I have been reflecting on a blog post that I recently read in the context of the Buddhist philosophy of Thich Nhat Hanh. Hanh writes that:
“So
in taking care of yourself, you take good care of your beloved one.
Self-love is the foundation for your capacity to love the other
person. If you don't take good care of yourself, if you are not
happy, if you are not peaceful, you cannot make the other person
happy. You cannot help the other person; you cannot love. Your
capacity for loving another person depends entirely on your capacity
for loving yourself, for taking care of yourself”
This applies so deeply to motherhood
where the insistence upon martyrdom is still strong. I was recently
reading a blog post by a mother who was reflecting upon the
challenges of parenting and attempting to cast the struggle as a duty
and, ultimately, a blessing. The writer suggests that being a mother
is the greatest and most wonderful thing, and that nothing in her
life will ever be better than being constantly needed. She suggests
that when her children leave her life will be empty and meaningless. You can find the entire article HERE.
One of the statements in the article
that disturbed me greatly reads as follows:
“The sooner I can
accept that being Mommy means that I never go off the clock, the
sooner I can find peace in this crazy stage of life. That
‘Mommy’ is my duty, privilege and honor. I am ready to
be there when somebody needs me, all day and all night. Mommy
means I just put the baby back down after her 4am feeding when
a 3-year-old has a nightmare. Mommy means I am surviving
on coffee and toddler leftovers. Mommy means my husband
and I haven’t had a real conversation in weeks. Mommy means I
put others’ needs before my own, without a thought.
Mommy means that my body is full of aches and my heart is full of
love.”
In the context of Thich Nhat Hanh's
theory of the essential practice of self-love, the above paragraph
hints at nothing less than self-abuse. No one should be living a life
where they “never go off the clock.” Even mothers should be able
to carve out time alone when someone else is caring for their
children and they are pursuing their own interests. If you are
“surviving on coffee and toddler leftovers” then you are not
nourishing your own body with healthy food, and that can only mean
depletion and sickness down the road. If you are not talking to your
husband then your relationship will suffer greatly. As co-parents it
is essential that you maintain your relationship, even in the chaos
of a house full of children. Your marriage is the foundation upon
which your family rests and if your marriage suffers so will your
children. Especially terrifying is the author's contention that
“Mommy means I put others' needs before my own, without a thought.”
This is the most damaging and persistent myth out there about
parenthood and motherhood in particular. If, as a mother, you never
put your own needs first, if you neglect your own health and
well-being in favour of the health and well-being of those around
you, eventually everyone will suffer. Thich Nhat Hanh so wisely says
that you must take care of yourself in order to have the capacity to
care for others. Love comes from a place of wellness, not a place of
depletion. If you are exhausted, if you are ignoring the desperate
plea of your own mind and body for nourishment and healing, then you
will grind yourself down to a tiny nub and you will have nothing left
to give of yourself.
The author of the blog post also
talks about motherhood as being the sole purpose of her life. She
states that being needed is what gives her value as a human being:
“I am sure there
will come a day when no one needs me. My babies will all be
long gone and consumed with their own lives. I may sit alone in
some assisted living facility watching my body fade away. No
one will need me then. I may even be a burden. Sure, they
will come visit, but my arms will no longer be their home. My
kisses no longer their cure. There will be no more tiny boots
to wipe the slush from or seat belts to be buckled. I will have
read my last bedtime story, 7 times in a row. I will no longer
enforce time outs. There will be no more bags to pack and
unpack or snack cups to fill. I am sure my heart will yearn to
hear those tiny voices calling out to me, “Mommy, somebody needs
you!”
I would like to challenge this
vision of the useless old person in a care home. While I will be the
first to admit that parenthood is a deeply important job, and while I
will agree with the sentiment that there is worth in being a
caregiver for small children, I must emphatically disagree with the
notion that a woman has no other source of worth. Yes, children will
grow up and your role in their lives will change. And while you may
not have the power to heal them like you once did I like to hope that your influence will still be valued even as an old woman. I hope my son
and I will maintain a relationship that comes to be more and more one
of equals. We will, one day, sit together as two adults who might
help each other see the world in new ways. As he gains independence
it will be important for him to need me less in some ways, but I hope
that he will choose to love me still, even when he is long past the
point of needing me to bandage his knees and sing him to sleep. I
also hope that I will find other ways to express my worth and value
to society. There are so many other places that a woman can engage
with the world in powerful and meaningful ways. If your children
don't need you in the intensive way they did when they were small
then certainly someone else in the world does. We have so many
opportunities to fight for social justice, to be a voice for the
voiceless, to get involved in our families and communities and the
structures of our globalized world and help those who are less
fortunate. I hope that sitting in your wheelchair at the end of your
life thinking that your value ended when your children moved out is
not an inevitability. And to assume that no one will “need you”
in your advanced age is narrow-minded and ageist. We need our elders.
We need their wisdom and the accrued knowledge of their advanced
years. We need them to continue to tell their stories to the younger
generations so we can all have a sense of our heritage and history.
I can see what this author was
trying to achieve. She wants to show the reader the beauty in
motherhood. She also wants to vindicate her exhaustion by situating
herself as a martyr. But I must argue that this position is damaging.
If we encourage women to lose themselves to motherhood, if we keep
insisting that martyrdom to our children is the ideal, and the
highest work that we can do, then we will continue to condemn mothers
and parents in general to a place of insecurity, depletion, and
depression. It's important to find joy in the process of motherhood
and I appreciate that this author was attempting to do just that. She
wants to see beauty in the night-time feedings and the muddy boots.
That's a wonderful exercise in mindfulness. But at the same time it
is dangerous to live through your children and find worth only by
subsuming yourself into their needs. As parents we must live for
ourselves as well, feed ourselves, feed our souls and find modes of
expression outside of parenthood so that we can model self-care for
our children. This is the greatest gift we can give them, and it can
only be achieved by sometimes putting ourselves first.
