Compassion and motherhood

My son recently turned 2 and it made me look back at the last three years and the changes I've gone through. Becoming a mother is a period filled with turmoil and a lot of different emotions. One of the greatest struggles for me was the lack of support system around me. Not because I'm surrounded by unwilling people but because the need of support of new parents is vast.

We often say "it takes a village to raise a child". Yet, our Western society is based on a principle of independent individuals who shouldn't need anyone. In addition we are fed images from social media, regular media and other places of the sucessful mothers (and fathers) who have it all together and on top of that manage to start a company, bake lovely cakes, play with their children and upload all of it to their instagram account. It gives us an ever so eschewed image of what parenthood is like and a sense that we are failing because we cannot live up to that.

When I became a mother I decided I needed some external emotional support to help me better understand the issues I and others go through. I asked one of the supervisors and teachers in Compassion Focused Therapy, Dr. Michelle Cree, to help me out. Michelle has written the very insightful and warm book called the Compassionate Approach to Postnatal depression. In the book she describes not only about the postnatal depression but also gives a very good description of the challenges we as new parents face and how we can approach that with Compassion.

For those of you who are curious you can listen to a podcast with Michelle where she discusses her book and her work with new mothers.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/gentlebirth-gentlebirth-podcast-positive-birth-stories/id1434587704?mt=2