Motherhood is revolutionary enough

Jan 29
4 min read

“You may feel powerless, but all I see is a woman who is SO in her power that she can show up for the children while everything is burning around her. What is power if not the strength of a mother to keep opening her heart and carrying the light, despite all the wickedness and darkness around her. You may feel hopeless, but all I see is a woman who inspires so much hope and joy in her children all while not knowing what the future holds for them. What is hope if not the voice of a mother whispering love words into the ears of her children, despite all the noise and vitriol around her.” —Daphne Delvaux

Motherhood is revolutionary.

I had no idea before I became a mother. And for years with littles underfoot, interacting with mothers in support groups and the playground and Instagram, hearing this sentiment, I still wasn’t convinced.

Often, the key for me is to witness the truth of things in a friend’s experience first, to be able to believe it for myself. I see in mothers (and myself) over and over again, how we show up to protect our children’s psyches from the inheritance of trauma. How we battle bureaucracy to get the services our kids need. The amount of emotional labor we do, thinking about, feeling through, creatively problem-solving the challenges our kids face. Day after day, season after season. And thank goddess for those mothers, my comrades, my community, that show me revolutionary mothering and affirm it in mine.

One friend stays up all night long every night with her teen, recently diagnosed with Autism and ADHD, to provide emotional support. One friend is walking a tightrope through paperwork to make sure their kid has insurance, that they get the diagnosis, that their school appropriately educates them and treats them fairly. One friend shared about being present and walking alongside their kid during suicidal ideation—around the clock care and impossible stress. One friend is trying to protect their girls from tech predators. I’m trying to raise my boys to be kind, feminist men. We are all trying to make sure the queer kids are loved and accepted and safe.

And this is no accident. Mothers overburdened with the weight of the world can’t fight the revolution and who benefits from that? We want to do more and we are already doing everything, but that doesn’t mean we should. It means we are very effectively sidelined in the fight.¹

Motherhood changes what we are willing to fight for, often because we’ve suddenly sidelined in this new way.

The noise of the world right now is greater than even the relentless cacophony of the kids. Current events are terrifying, overwhelming, disgusting and call us to act. As mothers, we often feel a responsibility to activism that we may have not felt in the same way before. The things I must do, for my kids, that I would never have done for myself. ‘I will tend to my own needs, not because I deserve it… if it means I can show up as the mother they need.’ The love activates the responsibility.

That logic rules my feelings about speaking up to my state representatives. I haaate doing it, but I will bear my own discomfort to speak up for my kids, for my friends’ kids, for the kids that cannot speak for themselves. I will put myself out there in a public way for their sake at a new level that I would never have been willing or able to imagine before.

And also. I cannot go be in the streets. I cannot strike from mothering. I cannot put my body in danger in the way some can, while holding the responsibility I carry to be here for my kids.

It is so easy to feel trapped, wrong, and not enough, and that is by design.

My dear friend and mentor, Beth Berry, taught me that needs come before values. If it’s in your values to be honest, to not steal, but your kids are starving and you can’t afford food, you will steal food to feed your kids. We cannot live from our values with unmet needs.

We can’t go fight the patriarchy while we are sleep-deprived and our kids are in crisis. And patriarchy is why we are in this situation in the first place.

And, there are still things we can do. There are a thousand ways to impact our world. We do it by loving our kids and raising humans that are prepared and resourced for what they will inherit. We do it by loving the people around us in our communities. Maybe you can make a meal for a friend’s meal train. Maybe you can donate $10 to the foodshare on your next grocery order. Maybe you can watch a friend’s kid for a couple hours. Maybe you can make one call to one representative.

And maybe all you can do today is breathe. That matters too—immensely. Let this never be an invocation to do more, to feel more responsibility than we already do. That’s the point. We feel enough responsibility. Dude, the weight of the world, for real.

It takes all of it. From the big actions to the smallest gestures.

So please don’t beat yourself up for not doing enough. We are raising your children inside a system that was never built to support us. The revolution is in how we mother—our kids, ourselves, and each other.

¹This is from my experience of mothers I am in relationship with and doesn’t even scratch the surface of the compounding complications of systemic racism, poverty, ableism, or living as queer, immigrant or solo parents with even less support or privilege. This is some mothers’ experiences and not all.

Drea Awdish, coach and facilitator

Originally posted on Substack