SHAME DIES WHEN STORIES ARE TOLD IN SAFE SPACES.
A mothers shame dies when she tells her story in a safe place & she see the eyes of the other mum looking knowingly at her and nodding her head.
You know the look I'm talking about, don't you?
As modern day mothers we hold ourselves to such a high standard, on so many levels.
We strive to maintain perfect houses, instagrammable kitchens, we want to look good, we want well behaved kids, we want cute well-dressed babies that aren’t covered in baby food & shit (is it too much to ask!), we want to work & achieve milestones in our career, we want a social life, we want to be a good friend & host family events, we want to throw fabulous kids parties, cook top notch Sunday lunches and go to the gym, do 2 yoga classes whilst making sure the family eat home cooked dinners & have ironed clothes & don’t forget walking the dog & baking cakes for the school bake sale.
The point here is that we hold ourselves to all of this, and when we don’t achieve it, or it doesn’t go perfectly we feel shame.
We hide because we feel like we’ve got it wrong, we judge ourselves as weak for everything not going perfectly. We are filled with self doubt that we can’t get it all right.
I need you to know – whatever you feel like your not getting right, or if you need to ask for help, or if something doesn’t go to plan, or if your kids wear cycling shorts to their birthday party & not the outfit you imagined! It’s ok.
You are not defined by these things. It doesn’t matter. You are still an amazing mother.
When you feel the shame, & you internalise it – you feed the shame & self doubt.
When we share stories of things that didn’t quite go to plan. If we felt confident to ask for help when we needed it. The shame dies.
When we talk to each other about things we are finding hard & we see other mothers nodding in agreement with every word we say – it doesn’t fix the problem but we sometimes we don’t need it fixing (it is hard at times & that's ok too) but just sharing & acknowledging the things we find hard can help a million times over in just feeling validated.
When I first started sharing my stories of motherhood – I was writing to an empty Instagram page with 2 followers & actually it felt good.
I wrote about how hard it was being a mum – knowing nobody was reading. I wasn’t getting any advice or even people ‘liking’ posts. But the more I wrote, & said out loud. The more I shared, the easier life felt.
So tell your stories, share the things your finding hard – you never know someone else might just need to hear how hard you are finding it too.
If you have something you'd like to share, my DMs are always open.
