Motherhood as Liberation: A Spiritual Revolution of Mothering
You want to know the last time I had a spiritual experience? It was not at a meditation retreat, although I’ve done those. It was not on my yoga mat, even though I’ve been a practitioner for over twenty-two years.
No, my most recent spiritual experience was watching my 6 year old daughter attempt to tie her own shoes. The amount of patience and focus it took for me to simply sit and be present was greater than anything I’ve ever felt at any meditation retreat.
Sure, I could have done it myself or hurried her up. But we were running late, and anyone who has ever been in that situation knows that rushing makes it take longer. So I simply sat, allowed myself to feel into my impatience and just watched her concentrate and be completely present in the moment. Eventually, I felt a sense of oneness. I felt a blurring of reality as time folded in on itself and I remembered learning how to tie my own shoes. This allowed me to feel even more connected with my daughter and share in her pure delight when she finally tied that last knot and looked up at me proudly.
I’m Susie Fishleder, and I want to talk today about redefining motherhood as a spiritual path to enlightenment. Forget about renouncing all your possessions and going to sit on the side of a mountain in solitude. That path is way too easy! Instead, we’re going to learn how to dive right into the challenges of motherhood as an express ticket to spiritual evolution.
But first, why is this important?
If you type into google “Why is motherhood…” here are some autofill options:
Out of 9 autofill options, only 1 or 2 of them were positive. Mothers are unhappy. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the painful truth that our capitalist society does not value motherwork. When millions of people left the paid workforce for the unpaid work of motherhood, many were forced to evaluate what truly gives their life meaning and purpose. As we emerge from the pandemic, we have the opportunity to redefine motherhood, not as a heternormative, patriarchal institution, but as a potentially enlightening experience that offers spiritual awakening.
Of course, reframing motherhood as a spiritual path to enlightenment doesn’t solve all our problems, as I’ll address later. Like many of you, I was horrified (although not surprised) at the leaked draft from the Supreme Court last week that indicated the overturn of person’s right to an abortion. I firmly believe that motherhood is a catalyst for spiritual growth, but not if someone is forced to be a mother before they are ready. Hopefully, this new way of looking at motherhood as enlightenment can help mothers feel more empowered, more secure in their inherent worth and maybe, a little bit happier.
Before I jump in, let me clarify this: who gets to count as a mother?
As Andrea O’Reilly has stated, the identity of mother is distinct from the category of woman. With the inclusion of “birthing person” in the US budget last year, we can finally publicly acknowledge that just as not all women are mothers, not all mothers identify as women.
This post honors that anyone who takes on the work of nurturing, loving and raising a child, what Patricia Hill Collins terms motherwork, counts as a mother, regardless of gender or biological relationship to the child.
Separating gender from motherhood allows us to expand even further WHO gets to identify as doing motherwork, and I’m really excited about the future conversations this will spark, especially as we work to get fathers and other male-identified people more involved in raising children.
I also want to clarify that when I talk about motherhood as a spiritual path, I am NOT saying that motherhood is some kind of sacred purpose or spiritual calling for women. Because it can fall into that category and that’s not what this is. Those are essentialist narratives that continue to trap mothers in this patriarchal institution that says “motherhood is your sole purpose and highest calling in life, and your worth is dependent on becoming a mother.”
Instead, this post proposes that when we reframe motherhood into a spiritual path, that position is a consciously chosen act of resistance to the patriarchal institution that devalues motherhood. It takes the act of motherwork and turns it from a child-centered activity into an opportunity for a spiritual evolution of the MOTHER.
You don’t have to give birth to be a mother, or to raise a child. That being said, the biological experiences of conception, pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding can all be transcendent experiences akin to a spiritual journey. Interestingly, a 2016 study from Duke University suggests that oxytocin, the hormone released during both childbirth and breastfeeding, supports heightened spirituality. Personally, the births of my three children were profoundly transformative, and I’m hosting a workshop this Mother’s Day with a doula and a postpartum herbalist about Birth as a rite of passage.
So there may be a biological impetus to motherhood as a spiritual journey, and that definitely warrants further conversation.
But these biological experiences in no way discount the fact that even if someone didn’t birth or breastfeed a child, they will spend decades raising them, and there is vast opportunity for spiritual growth in the work of raising children. That’s what I’m most interested in today: What does it mean to consider motherhood as a spiritual path?
Well, what if instead of thinking of ourselves as humans striving for spirituality, we consider that we are already divine, and we are actually spiritual beings in a human existence? When I talk about motherhood as a spiritual path, I’m not saying that raising children will turn you into some sort of ethereal being wrapped in an aura of light. That would be really distracting at the next PTA meeting.
No, when I talk about motherhood as a spiritual path, I’m really talking about the parallels we find between motherhood and many spiritual traditions. Some of the examples include directives like performing acts of selfless service, being present, releasing your Ego, and seeing the sacred joy in everyday acts.
Some might ask, doesn’t religion take care of all this? Why does motherhood need to be seen as a path to enlightenment anyway?
Well, many religions include systems of hierarchy, with leaders, who are mostly men. This creates an intermediary between a person and, what could be called God, the Universe, Source, the Divine, whatever you’d like to call it. Religion, especially Western religions, often enforces a separation from our own divinity. There is human, and then there is divine. These religions have left many people feeling disconnected from a true spiritual practice.
But if we can reframe motherhood into a path of spirituality, we can start to believe in our own divinity. We recognize that we can be our own spiritual leaders, and spiritual leaders for our children. We don’t have to wait until an afterlife to feel the sense of something divinely greater than ourselves, we recognize it in the beautiful, sacred, and messy everyday acts of motherhood.