A Mother's Pride

babies, toddlers, teenagers and my current favs, young adult daughters

Every week I’ll be sharing my personal stories and my thoughts and recommendations on healthy food, intuition, movement, growth mindset and women, all sprinkled with a touch of spirituality.

I’m writing about some of my life experiences – the good and the bad - with the hope that they resonate with you. Mine is not a linear path but a winding road with twists and turns - a life filled with family, friends, gratitude and love. Where has your path taken you?

Today I am a trained Holistic Health Coach and a major foodie. I love healthy, clean, organic food and to share my passion for wellness with anyone who will listen!

---

Let’s Dive In…

Is there an expiration date on motherhood? (I hope not!) Has your mothering strategy changed recently? (You bet!) Are you still ‘parenting’ your 30 yr. old kids or are you a Mel Robbins fan and practicing “Let Them?” Spoiler alert: I’m somewhere in the middle.

It’s their journey

Since my daughters reached their late 20s and early 30s, I have been trying to practice the parenting philosophy I refer to as, ‘It’s their journey.’ It’s a similar but different form of ‘Let Them.’ To me, ‘it’s their journey’ feels more compassionate, while ‘Let Them’ feels a little like not caring so much.

Allie and Julie are 31 and 28, respectively. They are the light of my life. We all live in different states yet they are on my mind daily and the three of us are in regular communication. Like most parents, I want them to be happy and healthy. But don’t we all? Perhaps, happy and healthy is a bit cliché? So when I dig deep and think about what I truly want for my girls, what’s in my heart, the word contentment comes to mind. Having peace of mind and the absence of too much angst. The understanding that life has its ups and downs with relationships, moods, health, jobs, and family. With contentment, we have the emotional ability to recognize that when things are rough or you’ve had a bad day, that in time, things will right themselves, if you let them.

What do you want for your young adult daughter?

Contentment can often be seen on the face of a person filled with kindness, love and gratitude. As a spiritual person, my internal operating system is naturally driven by giving an abundance of love and kindness and having gratitude for everything in my life. My hope for my daughters is that they each find their own personal definition of contentment. Secretly, I hope it includes kindness, love and gratitude. 

As my girls move through life, making large and small daily decisions, they know I am available for counsel at any time. Sometimes they ask for my thoughts and other times they don’t. I respect them for that. We have a funny routine in our family. When Allie or Julie face a significant decision they will text me and my husband Rich, requesting a ‘Board of Directors’ meeting. Translation — they need a FaceTime call to share something important and they would actually like our input. It’s very sweet and I love it when they ask for our feedback!  

Are we controlling our kids’ lives or allowing them to make mistakes they can own and learn from?

When they’re not requesting a board meeting and they text something they did or said or bought, I usually reply with great, love it or good for you! They’re choosing to make decisions independent of me. And that is OK! IMO, it’s healthy. But don’t get me wrong, if I see my daughters making what I think may be a poor decision, or one with negative consequences, I may ask questions. Not confrontational, but questions of curiosity to better understand where they are coming from. Also, these questions often spark their deeper thinking and sometimes help them to tweak their potentially bad decisions. But I try to stay clear of directly telling them what’s right or wrong. It’s their journey.

Let’s start from the beginning

Babies come into the world and our job as mothers is clear as day. Love them, feed them, change them, and help them to sleep through the night. As they grow into toddlers the job transforms, and we chase them all day to keep them safe. Our motherly challenges include choosing what to feed them and how to keep them in their little beds to sleep all night! Before we know it, they’re off to kindergarten and our responsibility becomes one of creating structure. Get them off to school in the morning, pick them up at the end of the day, feed them, care for them and give them lots of unconditional love.

Teenagers make our job a tad more difficult. As highly emotional beings, they may bounce from being excited and chatty to anxious, angry, sad, and quiet. Some may struggle with mental health and some with a lack of confidence. But then, in the blink of an eye, they’re walking up to the podium to receive their high school and then possibly their college diploma. Where did the time go? How did we get here so fast? Where’s my baby? Remember the terrible twos when the days seemed endless? Why does time speed up as they get older? Right in front of our eyes they became people, real people, pushing back and being independent. They have become everything we wanted them to be, but now we crave our little ones back. 

We’re grateful they survived childhood. Maybe we pat ourselves on the back for raising good kids. Hopefully they are polite, have a good job and if we’re really lucky, they have their own apartment. They are officially young adults; independent, working, socializing, maybe even starting to cook for themselves (ha, let’s not get carried away!)

Young women ages 25 to 35 may find navigating life challenging in the world today. From my vantage point, their life seems much harder than when I was that age. It was definitely easier in my generation. But obviously that makes me sound old, right? The older generation always says, “things were simpler when I was your age.” 

But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize that young women today have to deal with a myriad of challenges –

1. Health issues including hormone imbalance, gut dysbiosis, PCOS, infertility, mental health challenges, and more

2. On-line dating: don’t get me started, whoever created Hinge, I don’t like you and that is putting it nicely

3. Tik-Tok FOMO

4. Keeping up on social media

5. Comparison syndrome

6. Not to mention the over the top bridal showers, baby showers, bachelorettes, and destination weddings

So the question I have for you today, and trust me, I’m asking myself as well….

Can we support our young adult daughters who are trying their absolute best to build a beautiful, meaningful life but also dealing with sh*t (see 1-6 above).  

I don’t have answers, I have thoughts:

1. Check in with them often

2. Tell them you are proud of them

3. Send them a Whole Foods gift card just because

4. Listen closely when they call you crying but don’t necessarily try to solve their problems

5. Ask them what they need from you

Parenting is hard and the world is challenging. Let’s consider making it a bit sweeter for our beautiful daughters. Allie and Julie are productive, independent, hard-working young women. Not to mention beautiful! Mostly, they are kind, loving and grateful. And they are my daughters. 

What thoughts do you have on parenting young adult daughters?

#ProudAndBiasedMom

Food, Love & Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.