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motherhood

The Gift of Surrender

September 30, 2016 by Ashleigh

Motherhood is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. The constant needs of a 0, 1, and now 2 year old are overwhelming to the point of absolute exhaustion. I often fight with the desire to get away. I just need a week to myself, I think. Just one full night of sleep. The truth is, I haven’t had a full night of sleep since Mac was born and up till now haven’t been away from her for even a full day. Not that I haven’t wanted to, I have. I do. Sometimes, at the end of the day, I feel that if anyone tries to touch me I’m going to scream. And sometimes, at the end of the day, I feel so alone that I find myself staring into a dark, familiar hole of loneliness and despair. But most of the time, at the end of the day, I am dozing next to a sleepy, milk-drunk toddler with a contented smile on her face and her arms wound around my neck. And I’m so grateful for this unexpected gift of my life- that I am learning surrender.

I don’t think in this day and age that surrender is something easily learned. We don’t really need to surrender often or to anything if we don’t want to. For the most part, we go where we want and do what we want. And when we can’t do that we build pinterest boards of where we want to go and what we want to do, which is it’s own form of possession. But motherhood, at it’s depth, requires surrender. Surrender of where we want to go, surrender of what we want to do, surrender of our time, our body, our heart.

Surrender is not a popular concept in our culture of easy gratification. We’ve adopted the standard of convenience in its place. We’ve managed to make motherhood incredibly convenient. Car seats allow us to take our babies wherever we want to go. Bottles allow us to feed them on the way. Formula allows us to not even breastfeed if we don’t want to. There’s bouncers, and strollers, and swings, and pacifiers, and toys that make noise— a lot of noise. But what we are missing out on in this sea of convenience is the quiet call that beckons us deeper into motherhood. What I’m getting at is this— for every convenient parenting hack that we have created, there also exists an opportunity for surrender. What if, instead of trying to control, fix, change, and pacify our children, we chose to surrender to the exhausting, inconvenient, constant demands of motherhood? What would it mean for us and for our babies?

I’ve been breastfeeding Mac for two years now. For some, that seems like a long time. For others, no time at all. For me, borrowing from Hemingway, it happened gradually and then suddenly. But along the way there have been many, many weeks where all I wanted to do was have my body back to myself. I wanted to sleep through the night, without nursing our hungry milk hog multiple times. That’s what babies want: they want to nurse and be close to mama. All the time. There are a lot of so-called parenting experts giving terrible advice that these little ones need to be put on a schedule, their cries ignored, their needs unmet. Mamas, if your baby is crying from hunger or from fear, sadness, longing, or for any reason at all, I promise you they are not trying to manipulate you. They are crying, as all children have cried throughout history, because they were made to be utterly dependent on their mothers and in constant connection to them. The fact that we have tried to move away from this innate primal connection is hubris at best and incredible selfishness at worst. We force small babies onto feeding schedules thinking that they should be governed by our self-centered addiction to scheduling. I will never forget listening to the small baby of a family member crying relentlessly with hunger while the mother insisted that feeding time wasn’t for another 45 minutes. The cries were stressful for both the parents and the baby, but the dictatorship of the schedule had to be obeyed. How far from our mama intuitions have we gotten when we let the ridiculous parenting advice of a disconnected culture influence our decisions with our own little ones? Mamas, feed your babies! Hold them. Sleep with them. Keep them near you! It’s where they were literally born to be. Not just for 8 weeks or 3 months or even 6 months. In most of the world and for all of history, babies have been with their mamas until 4, 5, 6, even 7 years of age. Sleeping next to them, nursing when desired, enjoying constant secure attachment to the person who gave them life.

But what have we done? We’ve taken away our arms and given motorized swinging chairs. We’ve taken away our breasts and given plastic pacifiers and false nipples. We’ve taken away our warmth in the night and given instead the cold darkness of a solitary crib. We, as mothers, have given away our sacred place in our children’s lives and left them with false substitutions or worse, without substitution at all but with the only recourse being to cry themselves into exhaustion. Is it any wonder that rates of depression, suicide, personality disorders and mass shootings are skyrocketing? When our earliest needs for connection are being ignored?

And it’s not just the cost to our children but also the cost to ourselves that comes to bear. Each time I fight against the desire to run away from the weight of motherhood, I become a deeper, truer version of myself. I’ve been learning how to stay put, how to wait quietly in spite of the inevitable pain, loneliness and exhaustion of motherhood. Sometimes I just want to stick Mac in a crib and have my bed and my husband’s arms back. Sometimes I want to take a weeklong vacation and stop nursing. Sometimes. But the thing that our culture never taught me, the thing that I’m learning, is that it is okay to want those things and not act on them. It is okay to be utterly exhausted but choose not to sleep train. It is okay to feel totally depleted but to keep nursing anyway. It’s okay because my child’s needs are more important than my desire for my own convenience. And man, do I desire convenience. But the journey of motherhood for me has been one of letting the layers drop gradually away until I am totally exposed and raw and undone, until the only reality to me is her heart beating against mine as she burrows her hot, aching head into my chest while teething. Or as she clenches her fist in my hair and falls asleep in my arms.

And I know that something is working. Mac is confident, happy, healthy. She doesn’t cling to her toys, suck on anything relentlessly (except me), or cry hysterically when we leave her with someone else. She is absolutely secure in her world, secure in me. And that is so worth the cost of my time and my plans and my desires. At every inconvenient juncture along the way as a parent, there is a choice. Do we pacify, contain, control, fix our child’s need of us or do we enter it, wait with them, show up for them? This constant surrender is the hardest and most beautiful road available to us in our sacred role as mothers. It has the power to shape our children into secure, peaceful beings who desire connection with others. It has the power to shape us into slower, more generous, wiser versions of the women we were created to be.

Filed Under: Family, Words Tagged With: babies, motherhood, surrender

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Meet Ash

I'm a recipe creator, mama and writer living by the sea. I learned how to nourish myself with plants and in the process healed from chronic illness. My whole life has been a journey deeper into healing and freedom and I love being able to share that journey with you! This space is an invitation to my table where you will find way too much food, some real talk, and a whole lotta love. All the recipes I create are free of animal products, grain and soy. I hope you'll pull up a chair and stay awhile. At this table, all are loved! SUBSCRIBE

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  • Life without Instagram has been just so good for this mama. I missed you guys but what a wonderful few weeks of quiet and more presence with my people. I thought maybe I’d be over here sneakily coming up with more recipes for you guys but I’ve actually just been making our favorite meals over and over again. We’ve been spending our days in the unhurried rhythm of life together— meals at home, time outside in the muddy, cold pre-Spring wild, lots of books and crafts and cuddles and coziness. Thank you for being here. I love sharing life and connecting with all of you. This season feels new and unexpected and deeply still in a way that I didn’t even realize I had been longing for. Here’s to losing ourselves in the beauty of our ordinary extraordinary lives. PS Pictured is one of many humble bowls I enjoyed while away— roasted sweet potatoes, steamed yellow cauliflower, tomatoes, onions, radishes, cilantro, avocado, green onions and lots of lime! 🍅🥕🍋🥒🍆
  • I feel like I need to take a step back from Instagram for awhile. I’d like to listen more deeply to my own life than I can while doing so much talking. Sometimes I feel like my brain is on “scroll mode” even when I’m not on my phone.

If I can offer you any encouragement it’s this— that you are your own story. Yours alone. No one else has the answers. People can try to offer their well meaning advice, their flimsy expertise, their peer reviewed opinions, but none of us have any actual clue what we are doing or what is going on. Don’t give away your story, friends. Not to anyone. I’ll be back around soon. Peace to you.
  • Sunday lunch. Sweet potatoes, Avocado, and Brussels sprouts topped with finely chopped garlic and red onion and lime juice. Just the best. Off to hang out in the sunshine. 😘✌🏻
  • Just sitting here planning out meals for the week while I rock Shep to sleep in my arms. I don’t always stick to the meal plan 100% but I’ve started to more lately. It helps to have a game plan for shopping and has cut down on last minute grocery store trips. Tonight for our Sabbath dinner I’m going to make a curry to use up some of the tired looking steamed veggies we have in our fridge. On Friday afternoons, we pick all go together to pick Mac up and we eat lunch @erewhonmarket while I do our shopping for the coming week. I’ll try to post our grocery haul in my stories if you’ve any interest. I’ve also been posting my weekly meal plans there as well so I will get that up sometime today too! 😘✌🏻
  • This oil free Fettuccine Alfredo recipe couldn’t be more simple. It’s perfect for this time of year when these short dark days call for dinners that are fast, warm, and comforting to carry us through. Have you tried it yet? Let me know what you thought in the comments or if you have any questions. Xo  INGREDIENTS
•2 cups steamed cauliflower florets
•1/4 cup pine nuts
•1 tablespoon cashew butter
•1 tablespoon lemon juice
•1/4 teaspoon maple syrup
•1/4 teaspoon Himalayan salt
•1/4 garlic clove or 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
•3/4 cup pasta cook water or plain water
•2 servings fettuccine noodles of choice
•1/2 cup finely chopped parsley
•black pepper to taste

INSTRUCTIONS
1. Blend together the steamed cauliflower, pine nuts, cashew butter, lemon juice, maple syrup, Himalayan salt, garlic clove water until smooth.
2. Serve the Alfredo sauce over fettuccine noodles of choice and top with parsley and black pepper to taste.

Makes 2 Servings 🍝
  • “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” - Frederick Buechner 📷 @brittonfoster
  • Sheet pan meals were made for Sundays! This one baking tray can feed our family of 3ish (Shep doesn’t really eat much yet) for dinner and I can use the bottom rack to bake off some sweet potatoes, squashes or veggies for the week ahead. This recipe isn’t quite finished but I’ll get it up this week: Herb Battered Smashed Potatoes and a Maple Glazed Roasted Carrots Apples and Red Onion. Who’s here for this one?
  • Lunch today - Hannah Sweet Potato Circles with some other veggies and that homemade ketchup I posted in my stories the other day. (It’s saved under the What We Eat highlight.) Also I think I’m going to do my live mustard testing today if I can rope one of my fam into filming it for me. So be ready for that goodness! What are you eating for lunch?
  • Craving this. Gonna add it to the plan this week for sure. Sun Dried Tomato Artichoke Dip from Thyroid Healing by @medicalmedium. It’s simple but it is one of my favorite recipes of all time for sure.
  • Oh, cold rainy days I just love you. 😍  INGREDIENTS
•12 cups tomato broth (see description above)
•4 cups diced onion
•4 cups diced tomato
•4 cups cauliflower florets
•2 cups diced carrot
•2 cups diced zucchini
•3 tablespoons tomato paste
•2 teaspoons each of garlic powder, onion powder, chili powder
•1 teaspoon each of paprika, cumin, red pepper
•1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
•2 teaspoons Himalayan salt
•Optional Toppings
•4 limes
•1/2 cup cilantro leaves
•1/2 cup cashew cream (heyashfoster.com)
•1 jalapeño, sliced
•cayenne

INSTRUCTIONS
1. Add all of the ingredients except the toppings to a large pot and bring everything to a boil, then reduce to a low simmer for 30 minutes until the vegetables are tender and cooked through.
2. Serve topped generously with cilantro, cashew cream, lime juice, jalapeño, and cayenne if desired!
  • My sweet little avocado boy 6 months apart. Dealing with his eczema/allergies last year was so difficult. It really changed our family during that season. We found it really hard even just to go to the beach last summer because he was so uncomfortable and his skin would be so irritated by the sand, wind, and sun. I am so thankful for the healing he has experienced and I know I told you guys I would share more about that so here I am. Honestly, it took me awhile just to process it on my own. It was so hard! I have a new understanding and appreciation for what mamas of kids struggling with chronic illness go through every day. When Shep started struggling with his rash we had no idea what was causing it, but about a week later I started feeling it was the kitten we adopted for our daughter. Thankfully, some friends of ours fell in love with sweet Wendell kitty and adopted him. He is so loved in their home! But even after the cat left, the reactions continued. They got a little better maybe? But it was so hard to tell because it kind of came in waves. On the advice of @medicalmedium I completely overhauled my diet and took out nuts, seeds, oils, anything that could potentially be an irritant. My diet consisted (and still does) of fruits and vegetables. (If you want to know more about what I eat you can check out my story highlights.) The diet changes helped so much and were a critical component. But our guy kept on reacting. We had our whole house cleaned top to bottom including our air ducts. That helped some, but it still persisted. The whole time we had antibiotics from our doctor sitting in a drawer. They might have helped fix the outward appearance of Sheps skin but I was determined to help him heal from the inside out. The only thing we used on his skin that seemed to help a lot was lemon balm salve. I’ll post it in my stories and my recommendations highlight. Long hot showers also helped. And keeping his skin cool and dry. It wasn’t until we went to Hawaii that we found the final piece of the puzzle. We stayed in an Airbnb that had a cat in it before we arrived and within hours Shep broke out in hives all over his body. Continued in comments 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
  • Irish people know something about potatoes, friends. Colcannon (aka: sautéed kale or cabbage mixed with buttermilk mashed potatoes) is just the best winter food. I’ve been exercising the cabbage option lately and topping it with Surfrider sauce and it’s just 🤤🤤🤤. This recipe for “buttermilk” mashed potatoes uses cashews and it’s low fat/oil free. You can find it in my Potatoes ebook (link in my profile) and grab a copy for just $7! 👌🏻🥔🥔🥔