All month, we have explored ways to mother ourselves and to take care of ourselves. This week, we are going to take a moment to realize and accept the idea that sometimes, we just need another set of hands to help us.
All of us have moments of needing a Pinch Hit Mom.
The great news is that the Pinch Hit Mom can come into our lives in a variety of ways. It can be a friend, a hired professional, a man, a relative or a stranger. The beauty of the Pinch Hit Mom is that we recognize and receive the intentional motherly love that comes from that person. We ask for the help and we receive it as healing mom support.
Sometimes, the Pinch Hit Mom heals our heart more than the real deal.
Often when we are grieving, we hope to find a “caring stranger” to support us. We want someone to love us and support us, but we want it to be someone who isn’t too involved with our everyday hurt, mess or complication. It can just be too overwhelming. We want someone who can just lend us strength. This is where the Pinch Hit Mom literally hits a homerun for us here. Our Pinch Hit Mom comes in to fill a specific need but doesn’t get too involved in anything else. Having them fill that need and heal that one specific part of our heart helps us feel more nourished than by having someone come in who might be closer to our situation.
I was incredibly overwhelmed this week. I have been able to clean our clothes but have not had the bandwidth, energy or motivation to complete the process. After drying, I just kept adding to the pile of laundry. I decided to name the pile since he was as tall as me. His name was Mt. Clean Laundry. Feeling defeated and exhausted every night, I’d kiss him goodnight along with the rest of the family and hope that perhaps the next day, I would get to him.
But today, out of nowhere, my amazing cleaning ladies came and offered to fold and hang all of my laundry. Despite their shock and exasperation of “Wow!” when they walked in and saw him, they wanted to mother me. They realized how much I needed another set of hands. I needed help. I was drowning and they rescued me. They realized how much I needed mothering too. I hugged them all as if they were my mothers and made a point to receive their help as mothering love. Intentionally recognizing and receiving their love healed my heart so much. Healing is so much about intention.
What are you intending to receive? What will you heal when you receive it in a particular way?
For me, these ladies today, healed that longing to have my mom help me when I just don’t feel like I am enough.
But mothering can arrive in our lives in all different forms. A few months ago, I was missing my mom so badly. It was just one of those days, I just wanted her here. It wasn’t a special day. It was just a regular day but I had this huge longing for her to be here mothering me. I wanted her help and her wisdom. I just missed her. When I went to the grocery store that day, this older woman took me under her wing in the produce section and taught me all of these great tips on picking fruits and vegetables. (She had previously owned a produce store and was thrilled to share her wisdom.) I walked away from that experience realizing that we can even be mothered by strangers. It’s all what we invite into our lives. We need extra hands, sometimes. We need wisdom, sometimes. And sometimes, we just need someone to listen.
This week, take a moment to look into your heart and figure out which need in your heart needs the most attention. What needs the most help? What hurts the most? What feels the heaviest? Once you’ve defined your need, figure out who can help you mother it and who can help heal that pain. Will you ask a friend to swap dinner making? Will you swap with a friend to fold a load of laundry? Will you hire someone to help with your laundry? Perhaps you invite a grandmother-type friend over, who might also be lonely, to play with the kids. Perhaps, you go to see a therapist or a healer to talk through your pain and to feel really heard.
There are countless ways to find someone to mother your heart and to help you step through your grief. By finding one solution to one little piece of your heart’s pain, you will begin to move forward. Mothers come into our lives in many different forms. Each one is brought in to heal its own unique place in our hearts. Who will you let in to mother you this week?
We can’t wait to hear who mothered you this week. Take a moment to share in the comments down below what you did to help your heart this week. It might just be the encouragement or inspiration someone else in our community might need to read.
Love and Blessings,
Erin