April 09, 2014

Global Moms Relay

We recently came across this article on the Huffington Post, “Women and Girls Are The Power and Potential For Change,” which discusses motherhood, and the fact that when it comes to parenting, women are often too hard on themselves. The article itself is part of the Global Moms Relay, which is a new organization that is encouraging people to share stories about mothers via their website. For each story shared, Johnson & Johnson will donate $1 to help these inspiring campaigns. There are so many young girls and women put into impossible situations across the world every day, forced to grow up, become mothers, raise children and change lives, many with little to no support.

But even if you do have support, that doesn’t mean that you have an excuse to be hard on yourself, or to deny the incredibly difficult job it is to be a mother. That goes for birth mothers, adoptive parents and foster parents alike. There are no perfect parents, and there is no perfect parenting. Rather than taking each other down or living in judgment, we need to be spreading messages of acceptance, love and kindness. This is the type of support we would want to have in our most challenging moments—and we all have them—and it is the type of support we should feel obligated to give to those around us.

Your house may not always be clean, and from time to time, your children may be dressed in mismatched clothes. Not every soccer game, music rehearsal or science fair can be dutifully attended, and it is beyond okay for you to feel so stressed out of your mind that you can’t possibly see a way out. These things do not make you a bad mother. They make you a human. And trust us. Your child wants to be raised by someone who exhibits the same graceful (and not so graceful) mistakes that they will inevitably make as they grow up. We learn through our challenges, and it is our challenges that make us more powerful people. Next time you feel like beating yourself up for something small, take a step back and look at all the incredible things you accomplish every day. The children you feed, clothe, nurture and get out the door in some way or another. The fact that you have chosen to create and love a family, to grow another human and to prepare it for the world—not one day should go by where you don’t feel at least a little encouraged by that.

All you mothers out there, THANK YOU for what you do. You deserve all the love and support in the world, and we are so thankful for groups like the Global Moms Relay to remind us of that and to help encourage change where it is so desperately needed.