Stop … we must stop. 

A few weeks ago my vibrant, confident and amazing ten year old daughter, came home disturbed that one of her friends was being teased, behind her back, for being fatter than the other girls. She was confused and upset that girls would do that to each other and expressed concern that maybe she should change her eating to ensure she didn’t become the next target. 

And at that moment, my heart broke.

For decades now, women have been faced with the dilemma of how to be a working mother, whether out of necessity or out of a need to replenish ourselves outside of the home. But what I’m talking to here is an even deeper layer. I’m speaking now to those women amongst us who are so vocationally aroused (thank you Barbara Marx-Hubbard for this term), that not engaging with our gifts and our life purpose is akin to cutting off your oxygen supply.

It takes so much more than blinding self sacrifice repackaged as strength, to be a real mum and it is time that we named that. 

I remember all the dates like it was just yesterday. They seem emblazoned in my mind, though I suspect that it is more, that they are imprinted on my heart … a record of an important event which was inscribed on my soul long before this physical journey began.

How might our life have been different if, as we were growing, we had been taught by our communities (and shown, through the actions of the adults around us), to truly feel our feelings, sit quietly with our feelings, listen to them, honour and follow them as the most unique and amazing guidance system we own in our lives?