For Mothers: Freedom!

The flip side to our devotion to our children is a necessary sacrifice of our freedom in order to care for them. We cannot put ourselves first and put our children first. Something has to give… right?

Freedom in perspective

As mothers, I believe we are pre-disposed to want the best for our children. We want them safe, healthy, educated, socially secure…. and free to be themselves, right?

But in our promotion for their well-being, sometimes we have to sacrifice our own, don’t we?

What is freedom?

Actually, I don’t think we necessarily have to sacrifice or give up our own freedom in order to raise our children well. Rather, I think it depends more upon our attitude and our mindset toward freedom, and how we define freedom.

Freedom of thought doesn’t have to change with motherhood.

Freedom of movement doesn’t have to change… necessarily. Can’t we take our children with us much of the time? (I learned how to clothes shop for myself super-quickly when my son was a baby! In the pram sleeping, or in the push chair strolling, he fit into the change room with me!:)

Freedom of expression can be found in our appreciation of music, art, literature… We might have less time for personal attention in these areas, but we don’t have to give them up completely. In fact, I think it’s better not to…

What about our freedom of movement and our freedom in ambition… Yes, some of this may have to change, if we are to have time to devote to the development of our children. But when there is a trade-off, to have the blessing of a child to care for is not a sacrifice. It is a choice. It is an opportunity. It is a responsibility, a challenge, a gift.

Parenting is such an opportunity to express freedom! We may become free from a day job. Escape from unwanted social demands or expectations: aren’t these a kind of freedom? We are instead given freedom, an opportunity to be what the majority of adults are prescribed or designed to be: we gain the freedom to be a parent!

Mothers and freedom

Every choice we make is ours to make: freely.

When we look from that starting point, we can very quickly realise that we are free to be who we are in whatever circumstance we are in.

As an active parent, time to ourselves might be more limited than what it was before we were parents; however, being a parent is every bit an expression of ourselves. Whether expressing ourselves through a hobby, our career, our interests or relationships including our children, we are still living, breathing, existing, developing, expressing ourselves through everything we do. Being a parent is a relationship in itself, between us and our children. Each relationship in our lives is an expression of ourselves… and how we express ourselves in any of our relationships is an example of that freedom.

When you look at freedom — and time and relationship — from that perspective, we can realise that although our expression of freedom may change, our freedom remains.