the recording afterwards; listening to other mother’s stories is healing no matter when and how you hear them. There will also be an opportunity to gather in person for a retreat at the end of the nine months.

If you are interested in learning more, including cost and times, please email directly at: [email protected].