Your priorities will change. Your circle of close friends will change. Your focus on life will change. It is up to you whether the process of change is going to be positive or negative.
The shift in my priorities and relationships started to happen while I was pregnant with my first son. I believe his soul was guiding me to learn very important life lessons of integrity, trust, self-care, and intention in order to prepare me for how I needed to evolve in order to mother him.
At the time of my pregnancy, I became aware that what I focused on were tasks and relationships that drove my need to feel needed and to please others … my focus was unhealthy and unbalanced.
In welcoming my son to this life, I was able to find my voice and let go of the people that I thought were so important in defining who I was. The reality was that I was giving my personal power away in hopes of being loved and accepted. The irony was that the exact people that I gave so much attention to were the ones who often rejected me. It was like a tug of war. When they didn’t need me, they pushed me away, when they did call needing me, I ran with open arms.
Within the first year of motherhood, I released several toxic relationships, behaviours, and self-limiting beliefs. In going through those experiences, I learned valuable life lessons – here are the top three life altering that I hope help you:
1. Trust your intuitive voice. Listen to your inner knowing for what is best for you and your child. That doesn’t mean you don’t share with others, or listen to others suggestions, what it means is that with all the information that is given to you, take a pause - decipher for yourself and trust your own intuitive voice. Trust your own instincts instead of doubting yourself. Trust in how you perceive the situation instead of giving more weight to someone else’s story or perception. You really do know what is best. Trust it.
2. Spend time with people that elevate you and stop giving to those that drain you. I realized that, for me, giving was not the foundation of friendship. I learned that what I value from friendship is harmony. The harmony of give and take. The flow of respect and love in sharing life experiences. At the time of becoming a mom, the people that I gave the most time and energy to where in fact the people that did not respect or love me. I was an enabler of one-sided relationships. I gave in hopes of being accepted when in fact I often felt rejected. I was finally able to see that the people that I gave to didn’t care about me, they only cared about what I did for them.
3. Know that: People who love you want the best for you. People who love you will respect your life changes just as much as you respect theirs People who love you will not tell you what you do is not enough People who love you will value who you are instead of focusing on what you do
4. Advocate for yourself – your child’s wellbeing needs you to. I learned how to advocate for myself because I had to advocate for my son. My son made me realize that I had a choice. Do I choose to give him the love and attention that he needs or do I continue to drain myself by giving to those toxic relationships, giving in to fear based thinking, or self-sabotaging behaviours.
Motherhood has a way of forcing the issues that you keep pushing aside right into your way! Change is difficult and uncomfortable, but as the saying goes – what you resist will persist! Could you make a conscious choice to walk into that fear and hold on to whatever life supports you need along the way.
As you rise to the occasion to mother your child/ren, could you rise to be the best version of you?
Trust me - you will be amazed at how liberating it really is!