Mistrust in Motherhood
In motherhood we are our child’s first teacher, looking for ways to understand, nurture, and really provide for our children. Each child is a lesson for parents, as we get to know their strengths, food preferences, and the many changes in each stage of development. Then, we take that information and present it to our children in a way that best helps them learn. For some mothers, children are more than just an opportunity to show our strengths as parents. Children activate a part of a parents’ history that can be tender and this opportunity can be difficult to navigate. Especially, for those that grew up in abusive family households. This challenge for mother survivors of trauma can be fraught with frustration. Survivors want a better life for their children. But survivors have mistrust in themselves, mistrust in others, and their surroundings.
Trusting Motherhood
In 2011, I heard a trauma sensitive yoga instructor talk about his mother who passed away when he was young. He said, “she really got me.” This person’s story stood out to me because I still wasn’t a mother yet but the way he spoke about his mother reverberated in my mind. I began to remember his wise words when I started to raise my own children. I want my children to remember me in a way that they felt seen and heard consistently throughout their childhood.
Mistrust begins
Motherhood, and trusting yourself in it, can be thwarted in various ways. In the U.S. motherhood is very much a precarious place to be in today. On my recent travels to Ecuador, I was talking about motherhood with my family. One family member surmised that American women have the Rosie the Riveter “You Can Do It” attitude and the image she is known for with her red bandana flexing her arm can to my mind. I thought that was an accurate way to view the American motherhood experience as an outsider. He recognized the realities that we are fulfilling the motherhood role, amongst many other things outside the home. The strong Rosie Riveter image strength can be a powerful strength of women to admire and many times women never see their work validated even in their own homes. Mothers may be carrying many of the household chores like what each child needs, keeping up with emails, cleaning and cooking.
As a mother, you decide between staying home to care for your child or maintaining your own job to pay for astronomical childcare costs. Either way, consider yourself fortunate when family helps out or lives close by your home. Many mothers don’t have the extra help or when they do, family dysfunction can often rupture important family relationships. American women are also expected to work, clean, cook and do all the other kid activities like taking them to the library and setting up playdates. And don’t let anyone catch you complaining because then you will immediately be told that we have to be grateful for simply having kids. It’s like we have been conditioned to just normalize the motherhood burnout and that you are doing it all as a part of the successful narrative. People forget that we are very nuanced humans and can hold two different feelings at the same time. We can love our children without end but also feel completely overwhelmed by the journey of motherhood.
If we choose work, we also have to assess whether we trust those outside the home caring for our children.. Does the daycare provider have a decent Parent Handbook?. What is the day to day curriculum? How are they held accountable for anything that might go wrong? How about when other children misbehave? What if a toddler starts hitting your child? You also want effective communication with your daycare provider but what if they just don’t communicate? Maybe they don’t know how to communicate, technology is a challenge, or maybe they are stretched too thin. As a mother, you feel like you are asking for too much, but in reality it’s just the bare minimum. You want to know how your child is doing while being away from you for extended periods of time with staff that are essentially strangers to you. We place so much trust in our school systems, health care systems, and daycare providers.
Even if you are working outside of the home, it doesn’t exclude you from the other motherhood responsibilities. There are plenty of American women working in and outside of the home at the same time. I recall hearing a friend say, “going to work is like an escape.” It clicked completely for me. “I finally got it,” I said to myself. Work allows this space for them to just be themselves and a reprieve of sorts. They get to maintain a career they have likely worked so hard to achieve. Even if it’s not a career, it’s income, and that matters.
Some women have certain extenuating circumstances like choosing a partner that is abusive. A spouse that rarely helps around the house and only expects the female to do the household labor. This is even more complicated for mothers that have stayed at home and stopped bringing home an income for their family. We barely scratch the surface of a mother's story when we fail to recognize that women are financially being taken advantage of when they have zero access to their bank accounts and their spouse has complete control of the finances.
Many women face a history of childhood trauma and trust is a constant issue. They mistrust even friends that have well intentions. They question motives because once they trusted very close family members and were betrayed. Every facet of a mother’s life can be cloaked in this mistrust of others. The statistics show that a survivor will likely be victimized again by a known family member or trusted friend. Survivors are even at a higher rate of having their own child victimized. Survivors are often guarded and with really good reasons.
Motherhood traumatized
Today, as mothers we are not only witnessing a very pronounced mental health crisis with children and adolescents but with mothers too. Mothers are enduring the mental crisis because their child is suffering and there is likely an incredible amount of shame they may feel due to what they could’ve, would’ve and should’ve done. Many of these things were out of a mother’s control. Think of how genetics play into addiction, influences, and how many aspects of the environment impact the brain. This inner turmoil creates a mental crisis for mothers too. To watch their own child suffer and not being able to make it stop is a feeling beyond heartbreaking.
Many times, mothers can feel a sense of powerlessness because they were brought up as victims of childhood trauma. They froze when the violence began back then, when they tried their best to step carefully trying to circumvent the generational trauma. The same goes for today during our mental health crisis. We are frozen in a way. Suicide rates are climbing. We are witnessing trauma at an unprecedented rate. Mothers continually face this mistrust in people and isolation is inevitable when they pull away from others.
Mothers are the last ones on this list to take care of our own needs. Many mothers joke about “taking some time off” while they go to the dentist or run to the grocery store alone. We delegate various tasks in the house, predict how much is needed, cook meals, manage big emotions and all the while systems that are supposed to care for our children fall apart.
Yet we as mothers keep going, keep organizing, keep hoping there is more to this life than the violence that plagues our nation. We keep putting one foot in front of the other every day. Single mothers, mothers married to dead beat dads, and mothers just surviving it day in and day out. Even mothers with amazing partners struggle.
Stigma is lifting
Slowly but surely the stigma of mental health is deteriorating. People are figuring out that mental health care is healthcare. We as mothers will take our children to therapy and even work on what we need to do as parents. We take our children to various social events, get them involved in enrichment activities, and are willing to help them in many other ways. We get ourselves involved in the parent groups at school, the community groups, and help them feel adjusted to the new start of the school year. We might appear to have it all together but it’s really nice to feel supported too in your role as a mother.
Mothers deserve high quality and trauma-informed therapy care that addresses the exact pain point of what they themselves didn’t get in their childhood. EMDR therapy is a very effective treatment for childhood trauma and parenting. You get to work on your own childhood memories without having to hash out every detail. Your history of childhood doesn’t have to get in the way of how you parent today. Trauma is very patient and will show up when you least expect it to as well as when children present with challenges. I am currently accepting clients in the Carolinas and in Illinois. Schedule a free introductory call here or with a call at 803-579-0279 or email me here.
