YOU vs Mommy
In the battle for your identity, how does motherhood fit in?
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I heard from so many of you after my Mother’s Day piece on substack and my subsequent IG post where I encouraged moms to say “No” to something they don’t want to do, even if they can’t say “Yes” to something else.
This week, my upcoming guest on the podcast is Elise Loehnen - author of the forthcoming book “On Our Best Behavior,” fellow substack writer, and host of the podcast “Pulling the Thread.” Her latest op-ed in the New York Times this week picks up on this same thread - the ambivalence, expectations and martyrdom of mothers. In her beautiful recounting of her own childhood, she comes to something which deeply resonated with me. As with our children, our identities and temperaments should not be viewed as a defect, but instead as our own personal superpower. We should be the mothers we want to be for the children we have. Not the mother that society expects us to be for the children we imagine we can craft.
The ambivalence comes from a societal expectation that you should love the identity of mother and love your kids. There are some women for whom these are easily conflated and conjoined, but for many, they are not.
- Elise Loehnen
As I talk to mothers each day about how to navigate the chaotic and oversimplified world of parenting advice - where scripts bring a false sense of control or each moment appears precious - I see more and more of this disconnect between the love we all have for our children, and our expectation of mommy martyrdom. Our children are best served by knowing we are human, that we can have an identity beyond mother and that we can do so while also ensuring they feel loved and secure.
Even though it was painful at times when I was a child, particularly because she was different from other moms (though I insist, not that unusual), she did create a coherent narrative for me. This narrative has proved to be less emotionally confusing than for some of my friends, who can sense and yet not name their mothers’ frustration and rage.
- Elise Loehnen
Our children can come to love and respect us as people - not only as their mothers. In turn, we can help them to become who they are - not who we want them to be.
Warmly,
Love this!