The best part about being a mother is the impact you can make on a child’s sense of
self. As the maternal force in my child’s life, it has been a great personal satisfaction of mine to
watch her grow in strength and beauty, both inner and outer. To me, being a mother means I
can reach the depths of who she is by simply role modeling my own self love. Children will do
what we do and not what we say. A personal hero of mine, Maria Montessori explained how we
could find a future filled with self-care and self esteem more beautifully than I ever could. “If
help and salvation are to come, they can only come from the children, for the children are the
makers of men.”
So, how do we save ourselves through our children? Simple; we remember to take care
of ourselves. While we make rules and set boundaries, our children focus in on our parental
habits. While we create reward systems and chore charts, children emulate exactly what they
see in their own homes. In the same way you are like the five closest people in your circle, your
children are also like those closest to them; their caregivers show them the way.
Truth be told, what are we saying with our lifestyle? When I want my daughter to make
healthy choices, I can’t say it from the bottom of a pint of ice cream. “Make healthy choices” is
something we must strive to live ourselves, and not something we can preach in an empty way.
Sometimes that means choosing some yogurt over a sugary snack, sometimes that means
cutting a toxic friend out of your life, and sometimes that means going on a family bike ride.
There’s a lot that love can do when it is put in a leadership role instead of taking the face of a
“boss” who just gives orders. We must be the humans we want to raise. This requires training
our responses and bleaching the body negativity out of vocabulary.
My daughter often watches me get dressed in the mornings, and more especially when I
get dressed for the gym in gym clothes. She will point out things she likes about my clothes.
“Oh, I just love that color blue. I love light blue” and she won’t notice my cellulite. As I tie my
shoes she will ask me why I must go to the gym, and sometimes she tells me she’d rather I
didn’t. I hold space for her feelings, but I remind her that I need time to be alone and get
stronger so I can always be around to protect and hug her. She sees me in a way I cannot see
myself.
While you cannot tell by looking at me, I struggle deeply to see myself as enough. It is
partially due to the trauma of my past and lots of it is body dysmorphia that lingers from that
residually like the after shakes of a childhood earthquake. I am stuck in a set of eyes that do not
always see things as they are. It’s like a beauty filter, but without seeing myself with gorgeous
lashes I see the one fold of skin that sags the way I don’t like. My eyes zoom in and tell my brain
that all my existence can be seen in this one flaw. There is redemption for my vision though,
and it came to me with motherhood.
I realized during the active and laborious task of birthing and breastfeeding a whole new
human that my body was the most infinitely capable thing I had at my disposal. I saw my body
for its utility rather than just how I measured it aesthetically. It came alive for me in a way I had
never known before. I realized how desperately I needed to see my body for it’s meaning to my
life, and even more how I wanted to show my daughter to view her own body. The word that
kept coming to my heart was: capable. I must believe in my own capability so I can show my
daughter how wonderfully capable she is today and forever. I see my legs as the strong
muscular pillars that helped me carry the extra pounds of baby, blood, and placenta. I see my
shoulders as broad and distinguishing. I see the stomach as a comfortable pillow for her little
head to lay on while she watches Frozen for the one millionth time. I stopped viewing myself as
beautiful or ugly-- and began seeing it as capable.
For now, I practice “saving mankind” by saving children from the sinking feeling of self
doubt. That is the mark I intend to leave on the world. While I raise my daughter, and help other
mothers raise their children, I wish nothing but for them to understand the meaningful value in
each of their lives. Not what they can produce, not based on their attitude or abilities, but their
innate value, which they bring to the world by simply existing. This is what I find to be the most
important work of parenthood-- and moreover the most important work of any human life.