As parents, we are having a wild experience of living in a culture that tells us we should be GREAT. Great at parenting, at our jobs, at home tending, being our parents ’ kids, great at contributing to a better world. We are told, discretely and not so discretely, through movies, shows, magazines, and the fashionable, linen-wearing, soft-talking mamas who seem to have all their shit together on Instagram that we can and really should be striving for greatness and perfection. It's an American value, to strive for greatness.
Before I go any further please know I have nothing against greatness! Nor do I mean to cast any shade on beautiful, gentle mamas (I often wish I had more of what you’ve got going on). We truly need people to be doing things like discovering cures, creating solutions to massive system issues, protecting our most vulnerable, and uplifting those who need it most… I and love that we get to strive for, vision, and co-create a better world for ourselves and our children AND I do believe and can feel in my bones my own mental and spiritual degradation when I orient towards demonstrating my greatness.
Let me say more…
You know that moment in The Lion King where Simba is lifted into the light of the sunrise, the music is bumping and things feel really great? That's just it, that moment is just a moment in the light… the less-lit moment before it was of Sarabi (mother of Simba and undervalued character in the feature film) birthing baby Simba, but we didn’t get tickets to that…Nor did we get tickets to see the other lions caring for Sarabi and bringing her snacks and grooming her after she birthed her babe. Those are moments that our glamor-oriented society would not celebrate as great AND ones that certainly deserve celebration and recognition! The dirty work of grunting, sweating, and struggling are often our moments of parenting/and professional greatness that go unseen and undervalued. Therefore if we are not doing our own due diligence to illuminate them, and celebrate ourselves we may not be getting or giving ourselves the recognition and valuing we deserve and need!
I bet you're like “Deana, I know… fuck the patriarchy” and I’m like “I know you know but for real we can redefine greatness for ourselves and create new neural pathways and narratives about our own worth by talking up our unseen moments of greatness!” Our bodies, nervous systems, and our amazing minds were and are deeply influenced by our society's story about greatness. So if we want to flip the script and feel into all the amazing things we are already doing we must make the job of telling the story of our own, nourishing real, nitty-gritty, human greatness an ACTIVE ONE. We can, quite literally, tell ourselves about our own messy, sweaty, ugly, slippery, and sometimes sloppy moments of goodness. For example: “whoa, good save Deana, you almost lost it there and you got back on track” or “whoops, you did lose it Deana and then you checked in and offered understanding, attunement and connection, way to repair! Thats secure attachment in the making” or “Damn Deana, that plant arrangement is dope, way to make use of what you’ve got”. When I fill my head with these narratives I’d feel good, I might even feel great (insert winky face).
Our culture tells us greatness is achievement, it is shiny, and other people have to be involved. But when I find myself striving for that kind of greatness I notice I feel like I'm not doing it, I feel shitty that I’m not having a baby Simba moment in the sun. But I do have, and often undervalue, are lots of meaningful, sweaty, messy moments of sweetness with myself and my family, quiet aha moments at work, slipping then steadying myself or fully wiping out and then getting back on track to keep going. So, no I don't have many many moments where I think “Wow I am nailing it and doing so great and this is what it was supposed to be like”. I can, however, slow down and orient away from out of the toilet bowl of disappointment and self-criticism and instead line up with noticing and illuminating my goodness, my good enough-ness, and my eagerness for more of my own and others' goodness to come into my field of awareness. So cheers to paying closer attention to and modeling the celebration of our unglamorous goodness, our good enough-ness. And remember, fuck the patriarchy!