A shift from Self-less to Self-more
Like so many moms, my mom was the definition of a care-taker. She gave her all as a mom, wife, nurse, sister, and daughter. It’s been 15 years since her passing and the impact she left still ripples through in the hearts and lives of people who felt her dynamic love. ‘Selfless’ is a word I’ve been offered over the years to describe her. It was meant for solace and assurance that she was a ‘good’ mom.
We encourage and expect this endless outpouring of care from girls, women, and mothers. For us, it’s the ‘non-threatening’, ‘nonproblematic’ way to be considered heroic. Giving so much of ourselves that we become self-less.
After my mom’s passing, I pored over the idea of how much she sacrificed and I searched for evidence to justify that it was all worth it in the end. She was a woman, a mother, a wife, an immigrant, and a nurse. There was so much weighted goodness tied into her identity. I wondered how I could take life on in a way that would honour her legacy without having to lose myself in it.
Apart from the solid advice to ‘eat lots of fruits and vegetables,’ my mom advised me on multiple occasions, ‘not to change [my] soul for anyone.’ I was barely an adult, and as an art school dreamer with vision and resolve, it hadn’t occurred to me that changing my soul would be something to even consider. It could have been my Hindu-ish upbringing that introduced me to the idea of reincarnation where each soul gets to live through many lifetimes in order to collect lessons and experiences that eventually bring us all to Nirvana - ultimate freedom. Philosophically, that was a concept a girl like me could get behind.
It lets me maintain a reverence for the life I’m living now and also balances my tendencies toward perfectionism and urgency with the humility of not expecting to be able to do ‘it all’ in one lifetime. It keeps me grounded in my human life.
It also contextualizes developmental research that empathizes with how and why we exchange bits of ourselves for social acceptance, for being appropriate, for being tolerable, and for striving to be successful and ‘good’. It leaves room to zoom out and see that subscribing to these ‘good’ things only feigns the promise of order and survival. As we follow these standards actively or passively, we can start to believe that our goodness is not an inherent part of us but instead a currency we earn and only get to keep it there’s evidence that we deserve it based on some external measure. We get so caught up in proving and defending ourselves that we don’t get to actually be ourselves consistently enough to pursue success and freedom in a fuller sense that includes our emotional and mental well-being.
Now, there’s no better way to put this theory of wholeness and authenticity to ‘self’ into practice than to become a mother.
When I became a mom, I couldn’t turn my back on my natural and nurtured inclination to care-take. With a baby, there are immediate physical needs to be met and prioritized which made tending to my emotional and mental well-being less tangible. There was also a widely accepted invisibility to those needs as well. It was quietly encouraged and suggested that I rest when the baby rests by other women who understood the absurdity of the suggestion, but it was not easily facilitated. It’s also important to mention that not all women experience a natural care-taking urge which further alienate them from a sense of self and of being a ‘good’ mom.
With my mom’s advice to ‘not change my soul for anyone’ in mind, I couldn’t let the invisibility of my needs equate to the sudden disappearance of my-self. I was still here! I understood that being a ‘good’ mom requires a lot of things, but it cannot require us to lose our Self and become self-less. It’s no wonder why I hear so many moms say ‘I just want to feel like myself again’.
These pressures and expectations to be less of a self and more of a care-taker for others are already made clear to women and this increases exponentially as a mother. Of course, there are systems in place that convey and maintain this structure, and it’s jarring to realize that so much of it is internalized during that process of trading self-acceptance for social acceptance. I was aware, exhausted, and infuriated by all of it but I was still following along with most of it.
Ultimately, over the years, I’ve had to learn in cycles with ebbs and flows - reincarnations within this lifetime, how to become a mother and care-taker to not just my children but to myself as well.
Many of the teaching principles and research that supports the essential importance of self-care requires the people who are already doing so much, to do more, while the ‘powers that be’ evolve painfully slowly, if at all.
In addition to the absolute necessity of systemic change, and in full recognition of the barriers and inequity even among us, we can initiate changes and fortify from the inside to resource ourselves and each other on the outside.
In the often minuscule moments in-between all that we do, there is empowerment in choosing to take up that space and wedge our way into giving and receiving more and more (AND MORE) of our own care-taking. Shifting the definition of mothering from self-less to self-more. Building, supporting, including, inviting, creating, sharing, giving, asking, expanding ourselves and each other into different ways of being a Whole Self.