Solving Mother Resentment & Guilt.

Hi there! It’s Kylie Ryan, revealing the truths of a weightless woman. I just want to share with you a profound realization that I’ve just had. I have yet to test it out in my real life situation, but I’m thinking it’s gonna make some really profound shifts for me.

As you probably know, I’m a mum. I’ve got a beautiful little two-year-old boy who is amazing and an incredibly smart and vivacious, awesome, beautiful girl who is nearly five. And they are right at the stage where they’re fighting with each other and really asserting their power zones and figuring out who they are and their identity, and navigating their emotions, and having what I was calling tantrums. If you have kids around this age, then you’ve probably seen a few tantrums yourself.

It’s really interesting that I’ve been wondering why my kids seem to have more, like based on friends and family (family mostly) saying to me, “The kids are so, like, peaceful and they don’t really fight when you’re not around.” And I was like, “Huh, I wonder why that is. Is it just because they know that they can come to me and be nurtured, or because I’m a bit of a softie and I let them get away with it, I let them have their self-expression? Or something else? How am I creating this?” And I’ve been pondering this question for the past couple of weeks and months.

I’ve been reading and listening to The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, and it’s awesome. I just had this really profound realization for me that I was resenting — I adore my children, but I have been unconsciously resenting parts of the relentlessness of parenting, of being a mum,  and I guess how little freedom you have to do what you want, and the kind of selflessness that comes with the identity and the role of being a mother. I had been unconsciously resenting that, and I’m certain that that is what is a part of the trigger for my kids having tantrums, and like, being all over me when they’re with me, that they’re kind of constantly, “Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom.” And if you’re a mom I’m sure you get that too.

And I’ve been thinking about this work that I’ve been doing deep within the feminine collective consciousness and realized that this resentment is not just my resentment. This is a collective consciousness resentment — in the work that I do with women, it comes up a lot — of women being exhausted at the end of the day from all of the endless chores and tasks and things that need to be done, but also from the endless kind of mental attention that is required of us when our children and partners and jobs and all of the other things that need to be done are calling our attention. And there is this deep resentment within the feminine collective consciousness within the identity of motherhood about resenting the role, resenting all of the jobs and the things and the lack of freedom that comes with that role.

This, of course, doesn’t mean that you don’t love your children. Of course you love children. It’s because you love your children and end up sacrificing other parts of yourself for your children and to do the best for them and to be the best mum you can for them that there is — the duality of that is that within that love, the opposite side is that there is something that you’ve given up or that you feel is lacking. And so, I’m a hundred percent certain that that unconscious resentment is coming out in a short-temperedness for me when the kids are being really emotional and just a lack of presence with the moment to moment beauty of being a parent.

I had this thought the other day as well about, you know, when you have kids, a lot of times there is chaos, and a lot of noise, and a lot of mess, and spills as they learn how to carry things and move things and get toilet trained and all of those things. There’s a lot of energy flowing all the time when you’re around kids. And I was thinking that it’s kind of like labor, the expansion and contraction of labor, that when you’re in labor and you’re going through those intense, active contraction moments, the midwives tell you, “Just relax. In between the contractions, relax, don’t stress or worry about the next contraction.” Just be in the present moment and relax into the present moment.

It relates completely to The Power of Now. Just being in the moment that you’re in now and not thinking about the chaos or the huge, emotional outburst that happened a minute ago. Be in the moment now when your children are being peaceful and playing with each other or coming to give you a cuddle and being adorable. Be in that moment, or be in the moment when you can sit and have a cup of tea and relax. Be in that moment, and don’t think about all of the things that happened before, or all of the things that you have to do or need to do or are choosing to do in the future.

Because as mothers, we feel like we have to do all of these different things, but we’re actually choosing to do those things by being a mum, by choosing to be a mum. And, you might say, “Well, I’m not choosing to be a mum. I am a mum, I have a child, and I am a mum, and all these things have to get done.” But you actually are choosing to be a mum because there are women who have had children in the world and who have chosen to not be mums, and they’ve either,  adopted out their children for whatever reason. And no judgment for whatever reason they’ve given up that choice to be a mum, they’ve chosen to not be a mum. And you, if you are a mum, have chosen to be a mum, and so you’ve chosen all of the things that go with being a mum. And that’s certainly not to say that you can’t choose to get help as well.

I caught myself in previous videos saying, “Oh, all the things that have to get done.’ And, it’s that sense of ‘have to’ that comes with it and is part and parcel with the resentment that goes with that. When I feel like I have to do something then there’s a feeling of burden and that maybe I don’t want to do it, or that I would prefer to be doing something else, I would prefer to have the freedom to go and do whatever I want. But I’m choosing to be a mum. I’m choosing to be present with my children. I’m choosing to make them a healthy dinner. I’m choosing to be present and pat them to sleep at night when they get scared. I’m choosing those things, I don’t have to do it. I’m choosing to do that.

When you make that switch of choosing to be there and being present in that moment, then it changes everything. Remember, I had that realization about the nighttime thing a while back. It’s like, “I’m choosing to be here, and this is actually a beautiful moment. Yeah, I’m not getting as much sleep as I would otherwise, but I’m choosing to be here cuddling my child at night in the beautiful small hours of the night, there’s nothing else around and it’s just us. I can smell their skin and hear their breath, and this is us, my love for them.”

And in those moments when I was super tired and exhausted and grumpy and doing it out of resentment, then of course, the child picks up on that and ends up crying and having all sorts of issues and getting upset themselves, and it takes them ages to go to bed. But when I open my heart to love, and just be with them in that moment, and really love that moment, and be in that moment without worrying about, “Oh, am I gonna be tired tomorrow?” or all the things I should be doing, or all the work I could be doing now otherwise, it’s not there. It’s the here and now that we’re in.

I wanted to share that with you because it’s been a huge shift for me just right now. Something that I’d like to do more work with all of the mothers of the world with to start to heal this collective consciousness resentment around the work of motherhood, around the identity of motherhood. And so, if you would be interested in a short one to two-hour webinar training just on that, to heal the issues around motherhood, please let me know in the comments below. Just say yes in the comments below, and I will know that you’re interested in me putting together a webinar training to help you heal the issues around motherhood.

Okay, so it’s a couple of days later, and the update is that it really does work. Shifting that mother resentment is a key part to being able to drop into presence when I’m being with my kids and be able to deal with them in a way that’s going to really assist them to stay calm, and not make it such a big deal, and stay present from moment to moment. So when they get upset, then I can calm them down more quickly. And I’ve noticed over the past few days, I’ve just been able to be even more present with my beautiful children and less resentful when I’m doing silly things like washing up or making dinner or tidying up around the house.

It’s a huge thing, and I’ve been speaking to a couple of other mothers over the past few days about this mother resentment thing that’s happening in the collective conscious. And I think it’s a key part of what’s driving women at the moment to turn to food or drinking or stuffing themselves after their kids have gone to bed as like, “This is this one moment where I can give back to myself.”

I really want to hear from you below if you want to do this training on dealing with this collective consciousness mother resentment. And if you feel like you might have aspects of that showing up in your life, then type in the comments below, “Yes,” “Yes, I want it,” and I will put it together for you.