Category: Fulfillment

Motherhood shouldn’t just be a drudgery. Find fulfillment in your most important calling–mother.

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Fulfillment

February from the archives: A Mother’s Love

With five years of blogging on fulfillment in motherhood, I have a bunch of posts I’d like to revisit. I’m running a few February favorites over the next few days. This post from 2011 is, I think, my favorite February fulfillment . . . fulmination. Say that five times fast.

It’s been just over five years since I became a mother. And I discovered that being a mom was hard.

I knew, intellectually, that being a mother was a lot of work. But I had no idea how emotionally difficult a newborn could be. I felt like I had to have every priority and desire wrested and wrenched from me. (And, frankly, sometimes it does still feel that way.)

I was understimulated and overwhelmed, always tired, and never able to get the real rest that I needed.

And now? I have two other kids in addition to my baby. I almost feel as though I’ve been through the wringer and come out the other side—because, I finally realize, I do enjoy being a mother.

For the last five years, whenever a mother concludes the usual list of complaints with “but it’s worth it,” I mentally raised an eyebrow. And yeah, I still do that most of the time. There are still times—lots of them—where I am completely fed up and ready to quit. But slowly I’m finding myself remembering more of those moments where I do feel it’s worth it.

When Hayden was born, just being a mother was so hard for me, I wasn’t sure I could have another (and the epidural complications didn’t help). After Rebecca’s birth, I thought I could have another in due time. But before that “due time” was up, I had Rachel—and with her, every little moment I think, “This can’t be the last time I have a baby to snuggle or see these milestones or love a child of my own.”

A lot of the bitterness of the experience of becoming a mother has faded, and looking back, I know how easy I had it. I realized at the time that Hayden wasn’t a very difficult baby, and my struggles were mostly my own, and of course, I did love him very much. On the other hand, Rachel was my most difficult baby early on (she’s a perfectly happy child now)—and maybe that’s why I appreciate this phase more now.

Maybe it’s just that the older your kids get, the more you appreciate the little moments—and the moments they’re little. Almost every day, one of the kids does something remarkable, adorable, amazing, intelligent and/or kind. The milestones come faster and faster—and then I carry Rachel to her room for a nap, and I’m alternately amazed at how huge she’s getting and how tiny she still is.

I don’t know if I’ve done the feeling justice, but I feel like I appreciate and enjoy being a mother more now than I ever have. So this Valentine’s Day, I’m celebrating a mother’s love by loving motherhood.

How would you write a tribute to mother’s love for Valentine’s Day?

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Kids/Parenting Fulfillment

Mom’s love does a child’s brain good!

My sister came across this article on cognitive development and just new I’d love it. She’s right, because child psychiatrists and neuroscientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that:

School-age children whose mothers nurtured them early in life have brains with a larger hippocampus, a key structure important to learning, memory and response to stress.

Even in a very limited setting—all the nurturing was done at the lab, and they didn’t follow the parents and children home—they were able to observe the difference between children whose parents supported them and those who didn’t:

As part of the initial study, the children were closely observed and videotaped interacting with a parent, almost always a mother, as the parent was completing a required task, and the child was asked to wait to open an attractive gift. How much or how little the parent was able to support and nurture the child in this stressful circumstance — which was designed to approximate the stresses of daily parenting — was evaluated by raters who knew nothing about the child’s health or the parent’s temperament.

“It’s very objective,” says Luby, professor of child psychiatry. “Whether a parent was considered a nurturer was not based on that parent’s own self-assessment. Rather, it was based on their behavior and the extent to which they nurtured their child under these challenging conditions.”

The difference? An almost 10% in the size of the hippocampus.

That’s enough to make me worried I’m not nurturing enough 😉 .

What do you think? What other influences do moms have on minds?

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Faith

The end of a short era

When I was called as Primary (children’s Sunday school) president in October 2010, I met with the outgoing president. She was very sad to be leaving Primary.

I vowed (silently) that that wouldn’t be me. I didn’t want a big calling right then, with my husband in the bishopric and my kids being 4, 2, and 5 months and already having to struggle through Sunday meetings with little to no help because of Ryan’s responsibilities—and I was pretty stunned to be working in Primary. For perspective, my mom has had a lot of “big” callings on the ward (local) and stake (larger area, cf. diocese) level—but she never had a calling in Primary until a couple years ago. We didn’t do Primary: we did Young Women (12-18 year olds) and Relief Society (adults). Plus, couldn’t I get away from my kids for two hours a week???

Apparently, I was wrong—on all counts. Yesterday I was officially released. It was just time, apparently. The Lord had decided I was finished.

When the Bishop told me last week that I would be released this week, I was pretty shocked—surprised to be released, and surprised at how it felt to know it was coming to an end.

I wanted to stay in Primary. I wanted to be there for the funny things my children say—and they say a lot. I wanted to be there to watch all the kids learn and grow, to see the new 3-year-olds discover the fun of Primary, to stanch the constant turnover in the 30+ positions under our purview. (Ha. This never happens. We did what we could to turn over a full staff.)

When I thought about it this week, I wanted to cry. I expected to on Sunday (yesterday). I didn’t even feel the relief until half an hour before church. When Ryan called my name to stand for my vote of thanks (the custom when releasing people from positions of responsibility in the church), he expected me to cry. (I held it together just fine.)

It wasn’t a long time, but it felt like the end an era to me. It won’t be the same to go to church and not get to see my older two participating in their lessons. And I will miss it. I will miss them—most of all, my own children.

What do you know? I did love Primary.

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Fulfillment

Every! Single! Minute!

I think every mom has had a “veteran” mom—usually an empty nester, with grandkids—pat her on the hand and command her to cherish these times, lament how much they miss the dirty handprints on the windows they just washed, and/or wax nostalgic on how wonderful it was to wake up every two hours with an infant. (Only slightly exaggerating on the last one.)

To which moms in the throes of motherhood pretty much think, “REALLY?!?!”

I like to think that memory has glossed over how difficult raising children is—I’m just shy of six years in with my first, and there are already many difficult periods in our lives that have been covered with the benignant mists of time.

Thank heaven. Today is hard enough as it is; can you imagine if all the past trials we’ve endured came crashing down on us whenever we thought about them?

So maybe one day, I’ll be able to look back and say that I enjoyed it—overall. I hope I never forget how hard it was—or at the very least, that it was hard. Because it is hard and I’m not going to pretend like it’s not.

But I think Glennon at Momastery said it much better:

I think parenting young children (and old ones, I’ve heard) is a little like climbing Mount Everest. Brave, adventurous souls try it because they’ve heard there’s magic in the climb. They try because they believe that finishing, or even attempting the climb are impressive accomplishments. They try because during the climb, if they allow themselves to pause and lift their eyes and minds from the pain and drudgery, the views are breathtaking. They try because even though it hurts and it’s hard, there are moments that make it worth the hard. These moments are so intense and unique that many people who reach the top start planning, almost immediately, to climb again. Even though any climber will tell you that  most of the climb is treacherous, exhausting, killer. That they literally cried most of the way up.

And so I think that if there were people stationed, say, every thirty feet along Mount Everest yelling to the climbers – “ARE YOU ENJOYING YOURSELF!? IF NOT, YOU SHOULD BE! ONE DAY YOU’LL BE SORRY YOU DIDN’T!” TRUST US!! IT’LL BE OVER TOO SOON! CARPE DIEM!”  – those well-meaning, nostalgic cheerleaders might be physically thrown from the mountain.

If you have somehow missed “Don’t Carpe Diem,” you have to fix that. Seriously. Now. If you have ever been tempted to bodily harm a well-meaning old lady who tells you how she’d give anything to have her little babies back (or maybe just sic your babies on her), if you’ve ever struggled with perspective and wondering how, exactly, changing so many diapers was suppose to be the ennobling, important calling you’re searching for, if you just need to be reminded that motherhood is worth it—go read it.

Photo by Ed Yourdon

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Fulfillment Faith

Remember Thanksgiving

At Thanksgiving (in America), we remember our many blessings. Usually, we focus on big ones: family, freedom, upcoming books. But remembering the little things is important too, and not just on an annual day of thanks.

In this year’s General Relief Society Meeting, Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf spoke about things that we need to remember, using the image of a forget-me-not flower as a symbol. One of the things we need to remember, he says, is to focus on the wonderful parts of our life:

The lesson here is that if we spend our days waiting for fabulous roses, we could miss the beauty and wonder of the tiny forget-me-nots that are all around us.

This is not to say that we should abandon hope or temper our goals. Never stop striving for the best that is within you. Never stop hoping for all of the righteous desires of your heart. But don’t close your eyes and hearts to the simple and elegant beauties of each day’s ordinary moments that make up a rich, well-lived life.

The happiest people I know are not those who find their golden ticket; they are those who, while in pursuit of worthy goals, discover and treasure the beauty and sweetness of the everyday moments. They are the ones who, thread by daily thread, weave a tapestry of gratitude and wonder throughout their lives. These are they who are truly happy.

What do you think? How do you forget not the beauty and sweetness of today?

Photo by KH1234567890

Categories
Fulfillment

Moms are worth more than a paycheck

Last month, I received a PR email about an interesting study of working and stay-at-home moms. I found the results a lot more interesting than the underlying attitude. First, they had women identify themselves as “career-oriented,” and then tell whether they were working or staying at home now.

Indeed, our survey found widespread work/life disconnection: Women want one arrangement, but settle for another. Fifty-five percent of career-oriented stay-at-home moms we surveyed, for instance, would prefer to be working now. Equally troubling, 71 percent of mothers surveyed equate work with something done only to pick up a paycheck.
[Working moms would] like to scale back during preschool years. We discovered strong feelings about these early bonding years with about half of career-oriented moms ranking staying home with preschool children as desirable. [Hooray!] Some 42 percent of career-oriented moms, for example, said that allowing their children to be cared for by professionals did not meet their definition of being a good mother. Part of the issue is that moms are ambivalent about child-care centers: their cost, their quality and the enduring implication that “someone else” is raising their children. . . .

Yes, working moms (51 percent) feel guilty about not spending enough time with their kids. And stay-at-home moms (55 percent) worry about not making a contribution to the family finances.

The study also looked at other ways mothers are unhappy with our lives. Slightly less than half of all mothers say that they are their own worst critics. I certainly feel the most pressure to perform from me. Another prevalent concern: the house. It’s a wreck, whether you’re working or not—55% of working mothers and 44% of stay-at-home mothers frequently feel bad about how their house looks—we’re very worried that other people are judging our homes (42% of working moms & 35% of SAHMs say they worry about this).

Very interesting—and it makes me feel a lot better about myself, if not my house 😉 .

But there’s a very troubling message underneath all this. The article about the study is written for working moms (but 71% of these moms claim only to be working for the paycheck). The message in the study’s conclusion is that you should put off having children (until after college & age 25, so not forever) so you can make as much as possible. But that isn’t the worst part—that comes in the underlying assumption.

Are we really only worth what we make? I don’t buy it, and I don’t think even career-oriented moms should buy into that mentality. There are so many careers out there that have far more influence in the world than the pay suggests, and there are lots of careers with great pay and benefits that just aren’t for everyone. Just like stay-at-home moms, career-oriented moms (career- and anything-else oriented people!) have to find a definition of themselves that’s more than the number of figures before the decimal point.

What do you think?