I allow the love from my own heart to wash through me, and cleanse and heal every part of my body and emotions.
I’ve written a lot about self-care and compassion, especially in terms of parenting. I’ve written about it back when I used facebook. I’ve written about it on this blog, and in the newsletter I used to write for a local mothers club. The expectations of motherhood, both personal and societal, are impossible to meet. There’s always more to do. And there is always so much you aren’t doing, or can’t do, for one reason or another. It’s so much easier to see this obvious truth for others. It’s much harder to forgive these limitations in ourselves. We could have our children in sports for physical health and teamwork, music lessons for cultural and creative developments, tutoring for academic success, gymnastics or karate for coordination, some kind of scouts for social skills and self-esteem, and they are solidly booked all week. Booked…Oh, wait! We’ve got to get them into bookclub! We can surely squeeze that into a morning slot so they can do that too, right? Ok, NOW they are solidly booked, but that’s ok because we have the weekend! Except this is when we attend the games of whatever sport our child is playing, and recitals for their music programs. And somehow, maybe, we also cram in chores, church, family visits, school projects, and the occasional visit to a museum, or campground. And at the end of every exhausting day, we’d know that we were still failing, because research suggests children are getting burnt out by this practice of leaving no extracurricular stone unturned. We are failing because our children have no time to play, which is now a documented and dangerous truth about modern childhood. We are not finding the time to sit and chat about the little things, so studies suggest our kids may not tell us about the big things either. In our haste to take photos to capture the memories, we are failing to live them, and someday all the little fingerprints will be cleaned off of our furniture, never to return, and we will miss this time, having never felt like we truly lived it. But if we don’t sign them up for all the classes, and do all the things, how will little Dahlia get the soccer scholarship? What if, because he never took piano lessons, Jayden never learns he has a gift? What if the things I’m not doing are the very things that would make the big difference, and steer my kids towards a happy and successful life? Is the answer that I’ll never know, so I don’t have to worry about it? Alternatively, what if I did decide to create this kind of jammed-packed life for my kids, and it destroys our family? This is a distinct possibility, as it would mean a dangerous shortage of down-time that I don’t think any of our introverts could withstand for long. So, it is impossible to do all the things, and it is impossible to know the results of not doing all the things. What can I do? I guess I can just be the mom friend that I need, and acknowledge this when I start to worry about everything my kids aren’t doing. I can say to myself, “They will only remember what you did do. Be gentle with yourself. You are a good mom.”