Mothering as a Spiritual Path

Excerpt from Mothering From Your Center

by Tami Lynn Kent

Mothering is a true spiritual path in that it will expand your spirit, make painfully visible your personal limitations, and bring some of the greatest heart-opening moments of bliss—sometimes all in one day. When you bring forth something new from the center of your being—giving life to a child or a creative manifestation such as a work of art—there is an intensity in this process, like the heat of a kiln as it fires clay. This creative intensity is generated by the immense task of nurturing a new soul while simultaneously becoming aware of one’s inadequacies to do so.

I stepped into motherhood after a full-tilt decade of driving ambition that took me through my professional education and into my career as a physical therapist. This all came to a screeching halt with the infant pace of my first son. Instead of the high velocity I had become accustomed to, each day in the first year of tending my son stretched out in long swaths of time, with little structure and the infinite nonlinear caregiving tasks. Like many mothers who find themselves in this position, I was both amazed by my son’s beauty and confounded by my lack of preparation for this shift in how I lived. My body pulsed with the current of the external world and the rapid pace of its culture; yet now my focus was my home and my baby, who began quite literally with tiny movements that barely reached outside his parents’ arms or the bed where we lay.

To mother my first son, and eventually three, from a more whole place, I went to the deeper currents of the spirit realm. I learned how to care for my wild feminine energy, to supply the stores needed for bringing my children forth and tending them as well as my women’s health practice and writing. My guidance for mother ing and creative direction came from being present in my own center. In my work and my life, I have found that if a woman attunes to her center, her body contains vast information for cultivating all she tends. By developing my family life and work practice from the organic flow of spirit energy that moves from within, I hope to teach my children to attune to their own creative centers as well. I want my sons to witness that 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. By meeting spirit in this way, we tend to its presence in our lives naturally, finding a deep satisfaction as we do so.