A Soft Place to Land
Last week I was talking to a woman I know. We were talking about our children and our worries and she was telling me, fraught with worry, that the beginning of the school year has brought school troubles for her youngest child. Her emotions ran high as she explained the situation to me. She is battling the ugly guilt monster because she works full-time and although she wants terribly to be home for them after school, it's just not a reality in her life right now. Then she said something that grabbed me with full force.
She said, "I want to be a soft place for them to land."
It was so profound to me and verbalized how we feel a lot of the time as mothers.
As women, we are made biologically to be nurturing and sensitive and soft. Just yesterday I was reading an article that spoke of how physically, our brains are MADE different than mens' brains. Based on the hormones that surround us in our mother's womb, men's brains develop to me naturally more analytical and systematized. Women's brains develop to be more intuitive, sensitive, and to focus more on cause and consequence in situations.
We know we are not all made the same - each of us has varying levels of the above traits, both male and female. And when we are healthy and balanced (as a man OR a woman), our masculine and feminine traits work together and balance each other out.
Today's society holds a lot of emphasis and value on "masculine" traits. As women, we get extremely caught up in our lists and our feelings of always needing to do more, more, more. We push through our exhaustion and attempt to be the woman who "achieves" all the things (perfect house, happy kids, happy spouse, healthy meals, Pinterest worthy birthday parties, etc.). What's wrong with this picture, is that we let our "masculine" traits get way out of control and forget that embracing our "feminine" traits is how we become powerful and strong (and happy!) women.
The reality is, that we can be soft AND strong at the same time in our own way. We don't need to prove anything and actually, I believe it's our quiet strength and our softness that our children and our spouses love and need, even if they don't realize it. We are also made to receive. When is the last time you allowed yourself to receive (help, love, nurturing, etc.) without feeling guilty or putting up a block? When was the last time you softened and allowed yourself to just be present with your spouse and your children, giving them the space to come to you?
I know for myself, it's easier to be soft for my children than it is with my husband. What I've learned is that just as we are biologically designed to be soft, men are biologically designed to be hard. Where we are designed to receive, they are designed to give (think about men's biological desire to "hunt" and "provide"). They need to be able to give to us to feel balanced and whole just as much as we need to be able to be still and receive to feel balanced and whole. And truthfully, being able to be still and receive is what so very many of us crave - we just don't quite know how to get there from here.
I challenge you today to think about situations where you've been pushing too much or being too rigid. Then, I want you to give yourself permission to soften, just a bit. Maybe you sit with your husband for a few minutes after supper instead of running around like a chicken with your head cut off until your head hits the pillow. For me it looks like going to my bed when my spouse goes to bed, which is [much] earlier than I would normally choose to. I'm not usually ready to go to sleep, so I read or journal or cruise Pinterest while he sleeps. He gets upset when I stay in the living room by myself until the wee hours of the morning and although it used to irk me that it annoyed him (hello I need some damn quiet time!!), over time I came to understand that it is comforting to him to just be with me. He feels connected to me rather than feeling cut off from me.
As busy women, it's hard to sometimes just stop and be still; there's SO much to DO.
Try it though - I would bet you will be pleasantly surprised not only by how you feel, but by how those you love respond to you.
Sending you so much love today,
Elsa