As the mother of a teenager, it seems to me that the greatest lesson I can offer my daughter is to witness me standing in my truth, with integrity, no matter how painful the consequences.

It wasn’t until I could come to a place of truly knowing and loving myself that I could fully grok and accept the truth of my role as a mother. Because it is not what society approves of when they think of mothers.

Despite the fact that there are millions of different ways we’ve learned to mother, the vast majority of those ways in our Western culture fit within a rather narrow funnel of what “good“ mothering looks like. It usually includes the daily care, feeding and guidance of our children on their paths from age 0 to at least 17 or 18. Even if you have shared custody and your kids aren’t always physically present, you are rarely not mothering them on some level of your consciousness.

When society begins to release its rigid conceptions of what motherhood is “supposed“ to be like, we can all be free to be the very best mothers we can be for our children. When we can throw the old definitions out the window and dance with the truth of what is real. You will benefit and your kids will receive the gift of the greatest thing we could ever give them:

The freedom to be true to themselves, regardless of what society says.We get to model that role for them when we align with our truth and light. There is no better gift than that of being true to our own nature and living that for our kids.

In my case, mothering doesn’t look like what the world says it’s supposed to. But why are we asking the world? No one else’s truth is the same as yours.

When we each begin to uncover and discover our own truth and then live it, the entire planet benefits. When we can begin to see this, and forgive ourselves for believing otherwise, the truth will show us the rest of the way.

Our souls will be free. Our children will be free. And when they are free, the world will follow.