If you’ve got this far, if you’ve got past THAT title then I am taking that as consent that we are going in deep here. Balls deep. Because these are the conversations that I am here for. The ones that make you want to look away because part of you is screaming, you can’t say that shit and another part, often a much smaller part is saying, but it feels sooooo familiar…
This year, I am glad to tell you that I am celebrating Mother’s Day. I am celebrating my wonderful clients who teach me so much and I am celebrating me. A mother who has lost, a mother who has loved and a mother who is learning to love a tiny version of me who never really knew the mother’s love plastered on cards and cakes one Sunday every year.
And whilst I'm not going into the specifics of how I've got here. Of counselling, breathwork, meditation and all sorts of healing... What I am going to say is that I have realised that none of us really know the love that we see paraded around on Mother’s Day. Because it doesn’t really exist. And yet, this day, this lie has sold me a fantasy time and time again. First as a young child who felt like she was missing out and then as a young mother who felt like she was failing.
Screaming STOP at the top of your lungs, missing pick up because a meeting ran late or struggling through grief and illness and pain all whilst plastering on your best fake smile – that doesn’t quite cut it – that’s a mother’s love. Doesn’t sell a lot of cake though.
So this is the question I pose to you as you prepare to celebrate your own mother this year (if
that is available to you.) Who are your celebrations really for? If it is for your mum and she has been the best mum in the world, remember that she did that on the bad days, not just the good days. And if she has been the best mum in the world (which I am sure she has) then take a moment to honour those bad days and allow yourself the grace of bad days too. Break the cycle of impossible standards that we hold mothers to. Not just on Mother’s Day, but all year round. Go as easy on yourself as you go on your mum and love yourself like you love your mum. With that I encourage you to accept the imperfections you share with her and share the imperfections you’ve brought to the table all on your own. I want mothers to stop hiding the messy bits. The house, the hair, the whole shebang. Life is a beautiful patchwork and sometimes the threads are frayed. Allow it to bring texture rather than letting the whole thing unravel.
That’s why I have created a new offering. I’ve been gestating in my messy, ugly healing. What I have come to realise is that, like a patchwork none of our stories exist in seclusion. The story of our birth belongs to our mothers and then we go forth to make new stories that belong to our children. Each patch within a patchwork is weaved from a number of threads and often those threads are found in a repeating fabric elsewhere. But you can isolate a patch. You can isolate a story. A beginning, a middle and an end.
That is what my newest package, Birth Reflections, offers. An invitation to contain your birth story whilst acknowledging all of the threads that connect it to the other stories in your beautiful and unique patchwork life.
This Mother's Day, that is my gift to the world.
You can read all about it here.
Thank you for being here. Let me know your thoughts. You know I love a DM...
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