I consider myself to be a conscious parent, the last six months have really put that title to the test.
In general, I feel that being a mother has pushed my perceived limits and stretched me so far beyond anything I knew to be true about who I am as a human being. There isn’t a single day that I don’t learn something new because of my children and while them mirroring me has felt like being I’m being dragged, it is also what gets me up off the floor, knees shaking and willing to do better.
Before the pandemic, my oldest daughter was still in Montessori school and we had a pretty good routine from school drop off, to the library, errands, and finishing up with school pick up. Viv could sit at the table to do her homework while I made dinner and we’d relax on our own before we did it all again the next school day. Then suddenly there was no more school drop-off, there was no more mornings at the library for Ollie with his “best-friends” and there were no more trips to Target to wander around buying things we didn’t need when all we needed were paper towels.
The first couple of weeks were a welcome time for us to enjoy the pause, to let my daughter play Minecraft and Roblox for hours while she chatted with her friends. It was easy for us to hang around and snack in the beginning, my husband was working from home and it felt comforting to know that we could do this together. We would go out for a drive just to get out and we’d drive to the new house while it was still in it early phases and dream of what was to come.
After the initial quarantine period when my husband went back to his schedule is when the work really began and it hasn’t stopped since. I had known for a long time before that the way life is lived whether you call it in society or under capitalism, was just not normal or really even designed for children to be curious, creative or intended for them to have autonomy over any aspect of their lives.
One of the most obvious things that came to light as parents was how easily we had drifted into this habit of buying our children “things” in place of going out for experiences that required more planning, social interaction or physical energy when the routine already felt tiring, frankly raising three children asks a lot of energy as a whole. This habit of using errands as a means of filling our lives with things to do and toys in place of adventure made me realize that I was programming my children to fit my schedule rather than making space for them to show me who they are outside of being busy or along for the ride.
I believe that was something that was highlighted for everyone during this time, who am I when I’m not busy or stressed or working, driving to and from school, buying groceries or filling some role?
These beautiful children of ours, how do they manage be such brilliant teachers when they hold no degrees, no formal education, nothing but their spirit and curiosity.
Writing out this post is medicine for my own inner child because thats it y’all, we’ve always been more than enough from the moment that we were conceived and every moment since. Our value, our lives cannot be measured by what we produce, the amount of work we get done in a day and it certainly cannot be measured by material things. Its inherit, it has always been.
Since the pandemic, there has been less places to go, less things to do and definitely less stuff to buy. Well, with the exception of groceries and let me tell you that my babies CAN EAT.
It seems that the energy that I was spending on trying to keep them busy and engaged has been turned inward. Asking myself if that is what my children really need or want from me and if I am avoiding allowing them to experience who I am out of fear. That hasn’t been an easy question to answer because its roots go so deep and I have been walking along this journey as both a mother but also as a child myself.
We’ve been using these last few months to be mindful of the connections we want to make, the spaces in which we want to be present in most often have been outside in nature because that is what feels best. We’re doing our best to listen to the emotions beneath the words and behaviors, relishing in the quiet moments, trying to be aware of how we feel when life gets really loud and chaotic, above all we’re taking it one day at a time.
So what have we left behind in the world before the pandemic? We’ve left behind being busy, we’ve decided to stop selling our attention for stuff and we’ve decided to embrace being human. Being human, as I am seeing it for the first time through the eyes of my children, feels like more than enough.
This journey isn’t easy, as we are having to uproot some of the patterns we normalized as parents but I know that through our ability to communicate and bring it in, we got this.
