“Motherhood is a choice you make everyday, to put someone else’s happiness and wellbeing ahead of your own… and to forgive yourself, over and over again, for doing everything wrong.”
— Donna Ball
I know no greater balm to boost your mental health than LOVE: accepting life, just as it is moment to moment, immersing yourself in the joy of being alive. One of the greatest mysteries we get to experience is how that is possible. Just contemplate that for a minute. Take a minute to breathe deeply into this moment and appreciate the amazing creation all around you and yourself as an integral part of it all.
The joy of motherhood
Another amazing mystery is the love that explodes in your heart and life when you become a mother. Even when you feel completely unworthy of love or incapable of giving love, something mystical happens when you hold your child in your arms. You’re overcome by a power greater than your individual self, which settles into your bones and stabilizes and fortifies you for the mysterious journey you are embarking on.
Being a mother changes who you are in a way you can’t really put your finger on… but mysteriously, you begin to see through different eyes — ones that no longer consider your personal life alone… one that considers the wholeness of life, and the wellbeing of this precious life that you have now become the steward. Personal troubles, sometimes for the first time, take a back seat to the wellbeing of someone else, and you find you have the capacity to be selfless. You feel connected in a way that expands your awareness of the inner-connection you share with them, and humankind as a whole.
Taking a few moments from time to time, to rest in this awareness, is one of the most loving things we can do for our mental health.
National Mystery Month
Since May is National Mystery Month, why not make a pact with yourself to remind yourself to take note of the mystery of life all around you, at least once a day, pausing and taking it all in with love and appreciation — letting joy fill your being … there is so much more we don’t know than we do.
Set your seeming problems aside for a few minutes and breath. Five conscious breaths can lift you beyond the mind’s drama.
“You don’t have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you.” — Dan Millman
The ego mind is always interpreting life as one problem after another that needs solving. But that’s just one possible way of looking at it. And one that feels icky. It causes unnecessary anxiety. Just thinking we’ve got to have life figured out is what gets us in trouble — thinking we can control the outcome to suit what we want or believe things ‘should go’ that robs us of living in the flow of miracles and letting life’s mysteries surprise us and enlighten us. If you relax into the actuality of Life as it is happening, you can accept that how it’s happening is reality. Accepting this current moment as it is, loosens your grip on needing to fix anything in order to be okay.6
Most of what we’re experiencing all the time is a mystery. We’ve all had times when we realize there is something much bigger than ourselves which we’re a part of: on an early morning walk, listening to waves crash along the beach, the beauty of a sunrise, or the night sky, the love of a mother (or father).
We know this. Yet we forget we know this most of the time. Why? What is so engaging as to take us away from this beautiful awareness? Too often we feel separate from this aspect of our lives. Our daily lives are distanced from this knowledge, because we listen to the ego narrative interpreting everything, instead of just being with it. We fail to appreciate the mystery of life because we’re looking for something else.
The mystery itself has a livingness about it. It is not like a murder mystery story we solve. But rather a continual opening to see and feel and be part of an ever-changing dynamic organism of life. You can’t think your way into it. You’re already there. Thinking contracts around the ‘me’ mechanism – distancing us from the felt sense of aliveness and the naked appreciation of the mysterious unknown, revealing itself as this present moment.
Let’s focus on being aware in this moment with love and appreciation, as our gift to the mental health and wellbeing of the whole — honoring our inner connectedness.
The heartbeat of life itself is happening exclusively at this moment. There is a felt sense, an awake-ness that is markedly different from living from the story of me. We’re not trying to get something from life, we’re just being with it.
Look for the extraordinary in the ordinary
Look for the extraordinary in the ordinary. Feel into your appreciation of the mystery of this present moment. Check out its texture, its timeless quality – the exciting, curiosity bubbling within – a felt sense of being party to the wondrous surprise about to unfold. This is your yummy place. This alive immediacy – unexplainable joy with no destination. Here, we nurture our mental health with love and gratitude. And joy is the result.
Yummy or icky? If we’re experiencing resistance to being open to what’s happening, we feel it inside —it feels icky. There is a tightening happening in our heart or a clenching in our gut. When joy is our lifestyle choice, we soften into the mystery and simply let go of our resistance, opening our hearts to let love show us what life wants us to see or learn. And it feels yummy!
This month, let us be fine tuned to wholeness, to our connectedness, to the mystery of life all around us and simply be with it, dance with it and love it!
Happy Mother’s Day!
