What makes a 'good' mother?

Trading shame and doubt for self-acceptance and compassion.

I finished this gorgeous piece by

Lauren Barber

, and I felt inspired to answer the question of what makes a ‘good’ mother. Perfectly timed because I have been feeling down about my mothering. Stories have filled my head about how I am not good enough, not present enough, not loving enough.

They are stories, they are noise, thoughts rooted in fear and shame.

I thought when I became a mother, I would be my version of a ‘good’ mother.

I thought I would be endlessly patient, kind, caring, doting. I thought I would never yell. I thought I would cook every meal, I thought I would bake often, I thought I would spend hours on the floor playing with my kid. I thought motherhood would be bliss.

But what if mother is something different entirely?

I had someone catch me of guard today by asking me, “Isn’t motherhood the greatest thing ever? Don’t you love your child so much?”

It was a waitress at a restaurant, years of societal training and masking told me it was probably not the right moment to share my real thoughts about motherhood. But also, how hard would it have been to say motherhood is hard.

Because it is, no mother would disagree with that statement. (And if I am wrong, please stop reading this because this is not for you.)

When I do not tell the truth about motherhood it is because deep down I hold shame about how I mother. I hate that I am not the ‘good’ mother I thought I would be. No matter how many times people tell me I am a great mother, I do not believe them. I am convinced I am flawed.

And the biggest piece of evidence I have about my failure as a mother is that I yell.

My mother was a yeller, usually about things I did not understand and I believed were irrational. I could not understand how leaving a dish in the sink could be such a trigger for one human, but it was.

Uncomfortably so, I understand now. I wonder if my mother was yelling because she was angry or because she as overstimulated. And I wonder what my son feels when I yell. Because I know whatever I am yelling about is often a ridiculous demand (my child cannot possibly take care of my needs for me).

Anger appears when our boundaries have been violated.

Overstimulation appears when our sensory limits have been overwhelmed.

There is a difference to me and in my body. Often when I yell, it is stemming from overstimulation…too much noise, too much demand, too much touching, too much toddler doing what he wants instead of what I want.

Sometimes this results in anger but more often it results in overstimulation and I yell because I have had enough. I wonder where my mother was yelling from. I believed, as I kid would do if emotions were never explained to them, my mother hated me because she yelled at me. Maybe she did not know her own boundaries and she was experiencing overstimulation.

I try to talk to my son about the difference, but I am still learning the difference in my own body. I try to communicate what I am feeling and what I need. Because I am not sure I am going to stop feeling overstimulated, I do hope to figure out how to take care of myself before I get to the place where I need to yell out in frustration.

Practicing something new

So much of what makes me feel like a ‘bad’ mother stems from my sensory sensitivities. My kid is being himself, and it is too loud for me. My kid is being himself, and it is too much information for my brain to process. My kid is being himself, and I am bored out of my mind playing the same game for the fifteenth time.

I have been leaning into self-acceptance and self-compassion since I became a mother. I have stumbled at it, but I am remembering more often to be gentle with myself. And yet there is still shame, there is still this story of the elusive ‘good’ mother.

I know the conditioning of the ‘good’ mother goes beyond me. I know the overculture has influenced how I perceive the way I should act. But no matter how much I remind myself the ‘good’ mother isn’t real, I still think she is out there.

I suspect her in every mother I see. I suspect I am the one failing. All the mother writer’s I read who share about motherhood and how hard it is, I still manage to think they are doing better at motherhood than me.

I think everyone is doing better at mothering than me.

My partner and I are talking about another child, the timing feels right, I feel excited instead of terrified. But I do wonder about this struggle between the ‘good’ mother and the human mother I am.

Another child is naturally going to make me more human, but I worry the ‘good’ mother ideal will double down, I worry I will feel more overstimulated, I worry another child will confirm the shame I feel and reinforce the narrative of I am a terrible mother.

I wonder if I will ever feel good enough when I spent most of my life feeling unloved by my mother. I spent most of my life feeling this disconnect, this boulder in the way of the flow of her love. While I know it is possible to mother without being mothered in a loving and nurturing way, I wonder if I will always stand in the shadow of the trauma.

Will I always feel less than because I never felt good enough for my mother?

Embracing humanity

While all the adult parts of me know my mother’s inability to love freely had nothing to do with me, these adult parts of me also know my autism does not make me a bad mother, there are still the stories of shame and doubt.

Kaitlyn Elizabeth

wisely wrote in a piece (I cannot find because it is a note in my jouranl from months ago that stuck with me) that shame is saying, “I want to change myself rather than meet myself where I am and see what I need.”

I desperately want to change myself, oddly though it is only when it comes to mothering. I have come to accept the different ways I function when it comes to my autism, and yet for some reason when it comes to motherhood, every piece of my sensitivity is disgusting to me.

And that is why I keep writing about motherhood, about how it overlaps with neurodiversity, because the overculture has spent our lives showing us only a few specific versions of motherhood. We need other stories, we need more dialogue around it, so when strangers talk to each other about motherhood, the default conversation is not about how great it is and how much we love our children.

The ‘good’ mother is an illusion. I think it is universal but also deeply personal to what we perceive as our own flaws. The biggest thing I think that makes me a ‘bad’ mother is that I yell, the ‘good’ mother never yells.

Except the ‘good’ mother doesn’t exist, and most mothers yell from time to time, whether out of anger or overstimulation. Because we are human.

Those ideals around the ‘good’ mother are often inhumane. The martyrdom, the self-sacrifice, the looking put together, the never having any complaints.

It is not human.

I want to be human. I want to feel. I want to repair when I make a mistake.

I do not want to be perfect, I do not even want to be the ‘good’ mother.

I want to be myself.

I come to this conclusion over and over again in my writing and inside myself. I want to feel the full range of human emotions and I want my son to see that.

So, I cannot cut off the parts of myself that tend towards overstimulation, sensory overwhelm, exhaustion, or anxiety. These are parts of me too, they need a seat at the table.

The thing I think I may be fully coming to understand about my different parts of self is they are going to show up no matter what. So, I can embrace, nurture and respect them or I can keep trying to cut them off and deny them even though that seems to make them grow more heads.

It is too easy to want to be different, it is too easy to hate parts of ourselves, it is too easy to think if we keep striving and working hard we can escape who we are.

I do think there are beautiful ways we can evolve as human beings and I do think in some places we are who we are. I am not going to rid myself of autism, I may be able to build a bigger basket and expand my window of tolerance, but lights and sounds probably are never going to be my friends, because I am wired to be sensitive to them.

And that is okay. What is also okay is my child may never understand that because he is wired in a different way. He loves lights and sounds. He loves sensory input. And that is okay.

Shame also occurs when we try to deny parts of ourselves. It rises up when we choose to bury the truth of who we are and aim to change ourselves instead. But somethings are not meant to be changed but embraced and showered with self-acceptance and compassion, and maybe from there growth emerges.

So, what makes a human mother?

Someone who repairs when they make a mistake.

Someone who gives themselves compassion.

Someone who demonstrates the full spectrum of emotions in their lives.

Someone who tries to place love at the center of everything.

Someone who takes their well-being, mental health, and creativity seriously and makes time for themselves.

Someone who honors their limits.

Someone who gives all that they can when they have space and take what they need when their empty.

What would you add to this list?

Emma