Cultivating Seeds

Perhaps the most difficult part of motherhood is not necessarily in the balance of meeting the emotional and physical needs of her family - of being the very core of their well-being, but in the real truth that their approval and contentment is what she needs to feel centered herself. More mothers flounder from feeling overwhelmed not from physical work, errands, or even working motherhood, but from vying for the relief, pleasure, elation and peace it is to know that everyone is content and there is happiness throughout. She measures herself by this as men measure themselves in the workplace; they are unequivocally tied together. It is wisdom and insight to recognize that this innate need to please can also limit the ability of family members to navigate disappointment, own responsibility and develop their own thoughts and actions toward cultivating personal contentment.

For a mother, the most challenging teaching point is to allow the family the rights to their own emotions and to wisely stand firm and gracious without feeling unsettled in the process. We are, by nature, fixers in every aspect. To nurture their emotional development by letting go of solving everything would ease the difficulty in maintaining such precarious, reciprocal balance. Lifting the burden of exercising their collective choices and attitudes would give them time, leave, experience and opportunity to do it for themselves. Would that we could understand that serving our families and the joy this absolutely brings, also includes gifting them with this latitude as well.

Measurements of motherhood, indeed.

- This Carman Girl