Joy in Parenting
I am constantly trying to find my joy in parenting. I am in a season where I have to intentionally find the good in between the hard. And quite honestly, I am in a season where everything smells like pee. One of the many wonderful parts of being a mother, is that you can love your children with your entire heart and soul, the deepest depths of them, but not necessarily “like” your kids in that moment. And this is ok. It’s ok to have those feelings. The important part is that we are acknowledging them and honoring them for what they are teaching us about ourselves. Who did you think you’d be as a mother? Probably a lot different than the one you actually are, huh? That is because we do not birth our babies and become the mother we want to be, but we birth our babies, and they emerge from us pulling out the most magical parts of us that make us the mother who is inside. Our baby pulls out the parts of us that they need us to be, the mother that is a ferocious lioness advocating for them, the mother that is sometimes a little more “strict” of a parent than we thought we’d be, because we know they need healthy boundaries, the mother that doesn’t necessarily want to play “tag” and “fairies” and whatever other imaginary game, but we know that our love is not measured by our imagination and wonder, because we are better served as being their loving fortress and protectors of their hearts. Our babies dive into us and pull out exactly who we are meant to be and who they need us to be. They pull out our deepest emotions, our deepest traumas, the things we love about ourselves and things we despise about ourselves. It is not only for them, but for us. We heal through our children. We heal for our children.
How do we find joy in the chaos of parenting? By remembering that the world is designed to bring the chaos, not out children. Our children are simple, it’s the world that makes then complicated. Our children are kind and sweet, it’s the world that distracts them with poisons and addictions that make them disobedient and intolerable. Our children are healthy and strong, it’s the world that tries to poison them with artificial sustenance, conditioning them to have a false sense of the joy and art of food and nourishment. The story continues in so many scenarios. The result is always the same.
It is our job as parents to protect and foster our children’s joy. To allow them to explore and have wonder. To honor their excitement about bugs and putting their little feet and hands in the mud. Allow children to run and yell and be uninhibited. The world stifles their joy, let us be the protectors of that joy.
I have found that when I can slow myself in the chaos and the crazy and truly smile at the small parts of the day, like the bugs and the dirty feet and the cute way they say “sorry momma” after spilling their milk on the floor, I can breath. I have to take it down to the smallest things, the things that easily go unnoticed, to be able to reach my true and authentic joy. But it’s ok, because they’re the best things.
I think the same is true for birth. The most beautiful parts of birth are the small unnoticed things.
The way a mother will roam freely while laboring and sways back and forth like a willow tree in the breeze.
The way a mother instinctively reaches for the nearest hand to grab onto when a contraction is starting to rise.
The warm slippery perfect feeling when a baby is freshly in a mother’s arms seconds after birth.
The way a baby first nurses, their little mouth moves trying to figure out what instinct is trying to signal to them.
There is so much beauty and joy in birth, and in postpartum, and in parenting. But sometimes we’re so busy searching for it, that we’re missing the most perfect joyous moments transforming before us. Simple, peaceful, slow, small snippets of joy. That’s how I find joy, when the world tries to pull me away. I will not comply. I choose joy.