(The title is a quote by Hafiz).
I have the priveledge of being with a lot of mothers every week. Many mornings, I speak with other gentle mamas as I drop my boy off at preschool. I speak with mamas as we stand around the periphery of a park and watch our children play as if they have known each other forever. I have been at their sides as they birthed their babies. I have weekly dates with my best friends, who are now mamas too. I also have the priveledge to teach mom and baby yoga once a week. Through those classes, a special sort of community of mothers has formed. Looking back, it's been more than four years, on and off through maternity breaks... that's a lot of mothers bringing their babies together, week after week.
Two things I notice. One, is that, we really are of the same heart. We all want to be great moms, and we worry that we are not. We all adore our children - everything about our child tugs on our heart, the sighs at night, the special ways they move that we study since they are babies, each and every smile, especially the first ones. We are surprised at how much our children fill our hearts. It's so strong, it's surprising.
We all are human, and as human beings we are daunted at moments by what we have taken on, the depth, width, breadth of the commitment of being a mother. How many times have I heard a woman say, "No one told me it would be this challenging! Why didn't they tell me about (fill in the blank - loss of sleep, crying and wailing, how scary it is the first time they get sick - all the parts of being a mother that are immense)?"
I guess you could say that the moms I meet in my daily life are of the same culture. And, if you start to talk to people, I imagine that we really truly all are of the same heart, worldwide. We want everything for our children. We want to do well for them. We adore our children and want to treasure them in our arms as long as we can. We would do anything so that they thrive.
When I was giving birth, especially for my first child, I really did, in the throes of that passionate and painful moment of transition, have a vision of all the mothers who had come before me, who had all done what I was doing. Think about it, every single human being on the whole planet was carried inside of their mother. That is the only way we have ever brought a human into the world. The only way.
The other thing I observe is that we do better when we are together.
Maybe it is function of that same heart; we do better when all the parts of a heart, all the muscles are working as one. Like the Hafiz quote, we are very old friends. And without friends (this includes family) we would just not thrive as mothers.
One yoga student came up to me recently, with a brand new baby in her arms, just beaming. I mean, radiant, in her rumpled tee-shirt and sleepy cheeks after savasanah. This brightness was a marked difference than her expression in the same yoga glass for her first baby. When I asked her about it she said she is just so taken care of by the mothers she knows now. She has people bringing her meals, watching out for her big boy toddler, just coming by to talk. They threw her a lovely blessing way or baby shower. So she is just provided for, cared for and she has all the more energy to just enjoy the fleeting newborn baby days. She did not have this same community tending to her with her first baby, and it was stressful. She kept talking about how grateful she is and how the experience of having a newborn (even with the added challenge of a toddler as well) is estatic. It was so touching, lovely. Is this not as it is meant to be?
It is the commitment of my heart that mothers have support and connection like this dear mother of two. If a mother is supported so that she can relax and express her natural love for her children...is that not the world we would love to live in? A world where our heart can beat as one.
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