Women’s Personal Growth

First off, let’s define what a “Personal Growth Opportunity” is.

Any growth opportunity requires some stretching, some sacrifice, and some pain, more than likely. They are not free, nor are they easy. They come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors. I want to honor them all today, yet focus on one in particular.

Growth for women looks like a lot of things. It looks like wrapping our heads around self-care, taking a yoga or spin class…just for us. It looks like anything that will help us shift our perspective of ourselves and others. It can be a groundbreaking movie or book. I remember watching Good Will Hunting, the Secret Life of Bees, and Schindler’s List for the first time. They rocked my world. Growth opportunities are things, when embraced, never allow us to “go back”. We are changed, if we allow it.

It looks like putting ourselves first, demanding a good education, good jobs, good pay, and a good life. These are all important and needed. But it doesn’t end there.

It looks like having children, staying home to raise them, and putting off our career goals. Oftentimes, we don’t see these as personal growth opportunities, but as a mother, let me be very clear…they are. Growth is about expansion and that means, for ALL parts of ourselves. And I don’t mean our bellies! 🙂

As women, it seems we often fight back against things like the patriarchy by stuffing ourselves into the same ego-inflated box that we curse men for inhabiting. We want all of the things that men have had for centuries, even millennia. We want the same kind of:

power
earning potential
leadership opportunities
educational opportunities
and TIME!

I want to talk about women and children for a hot minute. The conversation is a bit different for men because they cannot bear children. But it has nothing to do with a “lesser” role for them, as fathers. Quite the opposite, actually. But that is another blog for another day.

I didn’t really want children. There…I said it. I had an almost deadly miscarriage in a foreign country 6 years before I ended up having my first child. It took me that long to wrap my head around conforming to that cultural norm.

I knew I did not have a choice. Not really. I came from a family with 9 children, having helped raise the last 6 pretty intensely. I had done my time, in my opinion.

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But here I was, 20, 21, 22, 23, and 24, years old…childless and Mormon. I was not going to be “allowed” to remain childless unless I learned how to tell literally EVERYONE except my one Gramma to fuck off. And that was entirely beyond me at that point in my life.

Women choose not to have children for many reasons. I chose to have them, in the end, and do not regret it. But my body literally tried to kill me with each of my pregnancies and births. Why did you or did you not have children?

One reason I know well is the fact that the workload is rarely shared equally between partners (if it is a hetero-sexual relationship). This is not just my experience, but a scientifically studied and proven (repeatedly) hypothesis. We, as women, get the shoulder the weight of all of the family chores and stress of family life when we have children.

Most women want to work, to earn our own money, and be self-sustaining-to a point. But we also want a partner to depend on for all the types of support: psychological, emotional, spiritual, and physical. In order to raise a family, we will likely need to make some economic adjustments as well. And to make less money, means less power, in this messed-up world we live in.

There is no way to stereotype a mom accurately. But maybe that’s the point of stereotyping. These examples could be both moms who work outside the home and not.

There’s the mom who puts her kids in daycare for hours a day in order to go to the gym to work out with her girlfriends and get a coffee.

There’s the mom who would never dream of that, and stays home, keeps things very simple and has a life of almost solitude.
There’s the mom who is the soccer mom, at every event with snacks-the cheerleader.
There is the mom who has no idea how moms do that, or why they would do that.
There’s the mom who wants to control every piece of her children’s lives, down to their grades, their teachers, their major in college, and their friends.
There’s the mom who is happy to see them grow up and make their own choices, and live with their own consequences.

What I am saying is, is that there is no one way to mother.

But, no matter, motherhood changes you, if you allow it.

Motherhood is inconvenient. It could look like potentially being sick for 9 months and knowing you could die the whole time. It is going through labor with or without drugs and feeling vulnerable like never before. It is showing the most intimate parts of your body to complete strangers and feeling hopeful that they know what the fuck they are doing. It is late nights with sick kids. Or late nights waiting for them to get home. It is reading the same story every night for months, long after it is memorized and wishing one of them would vomit all over the book just to make it disappear. It is saying yes to pets that you would NEVER in your life desire to have in your home. It is cleaning up after 4 million birthday parties, after preparing for said parties. It is full of NOT knowing anything-just hoping for everything. It is the most insecurity-causing thing a woman can do to for themselves. But that insecurity and vulnerability have rewards.

The rewards are multitudinous. If you talk to most moms, they are pretty passionate about their kids. We passionately love them or hate them-or both- in any given moment! There is something about saying “yes” to something that ensures you are going to be sacrificing and living somewhere on the roller coaster of pain and pleasure for the rest of your life!

Perhaps, you were one who jumped in with both feet and are making the best of it. Perhaps you came by motherhood after some hard knocks. No matter there is something inside moms that softens when we get to hold those little ones for the first time-whether biological or not. Our hearts melt and we fall in love like we have never fallen before.

And that is where the life-changing potential lay.

Potential is the keyword, however. Motherhood does not have to change us. We do not have to embrace the suck on a daily basis. We do not have to problem-solve the endless cries of our children. We do not have to put our work away to listen to teenagers process and complain. We do not have to go to any or all of their games or performances. We do not need to be inconvenienced. There are ways to protect ourselves, as mothers, from the irritation of parenting.

But, the secret is this:

It is in those moments, days, and years of inconvenience that our opportunities for growth lay. Our sacrifice is not in vain. Those little ones, should we have them, deserve to have us. As my 15 year old reminds me on a regular basis, “I didn’t ask to be born”. She can be a bit snarky at times:)

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I have learned how to love through my life with my kids. I am a better friend, partner, lover, and worker because of them. I am better at loving myself because of them.

They keep me honest. Every day, they mirror back to me the kind of “attitude” I might be demonstrating. They dish everything right back at me. Yes, it is painful and difficult. But it keeps my ego in check. Frankly, they have destroyed my ego, repeatedly. But, I am a far better human because of them.

There is an enormous disclaimer that goes with this blog. It is this:

If you choose NOT to have children, CANNOT have children for any reason at all, please do not take this wrong. I beg of you. YOU have your place in the lives of children that is integral as well. We, as mothers, need you desperately. We need the aunties, the cousins, and the adopted Grammas to show up for us and these kids. We need the mentors, the teachers, and the friends to be there for support. There are so many times they are simply DONE listening to us. They have heard enough and need it from a softer, different source. We love you and appreciate you. Whatever energy and love you put into children-yours or not-is not wasted. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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