Are you in a competition to be a mom? With whom? Who wins?
Competition. It’s pervasive. Insidious. In American culture, competition is in everything: political campaigns, media and who gets the attention–which media outlets and which stories, in school we strive for good grades or to be first chair in orchestra, captain of the cheerleading squad, homecoming queen. In work we are competing for a job, a promotion, a better salary, a bonus, a sale. We compete for men, for status, for who looks best in the dress.
Do you feel competitive about creating a family? Are you experience any projection from others that has the flavor of competition? My curiosity and reason for writing about this today has to do with seen and unseen influences you deal with as you create your family in our “modern” world.
What if there was an established cultural understanding of the beauty and perfection of every woman’s unique and divine path to motherhood?
In my experience, there are so many factors influencing and contributing to outcomes and to your well-being as you navigate your fertility journey. It’s complex. And often, some of the very challenging aspects go unnamed or overlooked because they aren’t conscious or acknowledged in the mainstream.
When your friends or your sister is getting pregnant easily again and again and you are not, it can be heartbreaking or feel unfair. Maybe you feel less than or left behind. Going to baby showers when you are trying to conceive can be excruciating. And holidays can be as bad or worse as well-meaning relatives ask you when you are starting a family. You may not want to share what’s really going on for you because of the way people respond.
These experiences are not necessarily related to competition. Having to show up to be supportive for friends who are new moms can be really challenging if you want what they have or if others are projecting their expectations on you and pressuring you.
How would it be different to walk with a solid internal knowing of your child’s and your soul’s plan (which you may already have), in a cultural context that reflects the beauty and perfection of your unique and divine path to motherhood?
Is there anything of competition, conscious or subconscious, on your journey to motherhood? Is there a layer in there somewhere influencing your experience at all, either from inside of you or projected upon you? Have you already considered this? What would that look like, if you were being influenced by a competitive drive to have a family?
Could it be comparing yourself to others and feeling bad about yourself and your spot, timing, situation? Could it cause anxiety? Could it be judging someone who is taking a path to motherhood that is different than yours? Could it be feeling and/or being judged and unsupported? Could it be an unexamined drive to have a child, no matter what? Could it cause fear of losing your husband?
What else could it be?
Female competition is not new. Beauty and fashion brands use insecurity and competitive female nature to sell their products and compete amongst themselves to dominate the market. In not-so-distant history, court dynamics played out viciously, with manipulation, betrayal, even poisoning at play. All of this to ensure your family’s place. Often the young daughters were used as pawns, trained to be cunning, deceitful, to lure and seduce. A woman who could bear a son was considered worthy. A barren woman, not worth much and in some cases was discarded unceremoniously or even violently. I could go on and on, but this is well documented and seen often in books, film. You know what I am talking about.
How do these cultural stories impact your individual experience of becoming a mom? How does our current spot in human evolution and mass consciousness around being female, scarcity of resources, perceived value, sense of self-worth, status impact your personal experience?
And look into the future and what it will be like being a mom. Mom’s compete. Whose child is the smartest, cutest, the best athlete? What mom recovered the fastest from pregnancy and looks best in her jeans? Who has the best house? The most adoring husband and “best dad” or same-sex partner? Who is the best cook? Who is the amazing home-schooler? Who is having it all, doing it all, super-mom?
Even if you are evolved beyond this way of thinking and being, it’s likely around you somewhere. You might be affected by cultural or personal expectations and messages about how you should be doing things, where you should be by now, how you measure up.
Here is a question for you:
Can you slip out of the noose of mass-consciousness female competition and stand firm in your own authentic truth, purity and power?
In my opinion, there is no place for competition on your journey to become a mom or be a mom. None whatsoever. You deserve to feel free. You deserve the space and freedom to sink authentically into your own perfect timing and all of the life experience you and the other souls involved are cooking up!
Your journey is yours. It’s unique. It’s Divine. It’s gorgeous no matter how it looks, how long it takes you, if you do it on your own or with a partner, if you are in a same-sex partnership, a stable marriage, choosing to be a single mom, adopting, using a surrogate, a series of ruptures along the way, had a one night stand, whatever. Yours is your own perfection and you really wouldn’t want anyone else’s.
Your soul has a plan. Your child’s soul has a plan. Are you tuned into the purity and beauty of that plan, choosing that as your anchor, your North Star?
This issue of competition is not small depending on your perspective. You can stay in it, in that dynamic for as long as it serves you. There is nothing wrong with it. It’s is and has been a part of humanity and part of many a soul’s plan.
Is competition a part of being the new human?
Is it a part of where we are headed as a species?
Is it what your child wants? Is it the tone that he or she is a match for?
Something worth looking at. If this resonates at all, you might consider freewriting or journaling about this. You could write Motherhood, Expectations about… My Timing, My Age, My Partner/Husband, My Body, or something else across the top of the page and then let yourself write everything that comes to mind. You could also write Things I know about …Becoming a mom, my child, our plan…and let yourself write freely about that.
