Recently, one of my favorite people asked me:
Look at things straight on.
“How are you feeling about Mother’s Day?”
It was an interesting question, partly because I had 2 mothers, and I am a mother myself. It was a thought provoking seed question for a romanticized, social media curated, Hallmark Holiday where we have come to glorify mothers simply because they are mothers, without a lot of honest attention given to the actual relationships we, as mothers, have with our children.
The more salient question, for me, became: How are you feeling about your mothering?
Travel far enough to find yourself.
Before having my daughter, now 28, I was terrified of motherhood. Due to my profound mother wound I engaged in therapy for five years prior to a decision with my husband to have a baby. Before becoming a mother, I was aware that I needed to metabolize all the shadow messages I received from my mothers about motherhood, or risk mothering unconsciously, passing on the tendencies and negative messaging to my child. The truth is, I still did to some extent, as we all do, but I was painfully awake and accountable to it when I did. I worked hard, and still do, not to project inner narratives on to my daughter.
The mother-daughter relationship is complex. As our relationship and the world around us changes, Emma and I are becoming more transparent about the ways in which our emotional lives affect (and have affected) each other. We have become very good platforms for each other’s “process.”
When we look into the mirrors that reflect back the relationships we have with our children, we may be delighted by those things we WANT reflected back to us, simply because they make us, as mothers, feel good about our mothering.
But what about the things we don’t want to own?
What about the things that make us uncomfortable?
Fly high.
Our children will carry that which we fail to clear in our selves. Will I hold my life in my own arms, so that my adult child is free to hold herself in hers? This is the harder work of conscious mothering.
At some point, we begin to understand that the work of mothering is no longer in shaping, but in honoring the shape that has emerged. And, when this shape is given enough space, the relationship re-forms.
Play your own music.
The version of the mother in me that was once needed has made a passage into new territory. A territory where I walk along side my daughter, when invited. This is motherhood without evidence. Why? Because no one applauds restraint. No one marks the moment you don’t intervene. No one sees the way you sit with the urge to reach— and let it pass through your body, instead of into their life. This is a different kind of holding. Not arms around. But space held open. Not guidance given. But trust extended. Not stepping in. But staying available. Gone is the time when love looked like doing. Gone is the time when proximity mattered and I might be able to fix a few things.
Now love looks like allowing. And allowing might feel like disappearing, if we are not careful. But this is where the line bends. This where the portal opens for the passage. Because if you stay— not as the manager, not as the fixer, but as yourself— something else becomes possible. You meet them again. Not as children. Not as extensions of you. But as women offering their own strength, wisdom, and holding right back to you.
Don’t forget to take selfies at concerts.