Approach Motherhood as a Creative Rebirth 

Mothering is a hands-on creative process that can be tended and shaped like any creation.The journey intomothering becomes an inspired process for giving expression to our creative essence. 

Modern women are generally unaware of how to access our own powerful root source of creative and feminine energies, and this contributes to a general ambivalence about mothering. Yet mothering calls us directly back to the home and the center of ourselves. Learning to access these root energies for our mothering enables us to harness this core creative essence for making a soulful life with our children. 

With the emphasis of modern culture on achievement outside the home, we may feel forgotten or isolated in returning home to tend our children. Seize the opportunity that motherhood brings for retreat. Moving away from outer distractions and instead dropping into pure presence as mothers, we can access the greater energies that are always there to inspire and sustain us.

In mothering, we can encounter a more authentic self. Living and growing with children, who live entirely in the present moment, fosters authenticity. Tending children, our world slows just enough to invite a return to the core, which allows for more authentic ways of being.  

Accepting the path of motherhood will not simply bring us to our place of joy or connection with spirit — rather, it often will reveal where we have blocks. Like all spiritual journeys, the challenges we encounter will show the psychic debris that has accumulated. The children we tend will assist us in meeting our shadow and finding the obstacles that limit our personal growth. 

When I entered the nonlinear path of mothering, where my time was organized by the home-based needs of my infant, I had no choice but to face the stored energies and dormant needs of my spirit, which I had previously managed to ignore.

Shifting our attention to the most essential aspect of our creative fire — what we want to create — we have a choice about what we hold in the center. Particularly once we free our creative essence from restrictive patterns, we can turn our focus toward the vast potential of this life force within. 

Use this exercise to energize your mothering core:

1. Find a quiet place. Set down anything on your to-do list and instead turn your attention to your own center. See what is here for you. Notice the state of your mothering and yourself.

2. Call your energy toward your center. Notice how much of your energy has been going out to the world, or to your loved ones, in various modes of work and caretaking. Call this energy back toward your own center; see it returning to you like beams of light. 

3. Consider your present state and your needs. Notice if you need to rest and imagine lying on the sweet earth. Reflect on what you have been creating, appreciate the efforts you’ve made, and invite forward any other creative desires.

4. Connect to mothering spirit. Ponder the Great Mother as an essence from which to call spirit into your mothering. Remember, within this work of mothering might be a creative process, a healing journey, a growth edge, a new potential. Take a moment to reflect on your mothering core, this creation of your womb/heart. What is taking shape? What would you like it to be? 

5. Receive love. Shine your heart energy down onto the womb. Send a river of love that flows unconditionally for you and your mothering. Feel the love that holds you in the same way that you hold others. Receive this love in your own center to carry with you in all ways. 

As we grow into motherhood, our way of being will change. Think of motherhood as a process of becoming — much like life is made by living. By opening ourselves to the possibility in each moment, we are most likely to encounter the sacred in the midst of living an awakened life.

With a willingness to meet the places where our spirits have gone hungry, we become able to tend ourselves as well. Mothering from this central place — from where our children arise — takes us to the heart of what matters and reconnects us with the essence of life. 

Written By Tami Lynn Kent

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Tami Lynn Kent is a women’s health physical therapist and the founder of Holistic Pelvic CareTMwhere she utilizes her ability to read energetic patterns of the body. Kent maintains a private practice and an international training program in Portland, Oregon. She has authored three previous books. Her latest, Wild Mothering: Finding Power, Spirit, and Joy in Birth and a Creative Motherhood (Atria Books, May 7, 2024), is a newly updated edition of her classic, Mothering from Your Center. Learn more at www.wildfeminine.com.