What does it feel like to be a mother?
On a quiet sun-kissed afternoon, “Pumpkin” did something he hadn’t before. All mothers have experienced both the wave joy when their baby does something for the first time and, the awkward deflation when others don’t grasp the significance.
Perhaps some things must be seen and felt to be understood.
Pumpkin had smiled at me. Ordinary, yet magical. Many thousands of babies around the world had likely gained the awareness and ability to intentionally smile that day but I took it as a small rite of passage that my baby irrevocably, no longer saw me as just a comforting being from which warmth and milk flow. This gummy grin was not a social reflex, but a decided response. He had paused his amusement with my hair to gaze deeply into my eyes. In that instant he knew me and, that we belonged together.
As I reflected later on days filled with spit up and more tiny wonders, Pumpkin was working his new social skills – offering joy to everyone from the friendly dog-walkers to the persnickety crone behind the counter at the post office. I loved witnessing the effect this had on people. How a small sweet gesture softened and brought them together, if only for a moment. I too had softened and it caught me by surprise that in all the exciting chapters I’ve lucky to call part of my story, this quieter, simpler moment is how and when contentment would find me.
As a mother, wife, sister, daughter, neighbor, and regular post-office customer, I thought what I had always desired was to be liked. Now it seemed glaringly obvious, all I had wanted, needed had been to been this. I mused for a while on what exactly “this” was.
Baby smiles? Empathy? Belonging? …Love.
Empathy is that which allows us to truly recognize and appreciated one another. A sort of socio-emotional glue which binds people and keeps them connected in a meaningful way. Empathy and selflessness are the two main ingredients of agape, the most powerful form of love, connecting all people as well as man and the divine.
Empathy and selflessness also happen to be the two main ingredients of motherhood.
Among the eight forms of love recognised by the ancient Greeks, agape is considered the highest form and, essential for true community. Author David Brooks probably said it best:
“There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.”
While similar forms of love may be present in relationships, most have conditions. Agape does not. It doesn’t need to be earned and, may even manifest as love at first sight. Which is by very real phenomenon:
Upon meeting their newborn, mothers and fathers experience love at first sight physiologically as a rush of oxytocin and cascade of other hormonal changes that will continue to affect their bond for months to come (Gettler, L. T., et al., 2021).
Babies may have a lot to teach us.
Empathy, a cornerstones of agape, which in turn is a cornerstone of community, is among our first abilities in life. It is believed that babies are capable of empathy as early as a few days to weeks old, with the mirror neuron system responsible for emotional recognition active immediately following birth. It makes sense, that a species born so fragile and needy, would be hardwired to form emotional connection as early as possible.
Connection = Survival
Interestingly, studies have shown that babies exhibit empathy not only by just mimicking, which may serve to provoke endearment from a caregiver but, additionally, that they will take empathetic action to help others in need, such as soothing peers or caregivers in distress (Nichols, S.R., et al., 2009).
Lying there on the cotton sheets, Pumpkin fast asleep, the thought arose in my mind that much of our development towards self-actualisation and the fabric of a healthy community require connection and taking empathetic action. While we may credit significant life lessons to our closest adult relationships, it is our babes with whom we often have the strongest connection, the most frequent exchange of empathy, and the gift of spontaneous agape.
Dr. Abraham Harold Maslow, a 20th century American psychologist, is famous for his theory of psychological health based on a hierarchy of needs in which humans are ever striving to fulfill, in a specific order.
I’m sure you’ve heard of it.
Since my first semester of psychology, sitting in a drab yet still imposing lecture hall that appeared unchanged since the 1970s, my impression of this famous triangle is that it is incomplete. The real and raw experience of life would say that the pursuit of fulfilment doesn’t fit into 2-D equilateral triangle and rarely follows the order Maslow suggests. Perhaps leaving out agape and community, makes Maslow’s triangle unascendable.
Survival requires connection. Thriving requires agape.
Connection seems to be the key to not only survival early in life, but to thrive later on. There is a positive linear relationship between quality of life and the quality of connections we have. Having community appears to be a built-in part of our how our biology is meant to function. Robert Waldinger, M.D., author of The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness (a book I highly recommend) explains in his TED Talk how we need community to get through life’s challenges.
“The people who were happiest, who stayed healthiest as they grew old, and who lived the longest were the people who had the warmest connections with other people.” - Robert Waldinger, M.D
We don’t realize how much agape fills the spaces in between waking and sleeping until it’s not there. This became searingly apparent when I decided to move to Germany without knowing more than a handful of words and even less people. Trusted co-workers, not having to eat alone, and the comfortable familiarity of conversing in my mother tongue had all been taken for granted. The survival-based need to connect, to belong, had kindled a fear in me that perhaps agape would not be able to follow me so far from home. I spent my first nights alone in an empty apartment, on a street I couldn’t pronounce the name of, wondering how I would ever find agape again.
Community is as important to motherhood as motherhood is to community.
We may be programmed for empathy from birth, but it is our mothers who embody agape and are the nucleus of our first community. But, amazing as they are, mothers also need mothering sometimes.
In a sweet blog post on motherhood,
mentions her daughter, already grown into a toddler, the cute rolls slowly vanishing from her limbs and, I welled up at the thought of Pumpkin outgrowing his leg rolls and plump pastry wrists. It is hard to imagine that someday, I will not longer be called upon hourly to care for him. One can’t help but wonder, what then? Will I still feel the fulfilment I do now?In an insightful letter,
recently pointed out that in order to thrive, mothers need more than their peers, more than “the blind leading the blind”, she writes. It was a welcome reminder of the valuable role of each generation in the community. While we need our peers to go through the thick of it beside us, we need the wise women who came before us to make sense of it all and show the way.I called my doula recently in a mild panic. My pregnancy is long over but I have made a friend in her, a wise woman, kindred spirit, and well of motherly knowledge.
I talked. She listened.
And then, she said, “You know, you’re doing a really good job”.
There was something about the way she said it, slow and sweet, like honey sliding off a spoon. I felt my throat loosen. She said it with the knowing and trust in my ability as a mother; with the seasoned grace of someone who has raised three babies of her own and helped them to become mothers. When I hung up the phone, I cried. Not out of loneliness this time but rather, the opposite. Agape had found me and, I knew I would always belong.
What does it feel like to be a mother?
It feels like diving in a sea of sweet and salty tears; being simultaneously at the giving and receiving ends of community; seeing magic while feeling your way through the dark; being needed and also needing - all while climbing up and tumbling down Maslow’s triangle on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. It’s the losing of things and the gaining of more important ones. It’s belonging.
Thank you for reading! If you liked this post, please share it ❤️
xx Chesica
*Note: this post contains an affiliate link to a book that I have genuinely found value in. If you choose to use the link and purchase, I probably will receive a small amount of money, which I will definitely use to buy chocolate.
References
Gettler, L. T., Kuo, P. X., Sarma, M. S., Trumble, B. C., Burke Lefever, J. E., & Braungart-Rieker, J. M. (2021). Fathers' oxytocin responses to first holding their newborns: Interactions with testosterone reactivity to predict later parenting behavior and father-infant bonds. Developmental psychobiology, 63(5), 1384–1398. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.22121
Nichols, S. R., Svetlova, M., & Brownell, C. A. (2009). The role of social understanding and empathic disposition in young children's responsiveness to distress in parents and peers. Cognition, brain, behavior : an interdisciplinary journal, 13(4), 449–478.
*Note: this post contains an affiliate link to a book that I have genuinely found value in. If you choose to use the link and purchase, I probably will receive a small amount of money, which I will definitely use to buy chocolate.