During my first few years as a parent, I bought into the idea that I was supposed to love my kids more than anything else. I heard and read the words of other parents:
“My life had no meaning before I had kids. Now my life makes sense.”
“I never knew love before.”
“All I want to do is stare at his face all day. Everything else melts away…”
I settled into the notion that now there were people in the world that I was supposed to love more than my spouse, more than my parents, more than myself.
And I did love them differently than I had ever loved people before. When my son was born, I held him in my arms in the recovery room. I had the distinct notion that I loved him with my feet. I could feel my love for him all the way into my swollen feet, the left one especially, a warmth that had never been there before.
So, a new capacity for love? Yes. When I birthed my son and later my daughter, I birthed within myself a new capacity for love.
But did this mean that I was supposed to pour all of that newfound love directly into my children?
At first the answer was, “Of course! That’s what being a mother means!”
But now I don’t think so.
If I’m taking all of my love and putting it into another, then along with that love, I’m unwittingly putting pieces of myself. My expectations, my needs, my hopes and dreams. Those expectations, needs, hopes, dreams–those become the strings attached to the love I give another, be it my child or a partner, a friend or a family member. Then that love, perhaps innocently given, can so easily turn into pressure. And if that love is not returned in the way that I want it to be returned, I could so easily become bitter.
During my Creativity Practice, as I sat in silent contemplation one evening, I heard the words in my head:
“I am to love myself as much as I love my children.”
Whoa.
We aren’t necessarily programmed to think this way. We seem to have a collective archetypal image of the mother who suffers for the sake of her children. And while some mothers perhaps need to suffer to create a better life for their children, I am not in that situation this time around. I live a comfortable, relatively easy life, and for that I am grateful.
At first the thought of loving myself as much as I love my children seemed almost sacrilegious. But then I thought, if I’m using all of my love to attend to my children’s desires, hopes, dreams, then who is attending to mine? Nobody. And then what am I teaching my children to do? I’m teaching them to eventually give up their own desires, hopes, and dreams– their own soul’s calling– once they find someone to pour their own love into.
Hm. A cycle of empty self-sacrifice, that seems to be.
So, who is the best person in the world to attend to my desires, hopes, and dreams? My own soul’s calling? Who is the person I spend more time with than anyone else? Who is the person best situated to offer me love all the time? Well, that would be me.
I’ve been practicing loving myself as much as I love my kids for a while now. This love isn’t the, “I’m great, me first!” love, it’s the “I accept myself as I am,” love. I practice attending to my own needs, and I practice noticing and respecting my own boundaries. I do things that are fun simply for my own delight (dance class!), and when I get angry or sad or scared, I let myself be angry or sad or scared and do my best not to make myself wrong for it. (<— Ha ha ha, I make that sound easy. It is SO hard for me.)
The beautiful part is, from this space of self-love, I feel an even greater capacity to love my kids. Instead of a love born of sacrifice, my love for them can be born of freedom of expression. Instead of feeling depleted because I haven’t attended to my own needs, I can feel calm and be present to the needs of my children. Instead of pushing my love down a path into their hearts, my love can radiate from within me and ripple out from all directions to them.
Then my kids can see it’s OK to do the same with their own love. (Truly, I think we’re all born radiating love for self and others, we just un-learn it as we go…)
All of this said, I would still throw myself in front of a train to save my kids’ lives. But I will not give up loving my own life under the delusion that I am supposed to love their lives “the most.”
Michelle Folk Johnson 