I Put My Third Baby in Really Bad Daycare ...

So how the f%^& do we do it?

How do we be the deeply connected, present, conscious mother that we want to be, while also fulfilling this deep yearning from our soul … which rises like screams from our heart …  to be of service to the world, outside of our family and homes? To be in service in a way which deeply engages our passion and activates our very blueprint for existence on this earth? 

Excuse the language … but isn’t that exactly what we are all feeling … if we’re really honest? All of the mothers out there, with children of an age which still (thank god) require our input and support in significant ways. Women who are also in a season in their life where their deepest calling is pulling them forward.

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.

These women are staring constantly at a blinking red “Danger” sign. Danger that we are going to plunge too far into our passions and neglect our mothering and home-making desires and duties. Danger that, as we throw ourselves into our family and home, our heart and soul aches and claws at us, unable to be quietly placed on the back-burner, manifesting in anxiety and depression, disconnection, fatigue and overwhelm. 

My personal way of expressing it over the years, has been to name this deep passion and love for my vocation, as my third baby. My husband and I have 2 beautiful daughters. We always thought we would have 3 kids, but for a number of reasons thatdidn’t happen … and a major one was that my body, heart and soul, could not wait another 5 to 10 years to deeply engage with the gifts I came here to share. 

So I honoured this part of me and promised to channel this desire for a third baby into my vocational passion.  But recently I realised that, although I was talking about my wonderful decision to create my vocation as my much yearned for third baby, I really wasn’t walking the walk. I was struggling, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically, because I was simply not making enough time for that third baby in my life. Effectively … I had put my third baby into really, really bad day care … she wasn’t thriving (she was malnourished and screaming) and by default, as all parents know when your kid isn’t doing great, neither was I. 

On a bad day, it kind of feels like that line from Dante’s Divine Comedy … “Abandon hope all ye who enters here”.  A sense of overwhelm and impossibility, almost always tinged with guilt and shame, and other times fuelled with anger and resentment (and yes, mostly towards our spouses, who we perceive as walking out the door focussed almost exclusively on work rather than our work / study / home making / kids / school / extracurricular / community and friends juggle). 

On a better day, we ride the roller coaster, pull out our toolbox of amazing feminine power, wisdom and connection, sure in the knowledge that “this too shall pass” and we continue to forge a new path, trail-blaze a new way of being, a new archetype of self actualising motherhood. 

Some of you, maybe many of you, may be asking, isn’t this just another debate over whether we can have it all? I always thought this was a really dumb statement … of course we can’t “have it all”, we have to make choices in life and live with the consequences … don’t we?  But that’s really not sitting well with me anymore. 

On a collective level, we are living in a time where we are being called to “stand” and take radical responsibility for who we are, many of us are deeply moved to participate in the world outside our homes in big and impactful ways … ways which do not slot in nicely with the families and homes we seek to run. Should we stop having babies and focus only on our womens’ marches? No … culture is calling us forward as integrated beings. 

On a personal level, my body, heart and soul is telling me, in no uncertain terms that I needs to have it all … and the more I trust that body wisdom, the more I get it. Yes - we can have it all, we just need to define what that is for each of us, and find a new template for doing so.

Our desire to be a mother and our desire to be an agent of change in the world (however that manifests for you) is not, and should never be thought of as mutually exclusive. If we weren’t made to be mothers who can impact the world inside and outside of the home, we would not have the yearnings to do so. We are not bad or greedy for having these urges for “more”, rather we are being called forth by them, asked to find new ways of being … for ourselves and to role model to our children.

One evening, as I was trying to get my daughters to bed, with a late coaching call looming … one I had been really looking forward to, it became very clear that there was no way I would be on that call in time. The usual bedtime antics crept up on me and I felt torn. I wanted to scream that I need to get this all done, go to sleep so I can get on my call!  And yet I also wanted to cuddle and engage and “be” with my little cherubs. Shouldn’t I always want to be with them more? Cue guilt, rushing through my veins. But mostly, all I could think was “I hope my daughters never have to feel this tearing at their heart … between their role as mother and their role as change makers in the world … God, please let them experience a different world, where all of this has been worked out .. where there is enough.” 

Enough acceptance for mothers to self actualise outside of the home.

Enough encouragement for mothers to take the steps to follow their passion.

Enough self belief within these mothers that they can and should follow their passions. 

Enough real life support, systems and structures for mothers to make it so. 

So what can we do, here and now, to make this so? How can we, as a pioneering generation of women, begin to build these structures and role model what a “self actualised mother” can be? 

Stay tuned … next week, Part 2 of this blog will reveal the 5 things I have implemented, to try and get my third baby out of really bad daycare. Until then, know that you are not alone … there are many of us out there now, seeking to combine our passionate and conscious motherhood journey with our paths of self actualisation in the world. Like generations of women trailblazing before us - whether for the right to vote, the right to choose or the right to sit at that boardroom table, we are being called now to stand together for the right to self actualised motherhood. Let’s do it together.