The eyes of a healthy, mature loving mother speak volumes.  They say "you are safe".  They say "you matter".  They say "you are enough just breathing".  Held in that gaze you know in the very cells of your body that there is room for all of who you are; no part of you needs to be hidden or denied.  You can grow.

We do not all come into this life into the arms and heart of such a mother. 

Even with their best intentions and efforts mothers are themselves only human, struggling with the challenges and limits and wounding of their own development.

So many of us are living with the consequences of not having been held in the consistently responsive warmth of a mature mother, yet despite that we all have the opportunity to become good mothers for ourselves.

And the way we start to do this is to come home to the body when it calls.  We can practice directing our awareness to what it feels like inside ourselves when we are signalled with dissonance.  We can notice the constriction in our muscles - not in a generalized way but specifically locating the tension here and there and here and there - as it lets us know we are faced with some vulnerable truth.  We can consistently come towards that physical discomfort and stay with ourselves warm and interested and nonjudgmental.  Here and now.

Like a good mother we can come to know our unique call with precision so that we recognize it no matter what other "noise" is going on.  We can choose to bring attention to it long before it becomes a distressed wail; we answer our body's call when it is merely on the edge of a whimper.

And we can grow our ability to tolerate the discomfort of the body's call, knowing that growth emerges out of being held in those places of struggle.  We hold ourselves and we breathe and we listen and we feel.  And we track ourselves as though what we feel actually matters.  Because it does.  Just because you are you.  And as your own mother, you know that is reason enough.

If even for a moment today you can tune in and listen to yourself with your very best mother ears, if you can look at yourself for just a moment with your softest mother eyes, if you can whisper to yourself with your sweetest mother voice, if you can stroke the back of your own hand with your most tender mother's touch, you will feel yourself open to the miracle that is you.

I invite you to hold your imperfect good enough self in your powerful loving imperfect good enough mother's heart.  I honour you in all of that.

Happy Mother's Day to you.

 Photo Credit:  ELB Photos