The power of socks
And feeling seen as a mother...
When my daughter was two I was gifted two pairs of warm socks by two friends who I move with regularly.
The socks were a birthday present, gifted to a couple of months before my actual birthday.
They came with a card: ‘may these keep your moving feet warm.’
They were the most meaningful gift I received that year and the imprint that receiving them left in my body is lasting, re-membering me within a time of my life in which the thing I needed most was warm socks and to receive the care that was behind the giving of them.
At this time in my life, all my socks were worn through. I would turn up to our regular peer movement group with my toes and/or heels poking through holes, making contact with the cold, hard ground in the depths of winter.
It’s not that I wasn’t aware of it. Of course I noticed my socks and felt the cold of my feet. It’s just that, through my sleep deprivation and the endless list of tasks that lay upon my shoulders, my need for new socks and remembering to buy them seemed to fall endlessly from my memory.
Whilst I was doing so well at ‘keeping up with it all’ - parent related tasks, keeping my children warm, waking multiple times in the night to tend my children, growing my business in a new place, cooking meals, doing laundry, keeping the house, picking up my children, dropping them off, attending a three year training - a part of me, in this case my dear, dear feet, we’re expressing something of my struggle, making it explicit to the world (and how I bow in gratitude to my dear feet).
I say this from a reflective place, rather than from a martyred place that might collude with ideas that my care for others completely overrides my care for myself. I never wanted it to be so. I include myself in the circle of all beings who are worthy of love and care.
And yet, I equally recognise how the belief that the needs of others must always come before my own is also something that can be unconsciously woven into a woman’s psyche and that can need unpicking, as it has done for me over the years, and especially since becoming a mother. The demands dominant modern culture places upon mothers are a heavy load to bear, especially when the privilege of financial stability and innate community support are lacking.
For many mothers, putting themselves first is not a choice they feel they can make. For many, there is regular compromise for the sake of survival and being able functioning in the day to day. This isn’t a sign that a mothers ability to be an upstanding member of society, to buckle up and live up to the modern day image of a can do superwoman has failed. It doesn’t mean they haven’t been able to adopt positive strategies of coping and are simply lacking self empowerment. It doesn’t mean that they have given in to negative thoughts or have a bad attitude towards life. No.
This is, rather, a much wider systemic issue that concerns us all. The expectations placed on mothers (primary care givers) are too high. They are unsustainable and, often, lead to burn out and a sense of feeling forgotten. The web of support that is remembered in the cells of every mother, and that is sorely lacking in the reality of every day modern life for so many can bring such grief and weight to the experience of mothering in modern culture.
Forgetfulness, scattyness, stress, rage, feelings of low mood, burn out, as well as nervous system responses such as fight, flight, freeze & fawn, are all natural responses to the pressures that are placed on mothers (primary care givers) in a dominant modern culture that strips the value and reverence away from mothering.
If you are a mother and you feel any, or more, of these feelings: you are not alone and your response to the situation you find yourself in as a mother in modern culture is valid and normal (perhaps even an energy attempting to move through you and instigate change).
Yes, there is a plethora of tools out there that can be utilised and are, indeed, of great support in meeting these challenging feeling states and helping them to shift and move. Praise and gratitude for these tools.
Equally, let us be aware of when we are adopting strategies that collude with and continue to bolster unsustainable notions of the hyper-independence fostered by modern, dominant capitalist industrial culture.
Do these strategies lead to greater connection and fulfilment in our wider lives, or do they foster, still, a sense of going it alone, managing, keeping a lid on things, and yet ever more independence? (when what we actually need is each other).
Back to receiving my new warm socks.
The most touching part about receiving these socks, for me, was that my friends saw a part of me that was expressing my struggle. They saw the part that needed support, and responded to it with care. They met a need that, at this point in my mothering journey, was just too much for me to fulfil alone.
The point of successful mothering (parenting / primary care giving) is not to master it all without the need for support. This would be a mass collusion with an unhealthy system that does not have our best interests at heart.
Perhaps a deeper seed within mothering is that it brings to the fore our shared need for each other. It invites an opportunity not only to see and behold our children, but to see and behold each other with greater intimacy and depth of connection.
Before I became a mother, I was doing quite well at denying my need for others. Not that I can say it was serving me. It wasn’t.
Since I have become a mother, I have not been able to deny this need and I have not been able to ignore the huge fracture across communities in dominant modern culture.
My invitation here is to look where you don’t normally see.
See feet, elbows, under eyes and knees.
Parts of us, of every-body (m/others), are speaking our struggles, silently screaming the places that need love, care and holding (perhaps even expressing something of the wider collective / ecological need) not just from ourselves, but from the wider community.
Warm arms and warm hearts can make a world of difference, perhaps even set something in motion you may never have imagined…