After becoming a mother, I realized that there is unspoken energy among mothers that instills us with the need to raise our children to be the next Picasso, Einstein, Elon Musk, or some prodigy of sorts. In the midst of running our children from one activity to the next, we are losing something more important: our community, a community of mothers that keeps us going and helps each other so that the struggle isn’t as hard, so that when things get tough, many hands come in to help smooth out the rough road.
Let’s start helping one another like the women before us did. What happened to knowing our neighbors, let alone borrowing sugar from them so that we can finish that cake we are making? What happened to being happy for the success of our friend’s child? Somewhere along the way, we abandoned our tribe and sacrificed the strength community gave us. We gave it up to become individuals, to be the best, to be better than, to prove to someone that we can “do it on our own.”
So let’s stop all these shenanigans and come together and recognize our uniqueness. We can all fit in and use our individual talents and passions to help contribute to our mama community.
It seems like no matter what a mama says or posts on social media it is up for critique. Even good things now receive some backlash. What happened? Can we readopt the principle of “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” or learn how to respectfully communicate with one another despite our differences? Bullying is at an all-time high, and we wonder why. Maybe we should look at ourselves in the mirror or re-read our comments on social media.
Most of us say our goal is to teach our kids to be respectful, kind, compassionate human beings, but through our actions, it feels like our real goal is to raise the youngest child ever to enter the Olympics. I am not saying that taking children to activities is a bad thing, but the primary purpose of music class or Kung Fu shouldn’t be to give a child some kind of advantage over his peers. All the running to and from is not helping our children; rather, it is doing a big disservice to them.
Are we truly taking the time to teach them how to look people in the eye and say, “Hello! How are you?” Are we really teaching them how to work together or to live in a community where differences are respected?
We can remedy this by building back up our tribe—our community—so that our children see how we support one another, how we support our children’s peers, and how, despite our differences, we can still respect and root for one another.
Do you have a community or tribe that you depend on? How did you find and cherish your community of support?
