The difference between self-gift and self-erasure cannot be in something like pleasure or desire to serve, because often the needs of our children that we must meet are beyond what we might think we can bear. The sacrifices of motherhood can be painful and reluctant. It seems to me that what protects from self-erasure is being willing to accept these same difficult sacrifices *from others on our own behalf*, for example letting a husband take on the burden of solo parenting several children for a few hours to give the mom a solo break. It is good to give of ourselves for others; it is also good to be able to accept their gifts of self on our behalf, even knowing that such a gift is not an easy one for them to give. It's not selfish as long as we don't demand it with an unjust frequency.
I love the way you phrase the mother as bring just like the child, of infinite worth in her own right. Both mother and child (and father, of course) are worthy of sacrifice, and should be willing to accept it in humility.
Accepting gifts of self on our behalf is important! I’m learning that it is more a sign of self-erasure or a prideful sense of martyrdom if I *cant or won’t* accept an offer like that (whether one-time or recurring) from my husband. In either case it’s an unhealthy spot to be in.
I don't know how to answer your question, but this comes closer to describing my experience of motherhood than most things I've read.
I've started saying recently that I do not find my identity in being a mother. My relationship with my kids is very important, and it uses the majority of my time and energy. But it's not who I am. Yet this seems like something that "mom culture" expects, to dissolve the self, and run in the hamster wheel of anxiety, wondering "am I a good mother?" No thank you. I have thoughts and ideas and personality, and there are foods I plan to eat without sharing, and more. If I had a clear sense of "what to do with my life" outside of caregiving and homeschooling, I would find a way to do it. I may yet find a way to do it, when I figure out what it is.
And even as I feel very firm in this conviction about myself, I feel strange, and a little bit lonely. It's hard to check that you're on the right path when you reject the crowded one, and yet meet no fellow travelers.
I also like these passages, because observing my kids is, so far, the pinnacle of my experience as a mother. To understand them better than anyone except their father, to figure out what makes them tick, to know what they love and why they love it. I get a thrill when I finally unlock some part of their heart or mind that I hadn't understood before. I delight in all the ways my four children reveal their strengths and passions and personalities so distinctly, despite having the same two parents. And having witnessed who they are, I have the privilege and responsibility of guiding them into who God wants them to be.
So, long story short, yes, this post rings true for me.
More mothers need to say this! My identity is separate from my kids and husband. Honestly, it’s unfair to them to make them be both themselves AND me as well! Their achievments are theirs and mine belong to me!
I have two thoughts on your comments. The first is that I pretty much followed the crowded path until my four were late high school/early college (including that I homeschooled them). It has made the transition to so much more free time very difficult - I wonder if that transition will be a little easier with your viewpoint.
The second is that I agree with the fact that observing them become independent people is the highlight of raising them. I get the impression that yours are a little younger than mine, and if so I am excited for you to see what happens when they start college and do so many things on their own and pick a major and start knowing so much more than you about their specialty. It's so, so cool.
I love your last paragraph, Leah, and those lines from Sarah Ruddick. If you can believe it, I thought of Charlotte Mason making the point that, just as children are born persons, mothers are persons too. And for her, and those of us who also follow Christ, the only Person to whom we give over our very identities is God Himself—and, paradoxically, we become more of ourselves in so doing, and are not annihilated.
In one of Mason's volumes, she tells of a mother who has gotten off balance: She takes her role seriously, but ironically not seriously enough, since she does not allow time for taking care of herself, such that if she is ill, she feels she must sneak away to rest, rather than saying unashamedly that she needs to rest and then delegating tasks accordingly. And Mason comments, in so many words, that she should lighten up, that indeed her role as a wife and mother is not to make it such that everything crashes when she's not holding up everything. I need to find where that is... but it's one of those balancing examples. It's true that a mother's presence—in all sense—is hugely important and formative, especially for young children, and that truth often needs defending nowadays. And it's also true that each of us is a person, and that we will better parent when we know ourselves as persons, as children of God, and that our children do not ultimately belong to us, but to God (and to their neighborhoods, towns, etc.). This what Mason's idea of “Mother Culture” is all about: redirecting the busy mother to the fact that she is a person, and that she too needs a feast of ideas spread before her, just as her children do.
There's an article from the Parents' Review (1892-93 issue) on this subject (by one “A.”), and therein is this striking passage, after describing a mother being overdone: “Then it is that she wears herself out. Then it is that, in her efforts to be ideal wife, mother, and mistress, she forgets that she is herself. Then it is, in fact, that she stops growing.” And then: “There is no sadder sight in life than a mother, who has so used herself up in her children's childhood, that she has nothing to give them in their youth.” The article also mentions how, in that day at least, the father is more likely to keep intellectually stimulated and growing. So, "A." gives tips for the young mother in need of encouragement to find time for reading, etc., saying along the way that too often young mothers “not only starve their minds, but they do it deliberately, and with a sense of self-sacrifice which seems to supply ample justification. There are, moreover, unfortunately, only too many people who think that sort of thing so lovely that public opinion appears to justify it.” How to alter the situation? "A." says a mother should “so strongly impressed with the necessity for growing herself that she herself makes it a real object in life.”
In a way, Mason's goal is to help mothers be equipped for two things: (1) running a household, and all the myriad responsibilities that come with that, for which so many of us are underprepared, and (2) living well, living the kind of full, flourishing life into which we want to introduce our children. (This is why her distance Mother's Education correspondence course included books on hygiene as well as John Ruskin, Plato, and Coleridge!)
The other thought I had is that it's interesting to note the particular temptations, perhaps, of fathers and mothers: I believe that both men and women are called to be spiritual fathers and spiritual mothers, but those things also never encapsulate everything about a particular human being and a particular person's tapestry of callings. But we don't often hear of fathers tempted to “lose themselves” in their family; rather the stereotype is of a father losing himself in his work—falling on the other side of the fence. And then, of course, motherhood is so hugely denigrated in obvious and subtle ways in our time, that it's understandable for us to struggle with recovering a proper balance, the real complexity of parenthood and personhood.
One way I realize I fall into a bad way of thinking is when I let the girls express anger destructively at me (I got hit in the face a couple times after a potty accident).
I don't want to meet anger with anger, but I have to remind myself that I'm not telling them the truth or mothering them well if I just absorb the blow quietly while they work out their feelings. They won't know who *I* am as a mother (or who they might be as a mother) if they learn it's ok to hit.
This makes me think of when a breastfeeding baby bites, especially after getting teeth. At first I felt terrible for shrieking, but then I realized it's ok to let them know they are hurting me. I would always comfort them, of course, if my yell scared them. Toddlers would just get immediately put down.
Yes! It's such a challenge consistently to respond with calm firmness to anger or whatever problematic behavior. I certainly need a lot more of calm firmness myself!
Thinking this over, I thought of how our response to destructive behavior in little ones helps train them not only to respect others, but also to respect themselves. It's hard to tread that balance as an adult, too, discerning when it's appropriate to absorb or ignore mistreatment (depending on the degree, intention, circumstance) and when it's appropriate to call it out—when to be gracious, when to be firm.
Yeah, it's also hard when you are fighting your own anger/hurt/resentment! It took me many years of parenting to get to a point where I realized - and I emphasize this with my young adult children over and over - you can be gracious *and* firm at the same time!
“Her role as a wife and mother is not to make it such that everything crashes when she's not holding up everything.” Very well said.
It reminds me of the discussion about refactoring a couple weeks ago, and about the process of teaching kids how to do house chores. Of course moms can run the vacuum quicker and more effectively than their kid who’s learning how, but in the long run, the chores are more likely to get done if the kids can do them and the mom doesn’t have to hold it all up.
Not only does it help mom out, it teaches kids necessary life skills. Each of my kids (ages 17-21) could run a household now if they had to because they do their own laundry, they all help cook and clean, etc. They need these abilities, so teaching them benefits everyone in the long run.
Love this connection with Mason. I've been learning more about her philosophy in recent months and the Mother Culture thing is so integral. Perhaps my own particular challenges in motherhood are different, but one thing I try to protect is that time of intellectual nourishment and growth. (I wither a little every time I talk to a mom who basically implies they haven't read a book in ages. There's audiobooks for your household chores, people!)
Totally agree on audiobooks! And also, speaking as a mom who has mostly put reading books aside for these early years, there are other ways to stay intellectually engaged! I especially love reading long-form articles (hello Substack!) and having debates with friends over dinner. To each her own!
Love listening to audiobooks during chores. I trained myself to get into audiobooks after my first child because I didn't have much time to sit down, but I needed the books!
I really appreciate this. I’ve spent the last near sixteen years trying to learn from the excellent qualities of my own mother as well as how I am not her, which means I’m critical of some of her choices. Ultimately, I want to keep growing now, as my children grow, because I want to grow with them as they age. I would rather be a mom who sometimes says hard, wince-inducing words that speak truth than one who avoids them for the sake of maintaining fairly artificial relationships (ones in which nuanced discussions about real things are avoided). I don’t want to be disruptive for the sake of being disruptive; I want my children to learn that one of my responsibilities as a mother is to listen well and also to be openly honest and truthful when disagreement is inevitable. That can only happen if I know what truth is myself, which means I must keep learning.
"Ultimately, I want to keep growing now, as my children grow, because I want to grow with them as they age. I would rather be a mom who sometimes says hard, wince-inducing words that speak truth than one who avoids them for the sake of maintaining fairly artificial relationships (ones in which nuanced discussions about real things are avoided)."
There are things we must keep learning, truth we must keep seeking if we are to parent in ways we perhaps did not have modeled.
I’ve been wrestling with the idea of self-sacrifice in motherhood for years. It feels like there are two (equally terrible) options: don’t sacrifice at all! Mothers aren’t martyrs! and Losing who you are as a woman when you become a mother is just what motherhood means! (Or, it’s what HOLY motherhood means.) Rarely have I seen nuance like you’ve expressed here. I’ll be sitting with this; thank you✨
I think it’s in that idea of seeking your lost self in your children. Looking for a sense of identity in them. Not only wanting but in a way NEEDING them to act a certain way or be perceived in a certain way by others.
Also, the marriage suffering is a symptom of that self erasure. When I seek refuge from my marriage in my children, what I’m really hiding from is my vocation and therefore my “self” in the sense of the path marked out for me by God.
Great post for this Friday afternoon. Enjoy your holiday weekend!
I'm a young man, not a mother, but I'm often stricken when going to mass by the huge emphasis we put on giving, and how much less we talk about receiving. Yet ultimately it's God who gives and we who receive.
We should strive to give with charity and selflessness but be ever ready to accept help and charity from other, with humility and thankfulness.
As I sit here, at 2something in the morning, nursing my youngest child back to sleep, I find myself simply thinking, "This, too, shall pass." And it will, my oldest is 22 and I remember being up with him at 2 am, 22 years ago, nursing him back to sleep.
Honestly, though, I find the danger of self-erasure lies in seeking one's identity beyond the objective reality. Too often identity devolves into a sum of feelings or actions, whether they be one's own actions or pridefully taking on the actions of others (husband, kids, etc...).
Our identity lies in our state of being, our state of reality. We are children of God, we are sinners, we are children (we have/had parents), if we are married - we are wives (husbands), if we have children - we are mothers (fathers). These are (some of) our identities because they are the states of being - the reality that shapes what we do, what we feel, what choices we make. But when we let our actions, feelings, choices become our identities, rather than letting our identities inform them, that's when we risk self-erasure or self-glorification. We risk forgetting to sacrifice ourself for the good of another, or we sacrifice ourselves for our own good and "play the martyr".
The baby bit me while nursing. But he is finally sleeping, peacefully, again. "This, too, shall pass."
I love the idea of Kantian thinking about valuing mother and child together, and in an interconnected way.
In a funny sense of God's timing, I just read the quote in your Benedict Option book from Robert Farrar Capon (I adore his writing) about how children love fat mothers because they are more *there*. This has been my experience. I have always been good at putting babies to sleep (mine and others), and I think they just love to snuggle into my body.
I volunteer in our county hospital's NICU doing just that. Sometimes it feels like a hassle, and more trouble than it's worth, and that I'm not wanted or appreciated. But, on the whole, I get so so much out of it, even though it's sometimes all of those things too. The former is more daily nitty gritty troubles, but the latter is big-picture. The babies and I are both calmer, quieter (in my mind, in their bodies), and more content as a result of these visits. I have to keep the bigger picture in mind as a way of helping me distinguish between self-gift and self-erasure.
Thank you for doing those NICU shifts! It’s really moving how much those little babies are helped by physical love as well as their medical supports. It’s how they know who they are, by being loved.
I’m trying hard not to give into trite language about self-care, but I think all my thoughts on this question borrow from clichés. First thing that comes to mind is that there has to be a self there to give; you can’t give of yourself if you don’t know yourself.
I also find the concept of emotional boundaries to be helpful here. Among the gifts I want to give my children is the gift of seeing and valuing them for themselves, knowing what in our relationship is me and what is not-me.
It can't be done unless we graft ourselves to Christ. It is in Him that we have our ultimate identity. Talk to Him; tell Him your troubles; share with Him your joys. He understands and loves us with a great Heart that He gives us to love others.
The difference between self-gift and self-erasure cannot be in something like pleasure or desire to serve, because often the needs of our children that we must meet are beyond what we might think we can bear. The sacrifices of motherhood can be painful and reluctant. It seems to me that what protects from self-erasure is being willing to accept these same difficult sacrifices *from others on our own behalf*, for example letting a husband take on the burden of solo parenting several children for a few hours to give the mom a solo break. It is good to give of ourselves for others; it is also good to be able to accept their gifts of self on our behalf, even knowing that such a gift is not an easy one for them to give. It's not selfish as long as we don't demand it with an unjust frequency.
I love the way you phrase the mother as bring just like the child, of infinite worth in her own right. Both mother and child (and father, of course) are worthy of sacrifice, and should be willing to accept it in humility.
Accepting gifts of self on our behalf is important! I’m learning that it is more a sign of self-erasure or a prideful sense of martyrdom if I *cant or won’t* accept an offer like that (whether one-time or recurring) from my husband. In either case it’s an unhealthy spot to be in.
I don't know how to answer your question, but this comes closer to describing my experience of motherhood than most things I've read.
I've started saying recently that I do not find my identity in being a mother. My relationship with my kids is very important, and it uses the majority of my time and energy. But it's not who I am. Yet this seems like something that "mom culture" expects, to dissolve the self, and run in the hamster wheel of anxiety, wondering "am I a good mother?" No thank you. I have thoughts and ideas and personality, and there are foods I plan to eat without sharing, and more. If I had a clear sense of "what to do with my life" outside of caregiving and homeschooling, I would find a way to do it. I may yet find a way to do it, when I figure out what it is.
And even as I feel very firm in this conviction about myself, I feel strange, and a little bit lonely. It's hard to check that you're on the right path when you reject the crowded one, and yet meet no fellow travelers.
I also like these passages, because observing my kids is, so far, the pinnacle of my experience as a mother. To understand them better than anyone except their father, to figure out what makes them tick, to know what they love and why they love it. I get a thrill when I finally unlock some part of their heart or mind that I hadn't understood before. I delight in all the ways my four children reveal their strengths and passions and personalities so distinctly, despite having the same two parents. And having witnessed who they are, I have the privilege and responsibility of guiding them into who God wants them to be.
So, long story short, yes, this post rings true for me.
More mothers need to say this! My identity is separate from my kids and husband. Honestly, it’s unfair to them to make them be both themselves AND me as well! Their achievments are theirs and mine belong to me!
Love these reflections. I’ve felt the loneliness too for sure!
I have two thoughts on your comments. The first is that I pretty much followed the crowded path until my four were late high school/early college (including that I homeschooled them). It has made the transition to so much more free time very difficult - I wonder if that transition will be a little easier with your viewpoint.
The second is that I agree with the fact that observing them become independent people is the highlight of raising them. I get the impression that yours are a little younger than mine, and if so I am excited for you to see what happens when they start college and do so many things on their own and pick a major and start knowing so much more than you about their specialty. It's so, so cool.
I love your last paragraph, Leah, and those lines from Sarah Ruddick. If you can believe it, I thought of Charlotte Mason making the point that, just as children are born persons, mothers are persons too. And for her, and those of us who also follow Christ, the only Person to whom we give over our very identities is God Himself—and, paradoxically, we become more of ourselves in so doing, and are not annihilated.
In one of Mason's volumes, she tells of a mother who has gotten off balance: She takes her role seriously, but ironically not seriously enough, since she does not allow time for taking care of herself, such that if she is ill, she feels she must sneak away to rest, rather than saying unashamedly that she needs to rest and then delegating tasks accordingly. And Mason comments, in so many words, that she should lighten up, that indeed her role as a wife and mother is not to make it such that everything crashes when she's not holding up everything. I need to find where that is... but it's one of those balancing examples. It's true that a mother's presence—in all sense—is hugely important and formative, especially for young children, and that truth often needs defending nowadays. And it's also true that each of us is a person, and that we will better parent when we know ourselves as persons, as children of God, and that our children do not ultimately belong to us, but to God (and to their neighborhoods, towns, etc.). This what Mason's idea of “Mother Culture” is all about: redirecting the busy mother to the fact that she is a person, and that she too needs a feast of ideas spread before her, just as her children do.
There's an article from the Parents' Review (1892-93 issue) on this subject (by one “A.”), and therein is this striking passage, after describing a mother being overdone: “Then it is that she wears herself out. Then it is that, in her efforts to be ideal wife, mother, and mistress, she forgets that she is herself. Then it is, in fact, that she stops growing.” And then: “There is no sadder sight in life than a mother, who has so used herself up in her children's childhood, that she has nothing to give them in their youth.” The article also mentions how, in that day at least, the father is more likely to keep intellectually stimulated and growing. So, "A." gives tips for the young mother in need of encouragement to find time for reading, etc., saying along the way that too often young mothers “not only starve their minds, but they do it deliberately, and with a sense of self-sacrifice which seems to supply ample justification. There are, moreover, unfortunately, only too many people who think that sort of thing so lovely that public opinion appears to justify it.” How to alter the situation? "A." says a mother should “so strongly impressed with the necessity for growing herself that she herself makes it a real object in life.”
In a way, Mason's goal is to help mothers be equipped for two things: (1) running a household, and all the myriad responsibilities that come with that, for which so many of us are underprepared, and (2) living well, living the kind of full, flourishing life into which we want to introduce our children. (This is why her distance Mother's Education correspondence course included books on hygiene as well as John Ruskin, Plato, and Coleridge!)
The other thought I had is that it's interesting to note the particular temptations, perhaps, of fathers and mothers: I believe that both men and women are called to be spiritual fathers and spiritual mothers, but those things also never encapsulate everything about a particular human being and a particular person's tapestry of callings. But we don't often hear of fathers tempted to “lose themselves” in their family; rather the stereotype is of a father losing himself in his work—falling on the other side of the fence. And then, of course, motherhood is so hugely denigrated in obvious and subtle ways in our time, that it's understandable for us to struggle with recovering a proper balance, the real complexity of parenthood and personhood.
One way I realize I fall into a bad way of thinking is when I let the girls express anger destructively at me (I got hit in the face a couple times after a potty accident).
I don't want to meet anger with anger, but I have to remind myself that I'm not telling them the truth or mothering them well if I just absorb the blow quietly while they work out their feelings. They won't know who *I* am as a mother (or who they might be as a mother) if they learn it's ok to hit.
This makes me think of when a breastfeeding baby bites, especially after getting teeth. At first I felt terrible for shrieking, but then I realized it's ok to let them know they are hurting me. I would always comfort them, of course, if my yell scared them. Toddlers would just get immediately put down.
Yes! It's such a challenge consistently to respond with calm firmness to anger or whatever problematic behavior. I certainly need a lot more of calm firmness myself!
Thinking this over, I thought of how our response to destructive behavior in little ones helps train them not only to respect others, but also to respect themselves. It's hard to tread that balance as an adult, too, discerning when it's appropriate to absorb or ignore mistreatment (depending on the degree, intention, circumstance) and when it's appropriate to call it out—when to be gracious, when to be firm.
Yeah, it's also hard when you are fighting your own anger/hurt/resentment! It took me many years of parenting to get to a point where I realized - and I emphasize this with my young adult children over and over - you can be gracious *and* firm at the same time!
Truly! (Perhaps I ought emend to "firmly gracious" and "graciously firm"... : )
“Her role as a wife and mother is not to make it such that everything crashes when she's not holding up everything.” Very well said.
It reminds me of the discussion about refactoring a couple weeks ago, and about the process of teaching kids how to do house chores. Of course moms can run the vacuum quicker and more effectively than their kid who’s learning how, but in the long run, the chores are more likely to get done if the kids can do them and the mom doesn’t have to hold it all up.
Not only does it help mom out, it teaches kids necessary life skills. Each of my kids (ages 17-21) could run a household now if they had to because they do their own laundry, they all help cook and clean, etc. They need these abilities, so teaching them benefits everyone in the long run.
Love this connection with Mason. I've been learning more about her philosophy in recent months and the Mother Culture thing is so integral. Perhaps my own particular challenges in motherhood are different, but one thing I try to protect is that time of intellectual nourishment and growth. (I wither a little every time I talk to a mom who basically implies they haven't read a book in ages. There's audiobooks for your household chores, people!)
Totally agree on audiobooks! And also, speaking as a mom who has mostly put reading books aside for these early years, there are other ways to stay intellectually engaged! I especially love reading long-form articles (hello Substack!) and having debates with friends over dinner. To each her own!
True. I started my substack as a new mom to share such things and to motivate myself to stay engaged in all those ways!
Love listening to audiobooks during chores. I trained myself to get into audiobooks after my first child because I didn't have much time to sit down, but I needed the books!
*nods in complete understanding & solidarity*
I really appreciate this. I’ve spent the last near sixteen years trying to learn from the excellent qualities of my own mother as well as how I am not her, which means I’m critical of some of her choices. Ultimately, I want to keep growing now, as my children grow, because I want to grow with them as they age. I would rather be a mom who sometimes says hard, wince-inducing words that speak truth than one who avoids them for the sake of maintaining fairly artificial relationships (ones in which nuanced discussions about real things are avoided). I don’t want to be disruptive for the sake of being disruptive; I want my children to learn that one of my responsibilities as a mother is to listen well and also to be openly honest and truthful when disagreement is inevitable. That can only happen if I know what truth is myself, which means I must keep learning.
I love this. And especially track with this part:
"Ultimately, I want to keep growing now, as my children grow, because I want to grow with them as they age. I would rather be a mom who sometimes says hard, wince-inducing words that speak truth than one who avoids them for the sake of maintaining fairly artificial relationships (ones in which nuanced discussions about real things are avoided)."
There are things we must keep learning, truth we must keep seeking if we are to parent in ways we perhaps did not have modeled.
I’ve been wrestling with the idea of self-sacrifice in motherhood for years. It feels like there are two (equally terrible) options: don’t sacrifice at all! Mothers aren’t martyrs! and Losing who you are as a woman when you become a mother is just what motherhood means! (Or, it’s what HOLY motherhood means.) Rarely have I seen nuance like you’ve expressed here. I’ll be sitting with this; thank you✨
Yes, well said!! I too struggle with the lack of nuance in these conversations generally. Really appreciating it here.
I think it’s in that idea of seeking your lost self in your children. Looking for a sense of identity in them. Not only wanting but in a way NEEDING them to act a certain way or be perceived in a certain way by others.
Also, the marriage suffering is a symptom of that self erasure. When I seek refuge from my marriage in my children, what I’m really hiding from is my vocation and therefore my “self” in the sense of the path marked out for me by God.
Great post for this Friday afternoon. Enjoy your holiday weekend!
I'm a young man, not a mother, but I'm often stricken when going to mass by the huge emphasis we put on giving, and how much less we talk about receiving. Yet ultimately it's God who gives and we who receive.
We should strive to give with charity and selflessness but be ever ready to accept help and charity from other, with humility and thankfulness.
A lot of sermons seem to be given with the assumption the needy are outside the church awaiting help, but not present in the pews.
Meanwhile scripture is pretty explicit that the most materially comfortable are likely to be in serious spiritual peril.
Not only that, but it must also feel rather condescending to the people inside the Church who are actually in need of material relief.
Not to say that encouraging people to bee generous and charitable is bad of course.
As I sit here, at 2something in the morning, nursing my youngest child back to sleep, I find myself simply thinking, "This, too, shall pass." And it will, my oldest is 22 and I remember being up with him at 2 am, 22 years ago, nursing him back to sleep.
Honestly, though, I find the danger of self-erasure lies in seeking one's identity beyond the objective reality. Too often identity devolves into a sum of feelings or actions, whether they be one's own actions or pridefully taking on the actions of others (husband, kids, etc...).
Our identity lies in our state of being, our state of reality. We are children of God, we are sinners, we are children (we have/had parents), if we are married - we are wives (husbands), if we have children - we are mothers (fathers). These are (some of) our identities because they are the states of being - the reality that shapes what we do, what we feel, what choices we make. But when we let our actions, feelings, choices become our identities, rather than letting our identities inform them, that's when we risk self-erasure or self-glorification. We risk forgetting to sacrifice ourself for the good of another, or we sacrifice ourselves for our own good and "play the martyr".
The baby bit me while nursing. But he is finally sleeping, peacefully, again. "This, too, shall pass."
I love the idea of Kantian thinking about valuing mother and child together, and in an interconnected way.
In a funny sense of God's timing, I just read the quote in your Benedict Option book from Robert Farrar Capon (I adore his writing) about how children love fat mothers because they are more *there*. This has been my experience. I have always been good at putting babies to sleep (mine and others), and I think they just love to snuggle into my body.
I volunteer in our county hospital's NICU doing just that. Sometimes it feels like a hassle, and more trouble than it's worth, and that I'm not wanted or appreciated. But, on the whole, I get so so much out of it, even though it's sometimes all of those things too. The former is more daily nitty gritty troubles, but the latter is big-picture. The babies and I are both calmer, quieter (in my mind, in their bodies), and more content as a result of these visits. I have to keep the bigger picture in mind as a way of helping me distinguish between self-gift and self-erasure.
Thank you for doing those NICU shifts! It’s really moving how much those little babies are helped by physical love as well as their medical supports. It’s how they know who they are, by being loved.
I’m trying hard not to give into trite language about self-care, but I think all my thoughts on this question borrow from clichés. First thing that comes to mind is that there has to be a self there to give; you can’t give of yourself if you don’t know yourself.
I also find the concept of emotional boundaries to be helpful here. Among the gifts I want to give my children is the gift of seeing and valuing them for themselves, knowing what in our relationship is me and what is not-me.
It can't be done unless we graft ourselves to Christ. It is in Him that we have our ultimate identity. Talk to Him; tell Him your troubles; share with Him your joys. He understands and loves us with a great Heart that He gives us to love others.