The Mommy & Me Mindset

B Y : P R I Y A A L I

I first became a mother back in 1998 at the age of 25. I was most excited to enter motherhood; it was the next big milestone in adulthood after I got married when I was 23. Mothering my first born led me to create a mindset of wanting to give her everything in the world. As I was still experiencing the newness of being more than someone’s daughter and wife, this new role was huge for me. I spent every moment with her, as her father worked long hours. She became my companion as well as my little doll that I dressed up and paraded around.

Days before giving birth to my second child and oldest son, Iremember holding my daughter in my arms in a rocking chair,sobbing. I couldn’t fathom how I could love another child

when I loved her so much. Thankfully when I birthed my son later that week, as soon as I held him I fell in love with him. It was a new love, a love just for him. As a mother of two, I was faced with adapting a new mindset. On an ideal day this mindset was balance. On a less ideal day it was how to juggle and survive.

Slowly without my knowing I was becoming more and more mommy and less me. My self value began to come through my children. How well mannered they were, how well dressed they were, how healthy they were, how smart they were all reflected back to me. In 2007 and 2009, my younger son and daughter were born. My ‘mom value’ doubled, as a mom of 4 had become a rare species. I can remember at one point in time, driving them to four different schools in the morning, beginning my daily quest to be supermom.

When my older son handed in a project in 4th grade, I became upset with him for not presenting it well because of all the hard work I had put into the art portion of the project. Shortly thereafter, there was a party at my younger children’s Montessori school for Christmas. It seemed like I was juggling ten balls that week as opposed to five, and I had to present a nut-free offering. Wanting it to be homemade, I put it off trying to think of ideas to wow. As time grew near, and after much inner conflict, I made a decision to go with a store bought item with a plan to purchase after the Christmas concert that evening. The concert ran late and the grocery store closed. I tried convenience stores; nothing nut-free. I went to bed with a plan to rise early and head to the store before school, but somehow the anxiety paralyzed me the next morning.

I drove the kids to school and arrived in theparking lot and parked right in front of the door.I could see the teachers waiting at the

glass door to receive the kids and the baked goods; the goods I didn’t have. Suddenly the emotions took over and I began to sob uncontrollably. I could see the teachers’ faces go from smiles of anticipation to confusion and then to concern. They came to the car and I felt like I had to turn myself in as I slowly lowered the window. The principal looked so concerned as she asked if I was ok and what was wrong. Through my uncontrollable sobs I managed to get out, “I don’t have any baked goods.” Her face went into shock, split likely from disbelief that this was actually the source of my grief and that I was grieving at all. She reassured me all was well and gingerly took the kids in for class. I realized moments later that I had now taken on a mindset that my actions determined my children’s value in society.

In my forties, I was in the midst of a divorce.My kids would spend time away at their

father’s home and for the first time ever in my adult life I found myself having periods of time where I was completely alone. I was born someone’s daughter and when I left their home, I went straight to being someone’s wife and then to being a mother of four. For the past 17 years I had been living life as mommy and now I was having an opportunity to live life as me.

Even then it took me a year or two to get out of the mommy mindset and into a me mindset. I recall the kids being away for Winter Break and at their father’s house for the whole week. By mid-week I had grown tired of take out and craved my own cooking. That day at the age of 42, I became aware that I had never, ever, cooked a meal for just myself. I had ordered in or eaten leftovers, frozen meals or managed to grab a meal out with friends or survived on appetizers from networking events, but never cooked a meal for me. What did I even like to eat? Not what will please the kids, or meet their nutritional needs or be fast enough for me to make in between work and supper time, but what did I like to eat? I spent the rest of the week making daily trips to the supermarket and buying and trying and learning about me.

This sparked a new awareness and a new phase in my life. The awareness that in becoming a mother, it is just as important to nurture, nourish, teach, lead, encourage, support and praise yourself. It is important to create opportunities for yourself as an individual; to know where others end and you begin. From the hours of labour, where we learn to push through the pain for the lives of our children to begin, we can easily fall into the mindset of living our lives for them, through them and putting them first.

It is so vital to consciously make time to be inthe mindset of your own growth and evolution.So many of us get lost in the motherhood

shuffle, only leading us to need to go and find ourselves in our forties. What if we kept in touch with ourselves all along, maintaining selfcare, self-awareness and personal development? Giving to our children can offer some of life’s greatest challenges and joys. A mother’s love is one of a kind, but it’s key to lead them by example and teach them the words of the late and great Whitney Houston, “learning to love yourself, it is the greatest love of all.”