“Nothing will sabotage our happiness and success more thoroughly than the fear that we are not enough.” – Bill Crawford
“Withholding love is a form of self-sabotage, as what we withhold from others, we are withholding from ourselves.” – Marianne Williamson
On June 24th I ran a workshop for mothers called Motherhood is Leadership. What inspired me to run this workshop? It originally started as a yearning to provide mothers with the space to talk about their birthing experiences. I especially wanted to create a supportive space for mothers who had given birth during the pandemic.
However, the more I sat with it, the more I realised that all mothers need a space where they can talk about their experiences of being mothers. And then I remembered Lisa Marchiano’s book on Motherhood, and I felt called to serve in this way.
In her beautiful book. Motherhood: Facing and Finding Yourself, Lisa Marchiano equates the journey of motherhood to the Hero’s Journey within. She shares that if you never have children, you might be lucky enough to make it through your whole life believing that you are a nice person. However, if you become a mother, you will be forced to face your shadow self and discover things about yourself that you would never discover otherwise. You will be confronted with parts of yourself that you don’t like and that you didn’t even know you had.
The Hero’s Journey is a common story that involves a hero who goes on an adventure, learns a lesson, wins a victory with that newfound knowledge, and then returns home transformed. And Marchiano believes that motherhood is the ultimate hero’s journey INWARD. Regardless of HOW you become a mother – i.e., giving birth to your own baby, adopting a child, becoming a stepmom when you marry someone who has children, or choosing to take care of others that are dependent on you – we embark on an internal journey of self-discovery when we become mothers. And the ultimate gift of motherhood, is discovering more about ourselves, and emerging as transformed beings who never relate to ourselves or the world in the same way we did before we became mothers.
Motherhood provokes a wide range of experiences. Some of these experiences are joyful and bring us a sense of awe and wonder. Other experiences of motherhood feel challenging and impossible to decipher. For some mothering comes naturally. And for others it simply doesn’t. Sometimes it can feel like a great mystery. And sometimes it can leave you feeling lost and hopeless, or isolated and overwhelmed. And most of the time we wish someone would just give us the guidebook or manual to motherhood.
The bad news is there is no manual or guidebook. The good news is every mother has the answers inside of her. Her job is to slow down to discover them.
I want to say here that this article is not just for mothers. It’s for anyone who has ever felt lost, confused, overwhelmed, perplexed by life, and who has wished that someone would just hand them a manual or guidebook to figure this out. We have all had times where we truly feel like we have no idea what we are doing.
And if anyone tries to convince you that they have it all figured out, they are probably more afraid of life than you are, because they are living in denial of some of the confusing and challenging things we face as we navigate life. No-one has it all figured out, no matter what their Instagram profile or Facebook posts have you believe. And all of us have had moments where we did not like ourselves much, or where we may have felt that we were supposed to be different or do something different. All of us have had moments where we have judged ourselves as not enough.
One of the exercises I invited participants in the workshop to complete was an exercise where they discovered their Mothering Gremlin. Each participant then had the opportunity to act out their Mothering Gremlin. Now, what is a Mothering Gremlin you might ask?
If this were 1984, you probably would have referenced the black comedy horror film by the same name. In the film Gremlins, Gizmo is this sweet, chubby, loving fur creature who is very well behaved. However, when Gizmo comes into contact with water, he multiplies and when he is allowed to eat after midnight, he turns into a gross slimy monster who gets up to a lot of mischief and destruction.
We all have Gremlins – also know as Saboteurs or Inner Critics. Our Gremlins are what we consider the worst parts of ourselves – the monsters that come out when we overfeed them. They come out when we feel most insecure, most inadequate, most incompetent, and when we feel most like we lack confidence in ourselves and our abilities. It’s the judgements we have of ourselves. It’s what we most dislike and want to hide about ourselves, because we believe that they get in the way of us showing up fully as our best or highest selves.
And they absolutely do get in the way of us showing up more fully or as our highest selves. And, judging ourselves for our shortcomings and insecurities will not make them go away. Often our judgements of them amplify the shame we feel about having these characteristics that we believe we should not have.
However, have you ever considered WHY you have a Gremlin or Inner Critic in the first place? Before the age of about six or seven, most children don’t have a Gremlin yet. They are still fully themselves, fully accepting of themselves. They love themselves. They feel that they deserve love. And they express their needs and desires, because they believe that they can have them met.
However, as children grow older, they discover that their needs will not always be met – whether that is intentional or not. They learn to judge just like we all do. They learn to hide parts of themselves if they have received criticism for those parts, and they learn to play roles to get the love, attention, and care they need, or sometimes simply to stay safe in an environment that is not supportive to their wellbeing.
These adaptations to our behaviour are what eventually become our Saboteurs or Gremlins. You see, when we were growing up, they helped us. But now that we are adults, they sometimes get in the way of us creating what we want and having the experiences we long for. Our Gremlin stops us from expressing ourselves fully, because it fears that we will get hurt if we do.
And our work as adults is to learn how to tame our Gremlin – i.e., how to love the parts of us that we don’t like or that we feel are holding us back. See, these parts of us will always be part of us. We cannot get rid of them. And counterintuitively, the best way to get them to release their grip on our lives, is for us to love them, NOT to judge them or push them aside.
During the motherhood workshop, I wanted to model to the participants what might be possible for them if they were to really see and experience their Gremlins, and I wanted them to have full permission to express themselves without feeling like they needed to hide parts of themselves. I wanted to create a safe space for them where they could share their Gremlins and feel loved and supported at the same time. And so, I needed to share MY Gremlin with them too. I needed to give them permission by giving myself permission first.
I introduced the group of mothers to my Mothering Gremlin, and it gave them full permission to explore theirs. Some of the feedback I received was that they could sense my Gremlin’s anxiety, fear, and overwhelm – which is of course spot on – and it provoked empathy. Watching another mother struggle with her insecurities, gave all the moms permission to explore her own without judgment and shame. And it’s only when we can see ourselves – really SEE ourselves, that we can make conscious choices about who we WANT to be instead.
It’s when we bring love, understanding, and compassion to ourselves and to the darkest parts of ourselves, that we can heal the pain that is there, and that we can finally unshackle ourselves from the chains that WE have placed around ourselves.
Brene Brown talks about this too in her research on vulnerability and shame. She shares that people who live wholeheartedly have found ways to love and accept even the parts of themselves that they don’t like.
Our work in this world is NOT to learn how to be our best or highest selves. We actually already naturally know how to be our highest and wisest selves. Our real work is to learn to love the parts of ourselves that we don’t love or like, the worst parts of ourselves. When we can do that, we are truly free. It’s only when we can reintegrate the parts of ourselves that we have rejected, that we can become wholehearted again and live within the full range of what is available to us mentally and emotionally.
References:
- Breytenbach, C. (2020). Getting to Know Your Inner Critic. Available online at: https://chantalbreytenbach.com/getting_to_know_your_inner_critic/
- Brown, B. (2022). The Gifts of Imperfection: Your Guide to a Wholehearted Life.
- Marchiano, L. (2021). Motherhood: Facing and Finding Yourself.