THOUGHTS ON BEING A MAMA

 

I am blessed.  I am called "mama" by three wonderful babes.  Hearing that word is magical.  To three little babes, I have become the person that they look to for protection, love, guidance, answers, navigation.  Each morning, they somehow all end up in our bed.  Tiny feet tickled my pits and legs are splayed across mine.  But it doesn't bother me.  I get to wake up beside those little beings who have been forming dreams all night and are waiting to burst into a new day full of curiosity that only a child can have.

Becoming a mama for me was a strange mix of emotions.  I was lucky enough to decide with that one person who I wanted to be in my life forever, that we wanted to both hold each other's hands and take the leap into the unknown.  It was with love and confidence that we entered into the agreement that regardless we will care and love a being that we had yet to meet. 

Our decision, full of love and happiness, was also fraught with confusion on how to bestow love when for much of my life I felt unloved by my very own mother.  Looking back and through my own personal journey I have finally come to the conclusion that I was deserving of love, but while trying to frame my own idea of what a mother was, I many times came up short.  I was full of fear.  

But sometimes you have to push down that fear, listen to your heart and carry with confidence your determination.  You must surround yourself with those who are amazing.  You must also realize that becoming a mother is a journey, an individual journey.  Each and every woman before jumping into the greatest challenge had a life, soul and journey which shaped who she is as a mother.  

There are those like me, who never had an example of nurturing to draw from.  But even when you are denied love it is absolutely possible to innately create that from your heart.  Each day I just look at my babes with an intensity at how miraculous and perfect they are and I can't do anything but gush and nurture their little spirits.  Watching them grow and seeing them become confident, happy, free spirits with strong voices, sweetness, empathy and love, is rewarding and a reminder that, I am capable of loving and nurturing.  

There are those who enter into this with every confidence and I appreciate that you exist in our lives and that your children are in yours.  Let us honour each and every mother who pours their heart and soul into loving and teaching their child and remember that our choices, manners in which we proceed and lifestyles, are irrelevant as long as that child feels love in abundance and happiness in themselves and their heart.