WHY WE NEED MOTHER MENTORS

Sarah Wheatley - 8 Oct 14

This week I had coffee with some of the amazing women who mentor me in my business. These women are a few stages ahead of me, and don’t mind sharing their wisdom, experience and support. I enjoy the parallel between all these older ‘mothers’ supporting me and my new ‘baby,’ through which I support new mothers and their babies. These ladies provide a healthy dose of reality at times, which I may or may not want to hear, and they also give me encouragement when my energy is flagging and I’m not sure what to do next. To be fair, I also have a couple of  great male mentors, but I most often find myself gravitating to the ‘mother mentors’ in my life.

It struck me the other day, that this ‘mentoring’ kind of support is also necessary for new mothers with their flesh-and-blood, sunshine-and-tears babies. People’s relationships with their biological mothers can be a minefield; for every woman I have met who describes her relationship with her mother as a ‘friendship’ or as being incredibly close, there are many others who often feel hurt, misunderstood or unseen by their own mothers. There are also new parents who do not have their own mothers around any more, maybe because they live so far away or else they are no longer alive. The awareness of this loss is often dramatically intensified by becoming a mother yourself.

Accepting our own mothers the way they are can be really free-ing as a new parent. Whether they are amazing, disappointing or just plain unavailable, if we can accept the reality of our relationships with our mothers, we can also look at what it is we might want from them.

And then – this is the great bit – we can go and find it.

Our ‘mothers mentors’ might not be obvious at first. Maybe there’s a lady at the mother-and-babies group who always gives you a hug when you look a bit overwhelmed, or maybe there’s a Health Visitor who really supports the decisions you make, or maybe you have found a doula or other supportive person who is your champion when you feel weary, and encourages you to look at how well you are mothering your baby. Maybe there’s a group, either online or face-to-face, that helps you laugh at the awfulness of some of the situations you find yourself in, or maybe there’s a friend who is happy to walk your baby in their buggy whilst you spend some time uninterrupted, or maybe at times you can mother yourself, run a bath and give yourself an early night.

These kind of mothers are our emotional supporters, our champions, the people that want to see us do as well as we can. They may not even realise that they are giving you just exactly what you need in that moment, as you might not realise the things that you do that will stay with your own children. Like our biological mothers, they don’t come in any prescribed shape or size, and they are never perfect. Sometimes there is only one bit of their mothering that we want, and not all of it. That’s fine. And these relationships may last as long as a cup of tea. That is fine too.

It can sometimes be difficult not to see our need to be mothered as a negative thing. You might feel worried that you’re ‘too needy’ or just ‘not getting things right’. We are often given the message that vulnerability is ‘negative’ and too often the playground we call the workplace teaches us that being a grown woman means fending for ourselves and hiding our emotions. But if we can accept this mother mentoring, wherever it comes from, we will be in a better place to be the mothers that we are.

Motherhood is different for all of us… if you’d like to share your thoughts, why not join our Network & start posting?

Main image: Fes No.1 by Ritty Tacsum at Lumitrix

Sarah Wheatley

Counsellor, wife, mother, bee lover. Lives beside the sea in Edinburgh. Works with pregnant and new parents to help them not just cope but thrive.

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