I Am a Mother
by Nicole Mann • Melville, NY

Life knocks the wind out of everybody at one point or another. As the mother of a two-year-old, I can easily relate to how lonely, isolating, boring and downright miserable motherhood can be. What other situation requires that you stick to the same task and care for the same person, do the same thing for an entire day (not just an eight-hour workday!) without reprieve? Day after day! Most of the mothers I know can easily relate to these feelings. We feel powerless, many of us because we are no longer earning a living or having a career. We feel afraid of being dependent on our partners. We feel ugly because our bodies have changed. And mostly, we feel lonely because we often have no other adult person to talk to for eight hours or more a day.

I know that all of us suffer, each in our own difficult situations. We need plenty of compassion and forgiveness, and yet we must also hold each other and ourselves accountable for our thoughts and actions, even during our suffering. As mothers, we are in a position of tremendous power, whether or not we realize this. We are our children’s means of survival, growth, and even evolution. Our children need us to be sane, real, tangible, energized and balanced. If we try to play SuperMom or Super- Woman, gleaning our worth from external praise, we won’t do the work of honoring and humbling ourselves to accept our feelings, weaknesses and even failures– without blame or condemnation. Motherhood is a time for self-acceptance, not self-rejection or self-excusing.

It is often difficult to accept ourselves where we are in life. Sometimes it’s easier to play the victim and place the blame on others for our feelings or circumstances. Maybe we are ashamed to tell our neighbors that we don’t always like being a mother, or that our partner isn’t helping out and we have to do all the work ourselves. We don’t want to embarrass ourselves and confess that we’re struggling financially and have maxed out our credit cards "keeping up with the Jones’."

Even worse, we might think we’re not good mothers. We might feel unworthy of the gift of this new life. Rather than tell ourselves and each other the truth, we dress our children (and ourselves) in designer clothes and put on airs at our Mommy and Me club, pretending that all is just rosy. Then when we get home to our lonely house, we feel depressed– for some of us, even suicidal. With no one else to talk to, we begin to tell ourselves all sorts of lies, and believe them. Maybe we neglect our children, yell at them or even physically abuse them. During all of it, we don’t share our thoughts and experiences for fear of what others may think of us.

The last two years of my life (the first years of being a mother) have held many unexpected challenges for me. I have suffered from depression and could easily have been diagnosed with Post Partum Depression. But for me, attitude is more important than brain chemistry.

It takes great courage and a high degree of honesty and self love to acknowledge our unhappiness. We also have to take responsibility for the fact that we are the ones ultimately responsible for creating a life that will sustain us spiritually and emotionally. It takes even greater strength to tell someone else how we really feel.

Of course it helps if we have loving partners and supportive families. Our communities are not as close as they once were, and that is a loss. It also helps if we have financial security, yet our pursuit of material wealth weakens us in some ways. However, all the external support systems cannot help if we do not draw on our internal resources in times of crisis. It is our authentic power and our connection with God that must be relied on. Then we have the strength to tell the truth to others and get the help and support we need. Women, from the beginnings of time, have had to face unbearable challenges and hardships in motherhood. Maybe that is what the pain of birth prepares us for– disappointment, grief– joy! The deep capacity for all of these experiences is what makes us good mothers, capable of being a soft safe place for our children– maybe the only one they have found on a given day. If we experience all of our feelings authentically, then we can be the strong, healthy, mentally and emotionally sound mothers that fight alongside our children.

As mothers, we want to preserve our children’s spirits, minds, hearts and bodies as best we can. That means that we must first preserve our own. It is not a choice: We must drop our pride, our illusions and our fear and ask Spirit to transform us into the mothers we were meant to be.

I have compassion for every mother (including myself) who betrays her children and herself by mistreating them in times of acute stress and fatigue. I am a mother. My love for my children– biological, spiritual or communal– is unconditional. Whatever I do or say to them, I will hold myself accountable. We are not just brain chemistry that we have no control over– we are powerful, eternal divine spirits. We are mothers. Let’s support each other on this journey.

Nicole Mann is a mother, Reiki Master Candidate at The Center of Living Light, and child care worker. Reach her at (631) 766-2392.