Shedding all layers I’ve outgrown 
And pick some back up on my way home
Not to put on, but to reminisce a skin I used to wear, 
A feeling I used to entertain, but a sensation, a thought that now no 
longer remains. 

In this phase you are going to address the beliefs  

With what beliefs did you grew up around being a mother?

What ideas have you implemented in your care taking? And which have you released?

How do you feel around those implemented ideas?

In what area of bringing up your child(ren) does it feel effortlessly?

Excercise:

What’s on your plate?

Please put on there everything you can think of

Now look at this plate as you would as if it were your friend’s?

Which of those do you feel lucky for to have on your plate?

Which of those feel like duties/chores?

Which of those would you rather delegate?

This is sometimes overwhelming when one part of this mother role is more developed within our selves than the other. For example when you are fantastic in nurturing, yet have a hard time setting boundaries. Or vice versa. We need more compassion and softness around the developmental (trial and error) stages of when and how one becomes the mother they intend to be.

Let us redefine the idea every woman is born as a potential mother and every mother is naturally wholesome in her role. A mother is not born when child is born. The task and the role of mothering is born in the instant that child is born. To become mother - a woman deserves as much time to grow into her new role as her baby gets the time to grow into a toddler, infant and so forth. With each phase comes a new set of skills needing to be learned and with that an individual curve in which it is learned. If you’ve ever felt you had to rush yourself into knowing how to - you are not alone. If you’ve ever felt falling short you are not alone, if you’ve ever felt you got all the chips in their place you are also not alone. The only thing is we have yet to create a space as mothers for mothers to hold compassion when those parts are present.

When one part of self is in the forefront, all we are asked to do is to give it our complete attention and honor its needs in a healthy manner - as most of us envision to do with our own children. But as we sometimes struggle to be this patient and compassionate with our children, we even more so struggle to be this to ourselves. That is where the self practice takes place. That is where we practice so to develop more patience with our learning self. Our child self that is sometimes projected on to our present.

Sometimes it is enough to read a post of a mother who’s been through it to forgive yourself while you are learning to do better. But sometimes it’s hard to relate to the women who share their vulnerability or you don’t cross their paths in the right time. When we learn to dialogue with ourselves as a wise mother or a sister-mother would - we create space to move forward, we create an honest and realistic role model for our children.