Mama Renew

We are mothers.  Our children circle around us and fill our days with beauty and a whole lot of messiness.  Many of us also have children who live in our hearts.  Children we lost in miscarriage and stillbirth, perhaps a child who died at age one or seventeen, and those who we were unable to conceive.

These children are often unspoken and unacknowledged, and yet they are an integral part of who we are as women and mothers.  They shape our identity, our relationship with our body, our understanding of the spectrum of life and loss and just how precious our children are.

A new resource is now available for mothers wishing to explore the healing journey after loss.  Mending Invisible Wings, by Mary Burgess with illustrations from Sophia McCloud, offers a space for exploration and healing for those who have lost a baby.  We are thrilled to see such a compassionate and creative resource available to mothers in need of support.

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This month’s Mama Renewed is Sarah Hughes, stay-at-home mother of three children ages 3, 6, and 8.  Her journey to self-care and renewal includes some remarkable insights and life changes.

About Sarah

A big part of my journey with Mama Renew has been to appreciate myself and what I “do” since I haven’t worked outside of the home for 9 years!  How to describe myself? I love the mountains and the water  – being outside rejuvenates me.  I love taking time alone even though I crave company – I need both.  Oh, and I love to listen to people laughing!

Why Mama Renew?

I joined Mama Renew after a chance meeting with co-founder Jennifer-Lee while at play gym with our kids.  I was in the later stages of recovering from postpartum depression and recognized that a Mama Renew group might help me sustain my progress.  The timing was perfect.

Mama Renew helped me let go of guilt and understand that all mothers need self-care and support.  When I reflect on my depression I can see that between a recent move and the distance from my family in the UK, I didn’t have the support I needed.

New Insights

I have found it very helpful to check-in with myself when I feel stressed, asking myself “What do I need in this moment?”  As a result I can often be found taking a mini-me break with a cup of tea – I am British after all!  I may still feel stretched, but I am now better at understanding my stress and responding to it.

I now schedule me time such as an hour or two at VanDusen gardens with my journal, and evenings out with friends or my husband.    I like to book evenings a month ahead so that I can balance my needs with other family activities.

My mental and physical health are priorities. I get up at 6 a.m. to exercise 3 times a week, and as a result have lost some weight that needed to go.  My toddler’s nap times are often used to call or mail a friend or do something that is important to me.

I am feeling ready to live with more creativity and adventure, and have been zip-lining despite a fear of heights!  In the future, I am feeling inclined to say “Yes” to opportunities to try something new.

Moving Forward

I have gained so much from my Mama Renew group.  I was a little intimidated at my first session to be with such strong, dynamic women, but I’ve come to realize that whether we are a career woman or a stay-at-home mom, we all have so much in common. We laugh outrageously and cry with one another, sometimes in the same evening.

We all agree that having shared so deeply we are less inclined to want to spend our precious time chatting about the weather.  It now strikes me as odd that so often our interactions in society are at a surface level.  How can we ever hope to support each other unless we are more honest?

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We don’t tend to have all that much spare time as mothers, so what better poetry genre to portray our lives than haiku? Capturing the moments in our lives that are funny, poignant, reflective and occasionally outrageous, the new genre of mama haikus somehow manages to convey the heart of our experience in seventeen short syllables.

Many mama blogs include examples of haikus that capture the beauty and challenges of parenting and motherhood.  A few years ago for a Mothers Day celebration we invited guests to write an impromptu haiku on motherhood.  Recently in celebration of my 40th birthday friends near and far were invited to share a haiku.

Fluttering in the breeze, hung on the branches of an apple tree were 87 haikus, each capturing a different part of who I am in this world and how they experience me.  What an innovative and loving gift, one that I will cherish for years to come.

We at Mama Renew challenge each of you to write a haiku – for a friend, for yourself, for your child.  Not the poetry type?  Perfect, seventeen short syllables are all you need.

Need inspiration?  Check out some of these haiku inspired by motherhood:

The Mommy Blog

Austin Mama

Great interview with Kari Roy, Author of Haiku Mama

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Inspired?

Click here to Contribute your Haiku

We’ve had some momentous birthdays around here lately.  Both co-founders of Mama Renew, Sarah and Jennifer-Lee, have turned 40 within the past month.  We have enjoyed a unique journey of reconnection and renewal over the past year, and we’re loving where it has brought us .  We’re entering our 40’s with excitement, energy and vision.

A few of us celebrated this  year’s summer solstice with a labyrinth walk at a lavender farm.  We loved being some of the youngest women present, with most of the group in their 50s, 60s, and 70s.  As we approached the labyrinth we were guided by questions and quotes inviting us to celebrate the wild and outrageous in our lives.

As we enjoyed lavender cookies and wine after the walk, several of the older women shared with us how good it was to see younger women (us) present, and know that we are caring for ourselves in this way at the tender young age of 39…  They spoke of the unexpected freedom and power they were feeling as they grew old, and how much more connected they felt to being outrageous and wild in their choices.

Today we were featured on sweetmama.ca with our words of encouragement in their blog post on turning 35. We are excited to see where this new decade will bring us, as women and mothers, and as we nurture Mama Renew to new growth.  Whether you’re twenty or seventy or somewhere in between, we hope you are feeling free and enjoying a healthy dose of the wild and outrageous.

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We came across a fabulous article by Cary Tenis on Salon.com, and it has us thinking about the ways in which we get caught up in our feelings, beliefs, and thoughts about the ways in which our partners, children, friends, mothers-in-law (etc…) drive us crazy, and forget to see the beauty.

The article is actually an advice column, written in response to the parent of a 16 year old girl who is having some trouble following her parents’ rules. His words of advice, however, are powerful for any one of us in relationship with another human being.

“When a person starts doing things I don’t like, at first I try to stop her. I can think up many reasons why my way is best. But what I find over and over is that when I am thinking of all the reasons my way is best, I am not seeing the person in front of me. I am seeing my reasons.”

In our Mama Renew groups we often see women struggling in their relationships with partners, children, mothers-in-law…  When our own personal needs are not being met, it seems we are even more prone to conflict with those around us.  Balance in our lives takes many forms, and when one need is out of center, others too are affected.

His article is a powerful reminder to come back to love, over and over again.  To look beyond the surface of our life, the mess and the hard days and the toilet seat left up, and simply see the whole of the person before us.  As he so wisely says,

“I love my reasons. I love my solutions.

But here is a person before me that I love, and I am not seeing her.”

So today, we challenging you to bring love into each interaction, to look beyond the momentary frustrations embrace the beauty in your loved ones that we sometimes forget to see.   It’s there, we promise.

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This past December I sat at our Mama Renew Holiday Party surrounded by some of the most amazing women I know.  After far too much gourmet pizza and wine, we went around the table and spoke our intentions for 2009.  Well, mine was Fabulous, Fit and Forty, a resolution that resonated deeply for both Sarah and myself.

On June 7th I turned 40 years old.

I am now 40 pounds lighter, and I am feeling fabulous.

What a crazy year.  That evening I had no idea how to take the next step, but I knew I had to, that this was my time.  After hip replacement surgery in September, I found myself living without chronic pain for the first time in ten years.  When I decided to walk 60 km in August for the Walk to End Breast Cancer my husband looked at me with disbelief.  He was kind, and tried to be encouraging, but I could see that he thought I was nuts, only weeks ago I had been unable to walk around the block!

The next step was clear.  I began to walk, needing to prove to myself and to others that I could do this.  I am now up to 10 km 3 – 4 times a week and loving it!  I love the walks with friends where we yak and yak, and I love the walks by myself where I am in my music and loving the freedom of movement.  Sometimes as I am walking and feeling no pain I feel like I am flying.

I wanted to do this walk for years, but knew that my hips would make it impossible.   I cried as those women passed by my house with their pink ribbons and exhausted but happy faces.  I cried for the reason they were walking, and I cried because I couldn’t walk along with them.

Well this year, I am walking.  I know I will be crying again, but this time tears of Joy.  Joy that I can make a difference for those who are in the labyrinth of breast cancer like my dear friend Sandra, for those who lost their mothers like my “sister” Maddy, and those who have had to journey through the unknown but have made it through like my “sister” Beryl with her mother. I have breasts, and I have daughters, so I must do this walk.  One foot in front of the other.

That is my new mantra, and I am sure I will say that to myself and my Mama Renew sisters along the 60 km through the streets of Vancouver.   And if I can do it, you can do whatever it is you think you can’t do.  Who knows what next year may bring - I’ll keep you posted….one foot in front of the other.

Support Jennifer-Lee & Mama Renew in the Walk to End Breast Cancer.  Her goal is to raise $3,200.

Click Here to Donate

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