The New Motherhood


Hello my dear friends. I hope that all is well and you are enjoying these beautiful summer days. I've recently been in a very pensive mood and have been re-evaluating my life, dreams and expectations. One of the main things that I have come to understand is that there is a new parenting outline, a new motherhood in which we no longer have to "have it all".

I was one of these women who was taught, you can "have it all". The family, the career, the friends, gallery openings on the weekends, trips to beach, romantic evenings every Tuesday with my husband all while writing my second novel. That fact is we really can't "have it all" and frankly I don't know who came up with that idea because really, I don't want to have it all! I have come to realize that its more about creating a balance with the things you love rather then trying to have it all. Not juggling too much or putting so much on your plate that you can't even enjoy life. Because really that's where I was. I was so focused on trying to stay busy and completing so many projects and trying to be a great employee and wife and mother and daughter and friend and writer, that I was losing myself in what I was doing. I was not enjoying life because I was trying to "have it all". Trying to be the kind of mother and parent that I thought I saw other women being. Once I came to this realization I actually sat down and started to prioritize things in my life, what was most important and what I loved. It came pretty easy. Family and friends were top for me. Focusing on being a mother and wife on my own terms, not by what society sets or what ideas I had projected on me. Second was writing and preforming. It is what I love the most and even if only one person reads what I have written, my pen will still flow because this is what gives me joy. And lastly, time for myself, including my health physically, spiritually and emotionally.  I have been in some dark places and know that you have to love yourself before you can love anyone else and trying to be a superwoman and a supermom was wearing me out.

This new motherhood, defining parenting in our own terms, has become such a liberating movement. I can say that I am a modern women, but I still give Donna Reed her props! I like a traditional home but if I want to take my son to a Mumford & Sons concert I can without judgement. And really, isn't that what this new movement is, parenting without judgment. We have acted, for so long in this boxed, cookie cutter pattern because we feel obligated to please other moms or feel inadequate or jealous because we are trying to achieve the "have it all status". But really, no one has it all. There will always be something that someone else does better or they have more money or they are prettier or smarter. We can only control our environment because  at the end of the day, you have to live with the choices that you have made or the ones you have resisted. So here's to the New Motherhood, may we all have  a little less stress and a lot more love and joy.

Peace & Blessings
Malinda xoxoxox

Comments

  1. Very good points. we women are our own enemies sometimes..

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    Replies
    1. Thank you for your comment and I do agree.There is such an underlined competitiveness that so many parents face, but I do believe we can now admit it and that is where change starts.

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