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Dear mother. I hope you are well. I hope with all my heart that you have made room for yourself these last few days. I hope too that every day by loving and respecting yourself you teach others how you expect to be treated. Today I want to tell you something very important: Accepting your limits is your greatest strength. You are not a super hero, you do not have super powers, and above all, you do not need the world to crown you as a “special mom” for your children to love and accept you. They already love you.
Accepting your limits is your greatest strength. For that you need to give up on the need of pleasing others, but most importantly, you have to overcome your own ego. Why is that?
• Ego is dangerous. It needs to be fed to feel important. When mothers let their egos get in between, they like to be told that they are special or chosen. The dangerous part of celebrating these labels is that in order to keep the compliments coming, you need to push yourself harder and harder to demonstrate someone else your value. Someone that has nothing to do with your role as a mom, and someone that doesn’t care about you.
• Ego makes you believe that you have no limits and pushes you constantly to cross your boundaries by making you believe you are better if you ignore your fatigue. By doing this, you are putting yourself in a high risk of hurting yourself physically and mentally. Like everyone else you need to rest and give yourself a break.
• Ego makes you believe that being yourself and being an ordinary person is not enough. It makes you believe that accepting your limits and recognizing your weaknesses is shameful. In reality, being honest to yourself is the only way to make peace with your imperfections while you discover your strengths and possibilities.
When you surrender to your humanity and most importantly, you give up the desire to make everyone happy or to feed their reasons to call you “inspiring or special,” you build your most beautiful self. You know why? Because you don’t need to be accepted and celebrated by others to feel loved and proud of yourself. You don’t work for them, nor should your happiness depend on their approval or judgment. Taking good care of yourself and investing love in yourself is going to pick you up when you fall and will provide you with the compassion to forgive yourself when you make mistakes. Only then you will realize that just by being yourself, you are enough. And only then:
• You will gain the ability to ask for help when needed, because you will finally understand that the goal is not for you to be a saint enslaved in motherhood, but a woman empowered in the task of being a mother. A task that is not about you, but quite the opposite, one that is about doing your best to help your children grow. Giving control to gain control.
• You will accept with love and humility that wisdom does not fall from the sky nor is assigned as a “special” label that the world feel the right to give to those that they consider to be living in pain or tragedy. In all your humanity and humility, you will know that out of love one learns what it takes, and above all, one grows and one evolves. It’s not about what you know today, but how you commit to learning what you need.
Finally, I want to remind you that you are already a wonderful mother to your children. Without a doubt, if you learn that accepting your limits is your strength, every day you will be even better. And you will be better because when you will learn to do your best everyday instead of punishing yourself for not doing more. You will learn the value of resting, reflecting, and celebrating yourself by focusing on what you have invested instead of what you have achieved. You will realize that tomorrow will be a better day and that the task of being a good mother is not one that is get in one day.
Being a good mother takes a lifetime, and it doesn’t have to be frustrating or laden with thorns to have value. On the contrary, it has to be charged with gratitude, love, and joy, even in its most difficult moments and its most intense challenges. All because it is not an easy task, and by recognizing this, is how accepting our limits is our greatest strength.
