Navigating Motherhood

Copyright © Laura Elizabeth

First published in Australia in 2022

by Maven Press

Roleystone WA 6111

Cover Design by Adrianna Grosso

Edited by Jade Bell

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles

and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be vaild. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

National Library of Australia Catalogue-in-Publication data:

Navigatinig Motherhood: A Practical Guide For Every Day Mums/Laura Elizabeth

ISBN: 978-0-6456356-0-7

(Paperback)

ISBN: 978-0-6456356-1-4

(Ebook)

In unity, we honour and pay our respects to the custodians of Whadjuk Noongar Boodjar country, the lands on which this book was first seeded.

We pay our respects to the Elders both past and present and to those emerging.

The stories within these pages may contain sensitive content and/or memories of loved ones who have passed on, which may activate a response within you.

Please read with awareness and care.

I see you, Mama. All you, Mamas. The single mamas, the married mamas, the working mums and the stay-at-home mums, the mamas looking after the children with special needs, and the mamas whose partners are more like children than husbands.

No matter your age, your background or the level of support you do or don’t have, we’re all navigating the same challenges, learning how to honour and take care of ourselves while being responsible for raising our babes.

Is it pretty easy to forget about ourselves in all this, right? Whether it’s the crying baby, teenagers going through hardship, disagreements with the father on parenting styles or just the very talkative five-year-old who you swear doesn’t breathe between the constant chattering and stories that lead nowhere. So where is the space for us in all of that?

They say motherhood is the most challenging and rewarding ‘job’ you’ll ever do. And it is. Because every day, every phase and every year of their life, we’re met with new challenges. Add extra siblings, issues with your partner or a troublesome mother-in-law to the equation, and suddenly you‘’re experiencing new dynamics and challenges. Then, just when you think you got it all figured out? It all suddenly changes.

Personally, I think the key to navigating Motherhood, isn’t about trying not to lose ourselves but learning how to reinvent ourselves—learning how to be the most loving, kind and understanding mother to ourselves first. And Learning that amongst it all, you are the one that needs and deserves the most compassion from yourself.

I also think it’s helpful to realise we are not alone in our struggles. Billions of women before us and billions of women after us will experience the exact same emotions, worries, situations and concerns. There is no shame in our experiences, and only healing and wisdom are to be gained by sharing them. It’s time to realise you are not alone, Mama, and regardless of how ‘perfect’ you try to be, you can’t control another’s journey, especially our children’s.

It’s all a part of the journey. But how much easier would that journey be if we could just invite in some self-acceptance, self-love and self-nurturance when we need it the most? How much easier will we move through these inevitable challenges if we surrender to the flow and choose ease and grace over striving for perfection or believing we should be doing better?

What if it was all perfect at this moment, regardless of how challenging it is? How would you feel knowing every single one of these challenges is just a moment in time and necessary for the moments of joy to occur?

Because let’s be honest, those moments of joy, like a baby’s first smile, the first time they hug you cuddled up on the couch relaxing with a movie. The excitement on their face at Christmas or simply the words ‘I love you, Mum,’ is all we need to completely dissolve and forget the hard days.

Being a mother is so easy until you have kids! At least it was for me. I judgementally watched mothers and their children, commentating in my head. I had grand ideas about what I would and wouldn’t do, even more so, what my kids would and wouldn’t do when I became a mother. I now laugh at the expense of my naïve younger self.

Since becoming a mother at twenty-three and raising a son with multiple diagnoses prone to dysregulation, plus having a daughter who is a living, breathing clone of myself, I’ve struggled with all the opinions. All the self-judgement and self-doubt, the mistakes, guilt, criticism, and the unrelenting drive to protect my babes and defend them at any cost gave me many fears and subsequent beliefs that impacted me and my relationship with my kids, myself, and others.

I quickly learned that I was not the mother to my kids that I wanted to be or that they needed me to be, and I commenced my own healing journey. From my own experience and the wisdom I’ve acquired over years of working with many other women, some fundamental messages constantly arise when navigating motherhood. It is an honour to share these here.

Self-care is more than...

Pampering yourself and surface-level pep-ups are fantastic. Do you love getting your hair done? You go, girl! Enjoy a pedicure? Yes! Massage? Oh, boy, take my money.

But these surface-level pep-ups won’t cut it if you’re in a chronic state of stress.

Navigating returning to work or maintaining a home or both, plus sleep deprivation, unmet needs, lack of support, and being needed day and night, can add to the stress. Our nervous system isn’t designed to be activated with so many demands and so little restoration for such long periods. When this happens, the self-care quickly turns into self-soothing or self-preserving, and the behaviours that result indicate our primal stress responses, fight, flight or freeze.

Fight mode mum might be reactive, snappy and yelling a lot. Flight mode mum, my flavour of a stress response, copes by trying to control things or distract themselves from the stressors. She rushes, always keeps busy, micromanages, and overthinks. Freeze mode mum manages by dissociating or numbing. They might spend hours upon hours scrolling social media, binge-watching television, or isolating themselves in any way they can.

Aside from these inherent behaviours, sleep is likely hindered, and appetite is likely impacted by craving unhealthy foods, insatiable hunger or lack of appetite. You’ll find your sex drive on one end of the extreme, either non-existent or ravenous. If you relate to any of this, fluffy self-care is like using a bandaid to reattach an amputated leg. Genuine self-care looks like setting boundaries, saying no to things that don’t sit well in your spirit, having courageous conversations, asking for help, and prioritising your needs over those of others, which leads me to the next point.

Your needs matter

Human infants depend on their mother or another for survival for the most prolonged duration of any other animal. When we have little people who literally need us to survive, and we often navigate that motherhood journey somewhat unsupported, it is very easy to disconnect from our own needs. When we habitually abandon our needs for the sake of our children or others for long enough, we eventually reach a point where we don’t even know our needs or how to meet them in healthy ways.

While we Mums are superheroes with our ability to wear many hats and juggle every aspect of life, we’re still human. Every human has essential needs, some are for survival, like food and shelter. Beyond that, we have emotional and relational needs necessary for healthy neural and mental development and well-being, like certainty, variety, significance, connection, contribution and growth.

If we are so focused on everyone else’s needs that we abandon our own, every aspect of our physical, emotional, social, intellectual and spiritual well-being suffers. We hear on aeroplanes, ‘fit your own mask first, before fitting others’. There’s a paradoxical relationship where to be the best mum, partner, daughter, sister, colleague, friend or anything else that we can be, we burn ourselves out, making it impossible to do any of those things well. Yet, when we prioritise our well-being and are fulfilled, inspired and experiencing joy, we are automatically better equipped to be the mum, partner and all the other things we desire. But what do we desire to be? Is it a good mum?

Don’t buy into the ‘good mum’ myth

We can invest so much time and effort in being a ‘good mum’. We can read parenting books, follow doctors’ advice, buy stylish clothes, create a fancy nursery, and cook homemade meals. We can bust our guts to breastfeed, buy our kids treats, and sacrifice or work hard to provide everything we possibly can for them. The problem is, we invest all this time, effort, energy and money into being or doing the things that society values and suggests make us a ‘good mum’, but is that really the answer?

Sadly, there is no amount of stylish clothes, abundant bank balances or breast milk that will make it easy for a child to share their favourite toy, prevent tantrums in public, or ensure that the teen years are smooth sailing. So, what’s the key to emotional and behavioural regulation and developing a healthy, safe, loving relationship with our children?

Let’s start by asking these questions

Can I be present enough with my dysregulated child, often the ‘naughty’ or ‘misbehaving’ child, to co-regulate, bringing them back to emotional safety?

Can I remain regulated enough to connect with them in their moment of need more deeply and respond from a place of love and compassion?

Could I remain sovereign to the judgements and criticisms of others to prioritise and validate my child’s emotional expression at that moment?

Can I set healthy boundaries that are in my child’s best interest, even if it means they’re unhappy with it?

To be honest, for the first eight years of my motherhood journey, the answer to these questions was no for me. According to the world’s values, I was a ‘good mum’, but when my children’s emotions or behaviours escalated, I’d spiral into guilt and shame. As a result, I’d completely dissociate or experience severe anxiety and want to punish my kids or use fear to suppress their behavioural or emotional outbursts.

That was all I knew, and my nervous system’s innate and natural drive was wired towards feeling unsafe if my kids were ‘out of control’ and reacting from a survival instinct in those moments. If you relate to this, find it in your heart to have loving self-compassion because, like every other human on the planet and me, you’re doing the best you can with the resources you have. But, even if our best isn’t too crash hot, no one can expect us to do better because we can’t do better than our best at any given moment. So, the good news is, if you’ve identified that you do want to do better, we can, but we have to be willing to step into change.

We have the power to choose change

The only time we ever have is right now. We can not go back and change the past, and we will also never get this time back, so we are constantly faced with a choice as to how we spend every ‘now’ moment. Our relationships, financial position, health status and life, in general, are all the culmination of every choice made in our past moments, whether we made them consciously or not.

Take a moment to reflect on each aspect of your life. Are you exactly where you want to be and fully satisfied? If not, that’s okay! However, if you change nothing, what will each of these aspects of your life be like six months from now? A year from now? Five years from now? If that doesn’t sound very appealing, you now have the leverage you need to want to make a change.

Although we can’t change our past, we can learn from it. We can change our priorities and intentions