Motherhood and Martyrdom Are Not Mutually Exclusive

Fertile Ground for Blooming Flowers 

We are laying the “my mother sacrificed everything for me” fairytale to rest and replacing it with “my mother modeled the fullness of love” moving forward. Our energy informs our identity and for mothers that can sometimes mean that we believe who we must be in order to be considered “good” is hogtied to the struggle. If our mothering doesn’t energetically live at self-denial are we even doing it right? What will people think if we don’t give our babies everything we have? What about the mom guilt that creeps in to rob us of our joy when something exclusively serves our pleasure?

What kind of world are we preparing our children to live in when we model motherhood as self-sacrifice? Are we lifting them up on our shoulders or are we inadvertently teaching them to survive a life full of settling? Are we accidentally teaching them to regard partners as pseudo-mothers instead of equals? Are we perpetuating the internalized repression we so desperately want to shed? When mothers are free, children get to see what freedom looks like and then believe they are supposed to have it too. Freedom is the standard for children with free mothers. 

Free mothering is not an open pass to run off into the sunset with Jidenna (unless it is, in which case, have fun! Leave them kids with a loving caretaker and some dinner money. See you when you get back!), it is an Intention makeover. Let’s let go of our harmfully romanticized attachment to sacrifice and place more value on our conscious commitment to mothering well. 

Motherhood, Not Martyrdom

We do things to uplift, expand, and inspire our children because we are committed to laying a beautiful foundation for them. We are committed to making ourselves into the fertile ground from which flowers can grow and bloom. We are committed to allowing our children to know us as dynamic and layered human beings and trusting that they will love themselves and others in their fullness as a result. 

Going forward, we love ourselves well as a way to fertilize rich soil and give freely from a place of abundance. Limitless love flows freely within us, for us, and from us. We exist in full freedom, choose to pour from a full cup, and teach our children to do the same. So anyway, who’s watching ARRAY’s “In Our Mother’s Gardens?” on Netflix?