Three Ways Moms Can Get More Support

And the word I'm using instead

When I was in seventh grade, my English teacher assigned a five-paragraph essay—

I want to pause here for anyone thinking, “That’s more exposition than I bargained for”—no worries! I put the three ways in bold in the second half of this post. Scroll on down!

Where was I? The essay. My teacher assigned an essay which was supposed to be about a significant adult in our lives. Maybe a few students in the class picked teachers or coaches, but most of us pivoted toward the nearest (colloquially speaking) breathing adult (a parent), typed up something about them, and handed back five paragraphs on the due date. Our teacher kicked off the next class by dragging a chair to the front of the classroom. She sat down and crossed her arms, the stack of red-penned essays in her right hand.

“This chair,” she said, “supports me.”

My classmates and I traded looks. What is she doing?

this chair won’t let you down

“It is… always there for me,” she emphasized. “I learned that your parents are, too. But what I don’t know is how—or even if—what your parents do for you is different than what this chair is doing for me right now. The words and phrases that you chose in these essays didn’t help me understand the specifics. What do your parents say? What do they do? When were they ‘there for you’—what happened?”

She stood up, walked over to my desk, and said, “Meredith, I could write a book about your mother.” (Relevant information: my mother taught history at the school—just a jog and a turn down the hallway.) She set my essay on the desk. “Nowhere in these five paragraphs did you tell me a single thing about her.”

I think about the case Mrs. Clemmons made every time I hear someone say that “Moms need a lot of support” or “Moms don’t get enough support.” The phrase gets used enough that most of us have some kind of concept of what it means, and we even nod along. It’s true. Moms do need a lot of support, and many (most!) don’t have enough of it. The problem is widespread, and there’s worthwhile advice in regard to it already in existence.

Here’s where I want to go with this. Is there a different word I could use to describe this particularly sticky motherhood problem? If Mrs. Clemmons marked out the word “support” and indicated in the margin that my word choice wasn’t specific, what word would I use instead?

Shoot. I can’t sub in my new word exactly over the top of “support,” in any of the sentences in the above paragraphs, so we’re going to have to mess around with the structure here.

Mothers need to be surrounded.

TO THE DICTIONARY!

many thanks to the good folks of Merriam Webster

Okay. I’m not sure about “enclose so as to cut off communication” (mothers shouldn’t be, you know, isolated), but this definition does help me out: “to enclose on all sides.”

Here’s the picture that calls up for me. If there’s a crowd “surrounding” a woman, they aren’t standing exactly where she is standing. They are standing in different positions around her. They are covering different metaphorical ground, if you will. It’s a circle, not a dogpile. Of course, no one is “coming from exactly the same place” as anyone else (insert diatribe about “understanding” and “having the exact same experience” not being the same thing). What I’m trying to say here is that a mother will not truly be surrounded—that is, enclosed on all sides—unless there are some significant variations in the experience and expertise of the persons around her.

A mother benefits significantly from proximity with other mothers whose ages, abilities, and approaches are somewhat different than her own. A woman in this coveted position is surrounded. But how did she get there?

This is the part where I’m going to switch to talking to “you” because continuing to read is tantamount to asking for (or at least being tolerant of) my thoughts on the matter, so here we go…

(This is directed at mothers with younger children, but hopefully some of it can apply more widely).

Ages

I’m going to start with age because I think it’s the most important. You need a friendship with another mother who is at least fifteen years older than you, living nearby, and is not your mother. No shade on actual mothers. Mothers are amazing. They are important. But they should not be the only woman in that “friends older than me” category. If you do not have this kind of relationship, you will have a woman-who-is-fifteen-years-older-than-me-and-not-my-mom shaped hole in your heart until you find one.

Let me guess. You listen to at least one podcast hosted by a woman who could fit into that category if she happened to live in your city. Sometimes you turn her podcast on while you’re doing laundry just for background noise. There’s a reason why you do this.

The internet calls it “big-sis energy,” but what this older-and-wiser and close-by woman offers you is an extra decade and change of perspective (something your same-age friends simply don’t have). Podcasts are great, but the real thing is better.

Where do you find this mythical beast?

Church.

Maybe they inhabit in other places, but you can find one at church. Attending a church (the same one) once a week, for a while, is a great strategy for bringing you in contact with the generation above you. You can decide how you feel about God later. Sure, jumping into these kinds of relationships might feel a little awkward. And yes, everyone is busyyyyyyy. Push through. Maybe you beg for a dinner invite. Maybe you ask them to come over for drinks or dessert after you’ve put your kids in bed and their older children stay home and WATCH THEMSELVES.

(Cheatcode: be Catholic, ask these types of women and their husbands to be godparents for your children. Then they can’t get away from you, ever.)

WAY #1: Beg, borrow, or steal friendship from a mother who is at least fifteen years older than you, or start plotting how you could do that. If you already have one of these friendships, reach out and plan something with her (today).

Abilities

This one is pretty self-explanatory and happens more naturally than the “age” one. The trick is getting your friends to own up to their abilities. The way to do this is to be needy, needier than you are probably comfortable with.

Can you make a pie crust?

Do you own a hand drill?

Do you know how to design your backyard landscape so the water doesn’t pool under your deck?

Someone you know probably does. Finding out is as simple as needing and asking.

WAY #2: identify something you need that you can’t make happen on your own. Send out a needy-Mc-neederson request for help without proposing an exchange.

Approaches

We all need a friend who does the baby-sleep-thing differently than we do.

Flashback: for some reason, 21-year-old me was leafing through a pamphlet from New Life Church Downtown that had a bunch of different small groups. One of the blurbs described the co-leaders of a women’s small group: “Holly had her babies at home, breastfeeds, and uses cloth diapers. Sarah had her baby in a hospital, bottle feeds, and uses disposable diapers. There is no mom-shaming or judgment here.”

I did not at the time apprehend why this was important, but I sure as heck do now. I know nothing about how Holly and Sarah became friends and why they decided to lead a small group together, but the world is better for it. We can all get very attached to our own approaches. We can fall for the lie that parenting is about perfect execution instead of perfect trust (and knowing when to pivot). Knowing women who do it (whatever it is) differently underscores the notion that mothering is not a “PICK THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE DICHOTOMY OR DIE” kind of exercise. I don’t know a better way to feel alone than telling yourself that you’re failing at the one right way to do ________.

WAY #3: think of a woman who takes a different approach to [schooling, birthing, food, sleep, what-have-you] and pray for her by name. Bonus points for asking her to pray for you.

On the Calendar: Second Week of Lent

✝️You are exactly where you are meant to be, and you are already doing more than you think. ✝️

🐂The Gospel for Sunday is Luke 9:28-36, the mystery of our Lord’s transfiguration. Just to point something out that (by some coincidence) relates to this post, let’s take a look at verse 30:

And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his exodus, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem.

This time, this struck me as a beautiful picture of the communion of the Saints. In this passage, Jesus is surrounded by Moses and Elijah, who are (in a way?) older and wiser friends who come alongside to encourage and offer perspective on something difficult that He’s facing. (“something difficult” — e.g., the most difficult thing anyone ever did…). I am so desperately grateful for the wiser and more experienced women in my life, women who have eased a hundred different heartaches and carried burdens with me.

It’s a big Lenten week! Am I the only one who cannot believe it’s only the second week of this season? It has felt like a year. I resolved to “get up immediately when I woke up,” and ran into the Daylight Savings phenomenon that makes six in the morning dark instead of light, so, that’s how things are going (not well! but who said that was the point?)

We are smack in the middle of our Lenten Birthday series over here (yes, we eat dessert on birthdays even though we picked dessert as our family fast for the season). It’s a week of light spots, though, namely,

St. Patrick, Bishop (March 17) and St. Joseph (March 19)

The feast of St. Joseph is such a big deal that I’ve heard it described as “In lent, but not of it.” That sounds like an invitation to celebrate. Not to escape our fasts, necessarily, but to add some meaningful joyful element to the day.

Last week, roughly 70% of readers polled didn’t know what they were eating the next Friday (which makes sense because this comes out on Saturday and only 30% of people like that a week in advance). If you need Friday meal ideas, the comments section of my last post has dozens of great ideas for meatless meals. The best thing that has happened to our Lent is hearing what one of Jonny’s coworkers (who is Orthodox) has to do, which has made our own load seem very light in comparison. But also, if you make a vegetarian meal just one other time during the week, Friday gets a lot easier because you have meatless leftovers. Cheat-cheat-cheat: make pizza on Wednesday and make half of one of your pizzas cheese. (With many apologies to the Orthodox!)

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