Being a Mother. Being A Lover.
I was certainly not the girl who had always dreamed of having children. My mom recalls that as a young girl I used to defiantly declare that I wasn’t going to have ANY because I suspected the pain of childbirth would be too much for me. However, as I started to grow up, I started to see the sorrow in my generation and realized that so much of it was due to the absence of fathers and mothers in their life.
I began to see that motherhood was a powerful, underrated force.
Have you noticed that we can often take some of the most profound things for granted? They are the things that we were designed to have in our lives. Without them, we begin to malfunction. Things like pure water. Things like whole-hearted mothers.
And so, I began to dream of being a mother, beyond biologically having children. I began to see that a mother was made to be a nurturer of the life around her, and I wanted to contribute that. So, as a nineteen year old I would pray for the ability to mother.
The essence of being a parent is to sacrifice for the sake of the next generation.
It is to take your stand as a sun or moon in the universe of your children, not in a ego-centric way, but as an offering of warmth, light and gravity in order to bring life, rhythm, and stability to the young ones.
What a selfless role to take. The young need us. And the day will come when they will be needed in the same way. It is a baton that we have passed on from one generation to the next.
The spirit of a true mother does not walk into a room and demand that all eyes fix on her. The heart of an authentic mother does not whine or pout when she is not the centre of attention. Rather, her eyes sparkle to see her children highlighted and honoured. She is filled with great contentment when her son or daughter is fulfilling their dream. She sacrifices to make it possible. Even now I paused to pray for strength to be a mother more like this.
Imagine a world where every child had parents like this? It could repair so much of the world.
It is this attitude that led Teressa to Calcutta, India to work among the poor, and led Florence Nightingale to abandon a traditional life for the sake of reforming health care among the devastated soldiers of the Crimean War.
The question is, how can a woman navigate the significantly different roles of mother and lover?
How can she recognize BOTH as good and healthy, but not let those roles interchange? Because our husbands certainly do not need us to mother them, and our children desperately need to grow up seeing the personhood of woman, distinct from her sexuality. Our husbands do want us to take off the metaphorical apron and lean into the sexual part of our personhood. In a healthy relationship, there is a safe place to express this, and have a great time doing so.
But, on the other hand, when we leave the privacy of the marriage bed, our children need to know that there is far more to womanhood than her sexuality.
In a world saturated by pornographic images and mindsets, daughters need to see that she has permission to live from her heart and soul, not relying on her prowess and seductive ability to get what she wants.
Sons need to know that real women have emotions and thrive best in safe and committed relationships.
They need to know that real women don’t wake up with their mascara on. They need to see that her sense of humour and genuine interests and personality are welcome.
I believe that the purity of motherhood is being compromised by an increasing pressure on women to be sexualized at all times. Throughout history, around the world, you can find record of goddesses that would be developed and worshiped. The unique thing was that she was most often portrayed as a mother with exaggerated breasts and a sensual vibe. There was a merging of her two identities of “mother” and “lover” into one, instead of the matured ability to know how to only activate her sexuality at the proper time and place. Men would come and bow at her feet, bringing her offerings and worshipping her with their own sexuality. Women would come to learn her ways.
There is a goddess movement now in the 21st century, and it concerns me because a woman who adopts a goddess-persona is narcissistic, demanding always to be served instead of having the willingness to serve others. You may have been in the presence of a woman like this.
On magazine covers, she catches your eye, but a real relationship with her is exhausting. And, I guarantee you, she is not happy.
She may try to do things or buy things or make things for you, but you always have a sense that she is trying to earn applause or an award of some sort.
She watches the clock and looks in the mirror, recognizing that her skin contains more lines than it used to, that she is losing muscle tone, and that her youthful appeal is fading. Now she realizes that she has invested in the wrong thing all along. Every woman will lose the battle against aging. But, there is a beauty of the soul that increases only among those who have truly learned to love.
Rather than being rejected because of her changing appearance, the woman who has learned to love will never be forgotten.
I am now a mother of five sons. A few of them are tiptoeing on the borders of adolescence, coming to increasing awareness of their own changing bodies and new desires. They desperately need me to be a non-sexualized female in their life, as the steadfast reminder that women are far more than the brazen-faced, sex-goddesses that our culture would boastfully advertise.
