Thoughts on Motherhood – and Mothers’ Day – During Quarantine

With Mothers’ Day just around the corner, I’m overwhelmed thinking of all that moms do for their families, their livelihood, their homes, and their well-being. With all they do for their survival.

Something I’ve wrestled with for years is the idea that women can do anything:

We can own businesses, run corporations, get married, choose to marry a man, a woman, get divorced, re-marry, stay single, have babies, not have babies, stay single and still have babies, be a stay-at-home mom, go to work, breastfeed, bottle feed, cook amazing meals, and be incredible wives.

We have the choice to do any of these things. What I’ve had to stop and remind myself time and time again is that we can do anything … not everything.

The intense pressure of “doing it all” because in this day and age, we “can,” has, at points, overwhelmed me to my core. I’ve felt that I shouldn’t waste a single opportunity since I’m so lucky to even have them in the first place.

I love my business. I love constantly working on my small company to be the best damn yoga studio I can make it. I love hiring smart, driven people, and I love helping them grow as individuals and as employees of Hometown Sweat. I love building our membership, teaching epic classes, learning about sales, and offering soulful service to our amazing community.

I love being a mom. I’m grateful to have devoted more than three years to breastfeeding and nurturing and skin time and sleepless nights (ok let’s be honest, I did not love that!). But I loved experiencing the magic of early motherhood even in the most trying times.

But, here’s the truth about “doing it all” – something with which I now feel genuinely at peace:

When I’m being the best mom to my family, my business takes a backseat. And when my business is firing on all cylinders and totally rockin’, I’m a distracted mother who’s focus lies away from mothering.

In yoga, we preach singularity of focus to help accomplish the posture and the breakthrough. When you’re on your mat solely focused on one single action, results and realization happen fast. But when your body skims though the motions while your mind darts to the grocery store then the doctor appointment and wanders back to last week’s parent-teacher conference, neither the pose nor the meditation can be fully experienced. In those classes, the singularity of focus does not exist.

Moms constantly navigate the opportunity costs of having one end of their lives thrive while the other simply survives; they’re perpetually deciding what needs their singularity of focus most.

Now closing in on nearly two months of stay at home orders with my three young children, a small business moved completely online, working to make sure my oldest stays up-to-date with online kindergarten (I won’t even call it homeschooling because my efforts insult actual homeschooling moms), and a husband with whom I’ve arranged a relatively consistent work trade-off schedule, I’m acutely aware that moms have risen to yet another pressure-filled responsibility: keeping their shi*t together for the sake of their families and their sanity.

Yesterday, Governor Baker made the announcement that Massachusetts golf courses could open effective immediately.

We’re a golf family. I love getting out to play with my husband, and when we’re able to safely hire a babysitter to watch our brood, our first date will be playing 9 at our local course. And I’m happy for Ben that he’ll get out to play – effective immediately.

And yet, my heart dropped into my stomach when I read the governor’s golf course news, because I knew it meant the moms would feel the responsibility of keeping up the happiness and sanity – keeping their sh*t together – as the dads get to experience this slice of normalcy as we head into Mothers’ Day Weekend.

At Hometown Sweat, Mothers’ Day is always one of our busiest days of the year. Moms show up to sweat, to steal away some time to re-charge and work out. To meditate and relax. To refuel and recharge.

Sometimes this appears like “self-care.”

It’s not.

It’s not now, and it never was.

What I know from nearly ten years as a studio owner and more than six years as a mom is that yoga and sweating has always been far more self-care for mothers.

When a mom shows up to a yoga class it’s because her security and ability to thrive as a human being – not just a mom – is at stake.

It’s because the class and everything about it keeps her bandwidth safe so she can manage being up all night with a newborn and hit that work deadline and remain on time for school drop off.

It’s because the challenge of working through that final set of push ups and that long hold in triangle pose amidst blazing heat and dudes sweating all around her proves to that mom that she can endure the hard stuff life throws her way.

Since offering our Hometown Sweat classes online for the past two months, our moms have been showing up for themselves in order to secure their bandwidth and sanity at home … with everyone at home.

Do you know what that looks like?

In every Zoom class I teach – literally every single one since we’ve closed the physical studio – kids appear on the screen with their moms. In the middle of class. Often the moms get up mid-breath, hand something to their kids (it’s a snack right? It’s always a snack) and get right back to the pose or the plank. If our yoga classes were for “self-care,” they’d have taken a back seat long ago.

Witnessing how much our Hometown moms show up – not only in frequency but also in focus – has proven that they won’t let anything stand in their way of using yoga to help them survive and thrive during a pandemic or otherwise.

On this Mothers’ Day, I’ll practice self-care. I’ll paint my nails and have a Zoom call with my best mom friends. I’ll call my mom and my grandmothers and I’ll go for a long walk. I’ll order my favorite take-out with my family, and then I’ll enjoy a bubble bath before crawling into bed and falling asleep to The Office.

But before I do any of that, I’ll do my yoga. And I hope you will too.

Happy Mothers’ Day moms, you’re all Wonder Women.