Mothering: The Great Resistance
I don’t want to admit it but I’m tired. Like, bone tired. My expanding body and generally over stimulated nervous system are telling me to pull back from all that is happening “out there.” To instead turn inward. A wisdom seems to be saying. “Come home inside and rest, mama. Rest in this final month of your pregnancy. Come inward and be with your unborn baby and be with your family. Rest, tune in, prepare.”
Anxiety tells me a different story. It shames me. It tells me I’m not doing all I can to confront this aggressive destruction of our democracy and oppression of the most vulnerable. That I have a responsibility to voice, to protect, to take a stand. That I need to just do MORE. That damn anxious voice, is always telling me to do more. It’s never enough. It shames as it attempts to convince that if I’m to protect my own children, let alone other’s, and their futures, I absolutely need to do more “out there.”
In the past week, I’ve had a handful of seasoned mothers synchronistically validate my desire to pull inward. At the co-op yesterday, a mother of now grown children said, “Motherhood is THE resistance.” Exact words that have been coming into my heart and mind for weeks now (hence the title of this piece). And today at the end of a phone call with the doula who was with through my first birth, she reflected, “Being a Mother is the most important work.” She told me about receiving a gift of a t-shirt when she was in the throws of early mama-hood that stated, “Motherhood is an act of revolutionary love.”
Revolutionary love, omg yes! Embodied Motherhood absolutely invites the power of a revolution: that which involves or causes a complete or dramatic change.
(Obviously, I need to find this shirt and have begun the internet search.)
Go Home, Love Your Family.
As I’ve listened to this call to turn inward to rest and prepare for birth, postpartum and beyond, I happened to reread words on my own website. Words that centered me in my first postpartum season and helped me realign the focus of my work as a therapist. Words that spoke and continue to speak to my heart as big Truth.
They read:
“If you want to change the world,
go home
and love your family.” - Mother Teresa
Go home and love your family…
Such an antithesis to what the culture around us promotes and specifically in terms of social justice. You should instead be on the streets with the sign, at the community meetings, posting, responding, calling representatives, reading books and articles, calling those darn reps again and again. The core of the message is: You better be doing something.
But never are we instructed that the doing involves going home. To learn how to love our families first. The truth here is if we can’t do that, what business do we have proclaiming love “out there”? That’s walking an empty walk.
What happens inside the walls of our home, behind the closed doors, matters. And I’ll boldly state, it matters most. If more of us actually believed this and followed through in actions, I likely would be out of a job as a therapist. The family traumas would be minimal. We would all feel more held, more understood, more accepted, and importantly, safer to be who we are.
We would grow up knowing how to accept others because we’ve been accepted. We would understand how to love through difference, because we have been loved for our difference. We would innately prioritize relationships over anything else because we were prioritized and sacrificed for. We wouldn’t have as many or as deep of battle scars from experiences of abandonment, shame, rejection, or neglect.
Perhaps then, we could release the empty desires that plague our current culture like the pursuits of power, money, and external success. We would understand what it means to care for others more than ourselves, to believe that what is best for most is simply what is best. Our epidemic of loneliness I am certain, would be dissolved.
All because we went home to love our families.
Mother Teresa invites us in these few words to consider simpler acts of love and peace. Ones that occur in the mundane, the day to day interactions, in the inevitable ongoing frustrations of living closely and with others who are designed so differently but who we love nonetheless. It’s through our families that we are invited onto the raw edges of ourselves and asked, “Well, what does love require of me now?” And knowing in our heart of hearts, love is never about trying to form a child into what or who we think they need to or should be. That’s selfishness, not love. Instead, great Love has a way of being interested in who we are and then yearning to nurture that essence into it’s fullest expression. That is what Love does.
Great Love has a way of being interested in who we are and then yearning to nurture that essence into it’s fullest expression.
Mothering As Resistance
The movement to focus on the home and raise children more intentionally, as a radicle way to resist racism, oppression, cruelty, and injustice arose primarily from Black and Brown mothers decades ago. That in returning to the home and reclaiming the importance of mothering their own children, Black mama’s showed a resistance to the impact of being forced to leave their children to tend to white families during and even after slavery.
Mia Brantley calls it Intensive Motherwork, describing how Black mothers use practices to guide children through experiences of racism and reclaim the family.
In this podcast, Jasmine Bradshaw reflects her own experience of leaving traditional spaces of championing civil rights to care for her young children. She too battled the “is this enough?” question many of us mother’s who are passionate about justice and anti-racism face.
So what does Mothering As Resistance mean?
I won’t profess to be an expert on this. I’m only beginning to unpack it and as I do, it feels like an absolutely radicle way to impact the world.1 But radicle and revolutionary in a very humble, often unnoticed way. It’s not the flashy “out there” and “look at me” influencer method. It’s perhaps even boring, unsexy, and definitely held by simplicity. It’s in the home. It’s at the dinner table. It’s bound by the quality of presence given.
To Mother As Resistance might mean guiding our children:
To honor being interconnected to all of Life. So that there is deep respect and reverence for Life and all that is alive.
To have grace for imperfections and mistakes. Our own and each others.
To value difference and know diversity is essential for all ecosystems to thrive (including the ecosystem of democracy.)
To be curious about and therefore careful with our inevitable judgements.
To be bold and outspoken. To take risks in expression and to resist remaining silent when facing injustice.
To champion, befriend and care for those who are most vulnerable.
To receive. Allowing others to help and trust to ask for help. Honoring reciprocity in all relationships.
To know that loving actions are usually more important than talking about ideas of being loving.
To rest. Oh yes, to rest. What a lesson of resistance that we too often forget or are fearful of. That voice of anxiety I spoke of earlier gets the best of us here. And this weaves into trusting our interconnection and leaning into reciprocity. That as I take a pause to rest, I recognize those who are “out there” on the streets, in the community meetings, running for office, and meeting with representatives. I honor them and I rest, knowing they too will need rest one day.
This is merely a brief reflection of what it could mean to Mother As Resistance to injustice. Tell me what it means to you.
Mamas, how do you practice Mothering As Resistance yourself?
How have you witnessed other Mothers being a force for resisting injustice?
One last story…
I was catching a rare coffee with a dear momma friend a few weeks ago. She’s newly pregnant and she shared the inner dilemma of, “Why are we bringing children into this mess, into this violence, into this destruction? Are we acting irresponsibly?”
I completely hear her and feel her. I’ve battle this paradox in both of pregnancies. “What am I doing? Why would I want to allow my children to be put at such a risk of living in a world that appears to be falling straight into darkness and turmoil?”
I attempted to reflect to her the realness of her questioning and how important it is to sit with this. While also rooting into the power of intentional Motherhood. That perhaps we really are part of the greatest revolution! In refusing to stop Love from flowing and creating, we are fostering new life and raising beings to be more conscious, caring, and connected. And to do this most important work, we as Mothers of Resistance and of a Revolution need to tend to our inner homes, our hearts and our souls, to ensure we are nourished to provide what our babies need to expand into their most loving expression.
Mothering is absolutely an act of revolutionary LOVE.
