Your Mom Parts don't need to be normal

Today I heard a highly respected maternal mental health expert say that it’s never normal for a mom to feel guilt or to have suicidal thoughts. And yet it’s very common. (insert headscratching emoji)

How can it be so common and yet not normal? What does that mean about all the moms who DO feel guilt and who do sometimes find themselves wishing they were no longer here? Moms are conscientious, self-reflective, responsible creatures and they tend to interpret words like “not normal“ to mean I am not normal, and more specifically, something's wrong with me, which morphs magically into: I’m a bad mom. 

You're not. You're a mom who has many parts and some of your parts are suffering. You're in excellent company. Definitely not alone. When experts say that what you're feeling isn't normal, I think they want to convey that you deserve help - right now. They're right about that. If your parts are having an emergency, they require and deserve immediate care. But the truth is when you know you have parts, and you have a relationship with your parts, you can unblend from them and help them with their emergency. Then it's not about  whether you're "normal" or pathological or whether or not anyone else even understands you. In the world of Mom Parts, we just go directly to your parts and start befriending them.

All Mom Parts are welcome. Even the scary ones.

Right now the way the world receives moms, especially new moms in distress, looks something like this: if you are suffering emotionally, that’s not normal. (YIKES) It means you need help. (YIKES) If you are a woman of color, or of low socioeconomic means, or living in patriarchy, or worried about losing your job or afraid of having your children removed, then help isn’t necessarily available - or safe to ask for. This helps account for the 75% of moms who do not seek help for mental health concerns. Getting help from outside is often not possible. And so those moms have to lean into their hardworking Mom Parts a little HARDER and figure out a way to try to muscle through.

Help needs to be a safe thing to ask for. We have some serious systemic issues that require significant changes in how our culture orients around mothers. Moms need more support. But even if BIG OUTSIDE change doesn't manifest systemically (and I pray that it does), you still have meaningful influence over your own interior domain. Learning to notice and respond more kindly to your Mom Parts gives you the ability to make dramatic improvements on the inside. Regardless of the abnormalness of your parts, you can always help them by turning toward them with curiosity, unblending from them and discovering their good intentions. You can give them TLC, whether anyone else on earth ever knows about them, ever cares about them or ever helps them.

Having intense, destructive or harmful parts is hard on you, your relationships, and our society as a whole. I do the work I do, because I believe it’s of the greatest importance to adjust the negativity that is handed down through generations, perpetrated and perpetuated by our reactive parts. I care about that more than almost anything. And… there is no quick fix. Discovering that we are beings with many different parts and then learning how to unblend from those parts and start to mother our own Inner Babies is a process. 

Learning about Mom Parts is a wonderful place to start.