Hey Mama! Melody here...
What is motherhood to you?
Do you feel lost as a mother?
How can you find yourself again?
How can you learn to love again, when you feel like you have lost the love you have for yourself as a mom?
Motherhood, to me, is a journey of love, laughter, and constant change. Too often the topic of love and how to love isn’t talked about in motherhood. As moms we naturally love our children and have different ways of showing them that love. This type of love is a deep-rooted love, a sense of belonging, a sense of being needed and a sense of self sacrifice. There are so many contributing factors that make motherhood a challenge and often the funny moments, hard moments, and challenging transitioning moments, are what we focus in on.
Motherhood is love. As a mother, you incorporate change, both with your partner and toward your children. Coincidingly losing yourself and loving yourself along the way.
Let’s first look at the facts on how to show love: what are the five love languages and how do we experience them? Have you ever heard of the five love languages?
Gary Chapman wrote the book: The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts, and inside he identifies five categories of love. He discusses how people express love and receive love and how they are identified as the following five ways:
1. Words of Affirmation
2. Acts of Service
3. Receiving Gifts
4. Quality Time
5. Physical Touch
I would like to take another approach to his viewpoint and suggest that in motherhood there could be a sixth-love language. The 6th love language for me would be the qualities or spirit of a mother, as motherhood is described in the dictionary as: “having an inherent sense of worthiness, justness, and goodness that is obvious or unarguable”, how we as mothers show our love too should be more openly discussed.
All the love languages are ways we show love to our partners and our children. In motherhood, though, the qualities and feelings that we inherently receive are what make our love so unconditional.
At times we feel like we have lost who we once were before having children to who we have become, and that person is now unknown to us. Can you relate? Do you feel lost?
We as mothers first must accept that we have these feelings of losing ourselves, relatively speaking, to grow and change and then become that of the mothers we desire to be. It took me many years to understand and change to be happy with myself as a mom. To be a happy mom for my children I used to think that I needed to let go of almost everything that I enjoyed. I felt as if I needed and ultimately did sacrifice my time and efforts to make my children happy. This self-sacrifice and immense guilt of having individual feelings and love for oneself is what inspired me to write this post and dig deeper into how, we as mothers, can inspire each other and learn to grow together from our experiences.
Showing love has always been an easy thing for me, I am a bubbly person, an extrovert and I absolutely will give you a hug (most of the time) or gentle touch on your arm as a gesture of kindness when speaking with you. However, when I became a mom I realized, over time, that the love you have for yourself can slowly become washed away, like a sandcastle on the beach when the tide gently creeps up and up until there is nothing left but a trace of something that once was, that is how I felt over time along my journey. I felt as if I was slowly being washed away. My hobbies started to dissipate, and I was consumed by mom life. I stopped doing things for myself. My every waking moment was my children, and they became my everything. There needs to be a balance and to find that balance we must accept the changes, grow with them, and build up that sandcastle to be stronger, bigger, more versatile, and open to the chance that it too could be washed away and need to be rebuilt over time.
Instead of fighting against the wave that was creeping up to wash me away rather I needed to learn that building a stronger foundation was the key to ensuring the sandcastle does not wash away completely.
When you become a mom, your world stops, and your journey restarts so let’s look at how to incorporate love, through loving yourself and nurturing your passions, back into your journey.
3 Ways to Incorporate love into your motherhood journey:
1. Allow yourself to have feelings but do not let them determine your course of action.
2. Do not be dictated by your feelings and the overwhelming emotions associated with them.
3. Identify your strengths and weaknesses as person, as a mother, as a wife and find the balance of it all. Write these things down and incorporate journaling, self-care, and reflection into your daily habits.
For example, one of my strengths and passions, in terms of everyday life, is spontaneity and when I am home with my 3 boys, I don’t always feel like I am able to tap into it. I can impart that gift to my children, however, there are times when I need structure, balance, routine, and mentorship. I need to restructure the foundations of motherhood so that they can sustain the random changing motions approaching. How? By pursuing what makes me a happier and thriving mom, alongside allowing myself time to grow with my children, I can not only survive the constant ripple effect of the waves approaching but learn what needs to be done better or changed to thrive on my journey forward.
What can you do to find yourself and how can you love yourself, when you feel lost, as a mother?
1. Be intentional about your expectations. Think about what makes you better as a person (individually) – strive for it – for example, if organizing your house brings a benefit to you for your functionality as a parent then plan and take action on a regular basis to complete the plan, this will benefit you as well as your family as a collective. If showering makes you feel better, but you don’t have the time in the morning, get up earlier, or be open to the new showering time of once the kids are in bed. Whichever option you need to do to feel better for you, be intentional about what you need to do to make that change a success.
2. Take a break – think and start small – a few minutes alone (even if you must sit in your driveway or at a local coffee shop with headphones in). Upon doing this on a regular basis you should be able to think more clearly, feel more recharged and feel happier knowing that you can look at your personal goals, setting a target to move towards.
3. Stop comparing to others, stop allowing negative commentary into your life and speak success into your day.
Every mom I have spoken to is different and parents differently, but we do have one similar commonality, we are moms, and we can learn and share how we do things as such. I had an individual, whom I loved deeply, tell me I wasn’t maternal. They told me that it just didn’t come naturally to me like it did to them or other moms. I think this really cut deep into my heart and soul. I started to believe it and I felt like I was constantly battling this inner battle with myself and those words. Everything I would do did not seem perfect enough and I felt like it really took a lot of time (years) as a mother, especially now as a mom of three and solo parenting them, to truly believe in myself and what I am capable of as a mom. I have heard the saying that you are what you think you are. If you do not think you can do something you likely wont work towards and achieve the goal of completing that thing. An athlete can train and train and train but if they do not take the necessary steps to prepare, the steps needed to attain and mentally believe they will do it, their dream will become simply unattainable, or they will never get exactly what they want out of their goals. In motherhood you too need to prepare both mentally and physically and take the appropriate steps to build, progress and succeed. You oversee your successes. Take authority over your life and over your family’s life by believing in yourself enough to build up that sandcastle!
4. Go Outside – The benefits of going outside and getting fresh air include…air cleans your lungs, boosts your mood, lowers your heart rate, increases energy levels, improves digestion and more importantly a serotonin release (the amount of oxygen you have in your blood increases and this in turn promotes a sense of happiness and well being). All of these benefits leave you feeling better, more relaxed, and more refreshed! So, get out into the fresh air and breathe it into your lungs Mama!
Thank you for reading: Thrive Mama Thrive Blog! Check out my other blog posts for more motherhood stories, mom tips, parenting advice, inspiration & encouragement.
I hope this helps you along your journey as a mother and more importantly as the beautiful, talented, and inspiring human being you are!
🖤 - 𝓜𝓮𝓵𝓸𝓭𝔂 𝓢𝓽𝓸𝓷𝓮