Mothering when the world is on fire
I won’t tell you HOW TO parent or exact tips… because I don’t know either. I’m figuring it out. I have many tools, deep knowledge and amazing coach community to rely on. But. This sh*t around us is CRAZY. So I’m only sharing what I do and making suggestions.
Hopefully it will help YOU.
What’s happening in the world right now is terrible. Allow yourself to feel any feeling which comes up. All feelings are valid. I feel a lot of anxiety when I think about my girl growing up in a world where r*pe is normalized and became statistics… where abortion is punished severly without second thoughts, but killing or r*ping women is max mild sentence.
Money and power can buy anything which makes me feel angry and powerless.
War.
Pedophilia.
Injustice.
Feelings which regularly come up: anxiety, anger, fear, disappointment, stress and overwhelm.
These are not comfortable feelings… But we can feel them. They are valid.
If I would put on my coach hat (which I swear will only do for a minute)… the reality is that NO feeling is created by these circumstances because if we wouldn’t know about them… we wouldn’t feel these uncomfortable feelings.
Our BRAIN interprets these …and then we feel those feelings based on what our brain makes it mean.
Which is good news.
We can direct our focus.
No… not away… not to put our head into the sand… and ignoring everything.
But to focus on what we can actually DO.
You know, the brain is NOT designed to be in this amount of stress all of the time. We feared, we got stressed then we survived the tiger or the night and there was a relief. If you’re a priviliged one (just like me) who is NOT in that tiger situation constantly, then it’s not ignorance if you don’t consume all the stress 0/24 but self-protection.
It’s a privileged choice what we need.
So you can stay sane.
So you can parent and be there as a mother.
When my phone is full of BREAKING BREAKING BREAKING and terrible news… my stress level is on the roof and I can’t funtion. That is not helping anyone.
I’m in a privileged situation to direct my focus on what I can do and release stress from my body.
What I do is:
Take deep breaths to calm my nervous system
Allow uncomfortable feelings when they come but don’t entertain them by scrolling my phone endlessly
Put away my phone in the evening (work in progress) to get a break
Try to focus on the present moment with my kids
Focus on the moms who I can help NOW
I search for ways to help, donate.
Pray would be the next one. But honestly I have a weird relationship now with praying, because how the F can these things happen… (so then I have a rant)
Do what FEELS good to you! But DON’t scroll endlessly PLEASE. Don’t let overwhelm get to you. That won’t help anyone.
Release the stress from your body and focus on what you CAN DO.
Donate. Pray. Protest. Share love in your micro environment. Raise the collective energy. Give yourself a break. Take deep breaths. Walk slowly. Help any way you can, anyone you can.
There is NOTHING wrong with you if you feel anxious, scared, overwhelmed… But don’t stay in those feelings because it doesn’t help anyone.
I try to keep the hope that bad things pass too… that good exists in this world and our kids grow up healthy and as happy as possible.
Exhale.
Xx