Why All Mothers Need Support

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While you're learning completely new and unknown skills like feeding, bathing, holding, playing, identifying the needs of a human who can't speak, you're also learning how to be with this new you. You are giving birth and tending to the new you, the mother.

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That is all consuming, emotionally draining, physically demanding, and spiritually elevating. Oh, and all that, after going through a major hormonal depletion, the biggest a human can undergo in such a short time span. I mean th those post-partum months, yeah, those two, three, six months after birth.

00:44
And being tortured with lack of sleep for months on end. Mothers are culture shifters and creatrixes. Then why are they kept in the background? quiet and unsupported. I'm Simona, Seasons of matrescence guide and educator, holder of space for mothers, woman honoring her body, her womb, and her wise cycles, and this is Motherlived, the podcast that sends that centers mothers and brings to light their lived experience, shifting the way mothers care for themselves and the way we support mothers as a culture.

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I'm filling the gap between what we think we know about mothers and their true lived stories and transformation. I sit down with amazing wise women, thought leaders, wells of creativity to talk about matrescence, motherhood, womanhood, cyclicality, spirituality, sexuality, and all the juicy, deep, complex threads we weave together as women.

01:51
You won't leave this podcast without a seed of change or inspiration growing inside you. Welcome.

02:08
Hi there. I'm so excited that you're listening to the first episode of Motherlived. I chose to talk about support for mothers because I think this is a great starting point for our journey together.

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This is a topic that is very important and that encounters and elicits a lot of resistance in mothers and in society in general. The fact that all mothers need support isn't a very well acknowledged nor an easily digested topic by the culture we live in, since if we talk about mother support, people tend to imagine you only refer to someone or something to help her care for her baby.

02:49
Nobody, or very few, actually think that mother support is actually support for the mother. We have such high expectations of mother and such little framework that actually sees and holds the mother, the woman, that we take this role for granted.

03:08
We completely ignore and fail to support the mother in her transformation and her becoming. So I really felt the need to put this here as a start to normalizing support for mothers, for them, for their inner lives, their challenges, and their becoming.

03:28
It's ridiculous to expect mothers to mother to their full potential, to raise healthy human beings socially, emotionally, not just physically and ignore the mother completely. And still, this is exactly what we do as a culture.

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One very real fact about becoming a mother is that you need support. And I don't just mean, as I said, support to care for your baby. I mean support to care for yourself and actually figure out what is happening to you.

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And another fact about mothers is that they often feel that needing support means they've failed. It's not always conscious. Many times this is a sneaky thought that plants its seed inside and works quietly to dissuade you of any attempts to ask for and accept support for yourself.

04:22
Now that we've got this out in the open, let's talk about why all mothers do need support and why this should be something that we shouldn't even be talking about. It should be implicit and rooted in our society.

04:38
Now, for years and years, women have had and counted on the experience, the support and wisdom of their circle of women, and of elders, who actually held the mother and prepared her for what was next.

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But that was a long time ago, back when we still lived in close communities, when caring for children was a collective task, a collective purpose, and mothers, grandmothers, aunties, sisters, neighbors cared for children together, and offered a tight and strong support network for the mothers.

05:15
So thousands of years of doing this will have rooted us in feeling a deep need for support and in needing to feel a community, a pack around us, to hold us while we're is experiencing this this massive transformation, becoming a mother.

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Needless to say say that today we live in a very different culture. And it is, many times, one that creates more isolation and loneliness. It's one that is characterized by dispersion of kin with your family or your loved ones living far away in different cities, even in different countries, countries or different continents, and having less and less of that sisterhood, of that closeness that used to be a net of care and support for women who became mothers.

06:07
What I'm saying is that the wisdom of having that close community and support of the family made sense. It offered a natural and important part of what a mother needs to integrate her new role, and to be able to carry it and care for her baby.

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the pressure is higher, the expectations surrounding mothers are off the roof, and the support that they receive is low to none. That is not right, and that does not reflect the need of mothers, nor does it help create a culture of connection or one that supports the growth and evolution of healthy adults, not just physically, but emotionally, socially, culturally.

06:56
As a mother, you're going through the single most important and impactful transformation that you have experienced in in your entire life. There is no other transition, there is no other developmental process more intense and more complex for a woman than becoming a mother.

07:17
Besides birthing a new human human being, one that is, no pressure, completely dependent on you and needs you to survive and to thrive. You are also birthing a new you. That means that all you used to know, all you used to do, all you used to value shifts.

07:38
It changes completely. The way you see yourself, the way others perceive you, your relationships and your roles, your routines, your body, your career, your beliefs, they all change. Yes, not all of them as intensely, but they do shift, they change.

07:58
You experience an intense and huge number of changes in all areas of your life. And if we're talking about the first years of mothering, if we're talking about postpartum, you're experiencing all that in a very short period of time.

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That is a lot to take in. It's a lot to make sense of, it's a lot to adjust to. It requires you to constantly rearrange your inner layers to let go and to make room for new aspects of yourself.

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It requires you to drop deep inside yourself and answer all sorts of distressing questions. Who am I? What am I doing with my life? What is my purpose? What matters to me now? Will I ever be the same again?

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Where am I headed? Those are hard questions to answer without having your whole life rearranged at the same time, and caring for a human being that makes you feel like you're walking around with your heart or lungs or any vital organ outside of your body.

09:04
Though I imagine the heart would mean you just stop living. Well, the lungs do involve a certain type of slow and suffocating type of death. So yeah, it would make more sense to have your lungs walking outside of your body.

09:17
But I digress. And you need to answer all these questions, yeah, and to make sense of your experience in order to be able to step into this life-altering role, the role of a mother.

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You need to care for that inner world so that you can integrate what it means to be a mother and care for your baby. That is an integral part of being and becoming a mother.

09:43
This new identity you're developing needs two important things to develop. One is for you to actually perform and involve yourself in doing all the tasks and daily life routines of caring for your child, so actually caring for your child daily.

09:58
And the second is being acknowledged and seen by the world around you, particularly by mothers, but also by sisters, by family, by society. You need to be seen as a mother by others, which means that you're obviously craving connection, you're obviously craving support, you're craving authentic and real care, compassion and acknowledgement, not to mention appreciation and feeling valued.

10:28
So while you're learning completely new and unknown skills like feeding, bathing, holding, playing, identifying the needs of a human who can't speak, you are also learning how to be with this new you. You are giving birth and tending to the new you, the mother.

10:49
That is all consuming, emotionally draining, physically demanding, and spiritually elevating. Oh, and all that, after going through a major hormonal depletion, the biggest a human can undergo in such a short time span. I mean th those postpartum months, yeah, those two, three, six months after birth.

11:12
And being tortured with lack of sleep for months on end. It is a lot to go through on your own, and you are not meant to mother alone. You're not meant to go through it alone.

11:26
You're not meant to remain the same you. You're not meant to bounce back to your old life, nor to see things the same way or to do the same things you used to do.

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Becoming a mother is like having a whole new pair of senses that are enhanced and set to evolve mode. They will show you the world completely different. You will be feeling everything intensely and all at once.

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You will observe and hear parts of you you didn't know were there, and you will grow and bloom amazing other parts, amazing gifts. So superhuman senses, intense experiences, and a whole new you.

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So yes, you need support. All mothers do. All mothers need support. There is nothing wrong with you for needing support, for feeling that it's hard as fuck to be a mother. There's nothing wrong with you for not feeling like you expected to, for finding it all challenging.

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That does not mean you're not good at this mom thing. It does not mean you're not meant to be a mother or nor does it mean that others are doing it better and you just suck at it.

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It means you are experiencing the deepest and hardest developmental process of your life, exactly as you need to, in order to grow into a new you. This is how you manage, this is normal.

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This is the messy middle, the hard, the ordeal, the rock bottom, out of which you emerge wiser and stronger. All mothers experience matrescence. All mothers experience challenges in their own ways, their own challenges, and you are connected by this this invisible thread that binds you in sisterhood.

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Because you're all rooted in living the ancient and most nurturing story of all. The birth of a mother, the creation of she who creates. So ask for support, my love, if it is in your reach.

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You are only stronger when you do so. Nobody should go through such a hard, confusing and all being demanding process without having without having all the possible support they deserve. That should not even be a question, whether you need support or not.

13:54
That should be a given. And if you're not feeling supported, Mama, if you're feeling alone and unseen in this huge journey, I see you and I am sending all my love to you. Know that you're not alone, and know that you deserve all the care and support in the world.

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If we're not getting it, it's not because you're unworthy. It's because the world and the culture you're living in has failed you.

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And also know that I'm here to be part of the tribe that supports you, that you can always write to me at connect at simonamustata.com or you can find me on Instagram or on my website.

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All the links are in the episode and feel free to reach out please. So if you're a mother, it's normal to need support and you need it to grow into this new version of you.

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And if you're not a mother, but you're around mothers, please do think and offer any kind of support that the mother needs. Ask her. Offer. She needs it.

15:10
That's it for today. Hold yourself with care and compassion. Until next time, hon. Big hug.

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Thank you so much for listening to Motherlived, and if you liked it, please show your love by sharing with other mothers who need it, who haven't yet discovered matrescence, who are struggling, who need to feel seen, heard, and supported.

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This is how we create the much needed cultural change in the way mothers are seen and held by society, returning their power to them and trusting the medicine that they bring to the world.

15:52
Have you joined my newsletter community of wise mamas yet? You get three mini audio episodes exclusively for you, meant to help you dive deeper into your lived experience. They cover the unseen work that mothers do, beliefs we hold about motherhood and their impact on your mothering, and cyclical alignment as a tool to help you practice self-compassion and presence.

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Join us today on Simonamustata.com slash newsletter community. Until next time, hold on to the belief that you are enough and that you carry the wisdom you need to guide you, Mama. Hugs.