Nurturing Intimacy Within Yourself
The relationship with yourself is the foundation of all others.
Motherhood comes with so much pressure—to always be happy and grateful for your family, to have a perfect marriage where you're best friends, co-parents, and still have amazing intimacy. You’re expected to stay fit and healthy, have a fulfilling career, and somehow be a present, patient, and playful mom. The list goes on and ON!
The truth is, most of us do live some version of this ideal—we love our families and are deeply grateful for them. We cherish being moms, and for the most part, our marriages are healthy and happy, with varying levels of intimacy. But here's the thing: we are human. And in our humanity, we carry an emotional landscape that colors all of these external expectations. These 'checklist' items, which on the surface define our lives as 'successful,' don't capture the complexity of our experience.
Intimacy and sex are layered with innuendo, red hearts, and lingerie…throughout the month of February. Over the past few weeks I’ve been adding my spin on this Valentine’s theme, writing about all aspects of intimacy, and I guess in many ways, I’ve been building up to the punchline…
Intimacy with yourself is the most important relationship you have. And, it’s the most challenging once you become a mom, because that kind of stillness with your own mind and body just doesn’t exist anymore.
The early years of parenthood are a gauntlet of resilience and pivoting—a constant flow of identifying, planning, and then re-prioritizing how everyone’s needs will be met. And, organically the mom’s needs slip to the bottom a lot of the time. I wrote a piece recently on how to actually be a supportive partner to a new mom (you can read it here), but the reality is that you will run depleted of emotional resources for a long time.
Here’s the catch 22: if you totally ignore yourself for this stretch of parenthood, you will land in a pretty dark place, pretty quickly
We’ve been told this before—we all know it and science knows it. We have heard the abundant advice that, “caring for yourself is caring for your children,” but that’s just not always true. At dinnertime, you don’t sit down and tend to your personal mountain of stress that desperately needs to be processed. You walk into the kitchen and figure out dinner for your hungry family. And when your baby is crying and your back is locking as you bend over the crib, you pick up your child and comfort them even if the pain knocks the wind out of you.
I think that’s the biggest blind spot for all of us moms. We are so focused on staying positive—on being patient and sidelining our unmet needs that whole years slip by before we notice ourselves and then, we don’t recognize anything about who we’ve become.
So, what would emotional intimacy with ourselves look like if we were to re-design it for the years of motherhood when we often come second (or last) on the priority list?
Discipline your monkey mind. It’s okay that your mind takes you to crazy, conflicting places. Parent yourself. In a quiet moment, ask yourself, “what do I need to hear most when I’m feeling out of control?” A simple, loving statement to re-caste your thoughts. For example, mine is “I love myself.” I just start repeating it in my mind until whatever thought stream that had been running becomes quiet.
Notice your body. We are 100% conditioned to ignore the body-temple we live in. But, your body is your entire reality. It is where your mind lives and what gives rise to your emotions and allows you to self-soothe and thrive. I’m not talking about being a monk and meditating all the time, but just becoming aware of your body cues. I feel my jaw clench, my stomach tighten or my mom-voice starting to pitch faster and louder—these are my personal cues to just stop and take a breath. Once I’m through the moment, I will note that I am beginning to reach a breaking point and I need some time with myself to be close and feel through whatever is going on inside.
Punctuate your days with small doses of self-care. My mom hacks are pretty well known in my household at this point. At the end of a long day with my young daughters, I sit on the edge of the bathtub and soak my feet while giving them a bath. It’s small, but it really calms and grounds me. It is an act of meeting my own needs while caring for them. Another one I love is keeping mason jars of simple nuts and organic dried fruits on my kitchen counter. When I’m starving, I grab from there instead of for the cookies or snack cupboard. It’s a way to nourish myself with real nutrition in the moment and on the fly when I don’t have time to sit down and eat a whole meal.
Mom guilt is everywhere. You simply have to befriend it so it doesn’t control you. You will ALWAYS feel guilting and torn when you choose to meet your needs instead of tending to your child. It is the essence of your connection to motherhood and to your role in your childrens’ lives. It is a mark of how much you love and value them. Come to an agreement with your partner that you each take a certain amount of time away, alone, with friends (whatever it looks like for you), to meet your personal emotional needs with yourself. You simply have each other’s back and do it. The more you stick to this, the easier it gets and the mom guilt diminishes.
Intimacy with yourself is not always pretty. Often, the unmet needs you run into reveal a lot of sadness, fear or anger…these are not bad feelings. They are totally normal parts of being human, let alone a stressed-out human raising tiny humans. So, feeling is the gateway to closeness, to sifting through noise and becoming clear about what you need in order to keep thriving upward, on the grateful trajectory of loving your life and family.
I can’t begin to tell you how many moms I have witnessed in class melting into tears. We all just need to cry sometimes because this job is HARD and you are living at full emotional capacity ALL THE TIME.
So, cry, feel, breathe—live in your body and notice. Let the messages in and then let them go. You don’t have to hold it all yourself. You can’t…none of us can. Intimacy with yourself is knowing yourself and knowing yourself over a lifetime journey that arcs, curves, expands and contracts.
Exhale. Lean in. The water is deep…but, it’s wonderful.