Prioritising Maternal Health: Rewriting The Mother Story

Rewriting The Mother Story By Investing In Our Own Care

I am asking women, birth givers and mothers to actively invest in themselves.

To invest real time and real money into their own care. To invest in a way that isn’t culturally supported.

I understand the friction of it with my whole heart. And I’m asking anyway, because it matters.

I know how hard it is to do. I struggled to / didn’t in any meaningful way prioritise my own health and invest in my own care in my own early mothering years.

Even though I was an health practitioner. And even though I logically understood that in order for a baby to thrive, both sides of the mother-baby dyad have to thrive.

What I realised, is that it’s not just about understanding the logic of when someone needs tending to.

Because what I wasn’t prepared for before I had my own kiddos was the power of the cultural story we tell mothers. The power of the stories we have internalised since we were kids ourselves.

Once we meet the cultural story of what it is to be a ‘Good Mother’ - and the glorification / obsession with the ‘Self Sacrificial Mother’.

It’s hard to choose yourself. Really really hard.

It’s hard to allocate the brain-space and funds and minutes you do have to your own needs when all around you you sense a cultural whisper that none of this is about you anymore.

It’s hard to invest in your own care when you don’t hear or see anyone advocating for mothers. Anywhere. When there is So Much Noise about the importance and significance of all the things we Must Do For Babe. But no one is standing to remind mothers how essential it is to prioritise their own long term care and health in any meaningful way.

And it can get even trickier when one tiny human becomes multiple tiny humans.

When all resources are stretched to tension, it’s the mother that’s been taught to sacrifice herself.

So I’m here. Having travelled the long way around to my own experience of maternal health and strength. And to all the beautiful people navigating this transition I will say:

Invest In Your Own Care.

You Matter. You Matter. You Matter.

We don’t want a world where mothers sacrifice so much they almost disappear.

Mothers are too amazing, too intelligent, too vital in the navigation of our collective story to be undernourished.

This is where rewriting the mother story and maternal wellbeing intersect.

Tearing down the Self Sacrificial Mother allows us to see the genuine worth of ourselves.

From a place of understanding our inherent worth, we can begin to make choices to intentionally invest in our health and our own thriving. We can lean into whichever systems of support and care feel most values aligned and beneficial as we go.

When we care for ourselves along the way, we wont face a huge cliff of depletion.

And we do this not because a thriving mother benefits her children, her family, her community.

We do it because, independent of all of the roles we may play, Mothers are worthy of care. All on their own.