Emotional mama. I am curious what you think of when you first read that. What do you feel? I could bet for many, the initial gut reaction is negative. Or at least not overly positive — maybe a little cringy even.
An emotional mama?
You mean, like a woman who is crying and yelling and blubbering? You mean a mom who is acting erratically? Or a woman ruled by her feelings?
Well. No. I don’t mean that at all.
If you look up the definition of emotional on Google, it lists the following:
- relating to a person’s emotions
- characterized by intense emotion
- having feelings that are easily excited or openly displayed.
I don’t see anything about being unhinged or out of control — do you? Actually, it seems to me that being emotional simply means to experience emotions, and perhaps have that experience be perceptible by others. However, I think as a culture, we assume that emotional automatically says something about the intensity of a person’s feelings. I think there is also an underlying sense that it means irrational.
As a society, we often assume an emotional individual is unreliable or not easily trusted. I mean isn’t that often the argument given when discussing why women should not be in power? Because they need a “level head” to make decisions? If this is the case, then success is almost always found in leading with logic rather than feelings (more on that later).
And clearly this line of thinking within our society also means there are pitfalls to the idea of an emotional man. Oftentimes, this translates to an angry or unstable man which can generate feelings of fear or again, mistrust.
Of course, the truth is that poor or harmful decisions are made in heightened emotional states every day — just turn on the news to see someone causing havoc because of their anger or deciding to give up because of their despair.
But what about the good that also comes out of heightened emotional states? For example, the people who rush into danger to rescue others, not out of a sense of logic but rather a feeling of fear or duty or compassion? The ones who sacrifice for others because of the love and affection they feel?
If we only prioritize logic, to avoid the dangers of unruled feelings, we also miss the beauty of connection. Because you simply cannot connect meaningfully with another human being without some emotion.
I could go on and on about the ways in which our society prizes the ability to lock up feelings, and the clear discomfort we have at times with feeling anything but “happy,” and the harm this often can lead to. I could also meander into how it informs our cultural ideas of gender and the destruction and pain that brings to people.
But that’s not for today. At this point, I just want you to see the sense of unease our society has with the idea of feelings.
I will admit my own journey with the idea of being emotional has been rocky. I have struggled with anxiety and depression since childhood, and when I was in college I tried to essentially lock up the emotional part of who I am. Somehow, I believed that all my feelings were what made me anxious and depressed. If I could just tamp them down, and project a sense of happiness to those around me, I would be okay.
But that only backfired, driving me into a deeper depressive hole and continuing to perpetuate the lie I believed — that my intense feelings simply made me “too much.”
At some point — and honestly, I am not sure exactly when it happened — I realized that my emotional heart was an essential part of who I am and how I was created. When I finally began to embrace both the joys and the sorrows, I took my first steps towards emotional health. I realized that my propensity to feel things — deeply — was not some flaw in my humanity, but truly a beautiful way in which I could understand and experience the world.
It has been a long journey and I would not say I have fully “arrived” but now as a 35 year old mother of two girls, and a professionally trained counselor, I can proudly own the fact that I am a very emotional creature. Part of the way God made me is to experience my reality and my life through my feelings — it’s how I make sense of the world. It’s also how I helped others make sense of their world, in my career.
Being emotional means I feel things deeply, both the highs and the lows. It means I also pick up on the emotional ups and downs of those around me (toddlers, anyone?) which can be both a blessing and a burden at times.
It means I express myself with passion and sometimes I use too many words. And it means that I have had to learn how not to be ruled by my feelings, but to let them ebb and flow — and yes, I am absolutely still learning.
I want you to have a small glimpse at my story because I hope you see the heart behind Emotional Mama. My goal in creating this blog, this forum, this space is to support and encourage healthy emotionality in parenthood that then flows into teaching the next generation.
I actually appreciate that “emotional” has a bad reputation because it gives me something to work on — changing the way we conceptualize an emotional mother, or better yet, how we conceptualize an emotional human.
Especially as I watch two beautiful little girls grow and feel all the big feelings, I want the word emotional to hold empowerment, not shame. I want my daughters to go through life knowing they are not too much and knowing that the way they experience and express life —whether that be with openness and drama or quiet reservation — is a gift.
My vision is to encourage a movement of emotional mamas, a community of self-aware parents who can shepherd a generation of emotionally healthy humans. Emotional mamas (or papas or nanas or aunties or whomever!) are people who acknowledge the fact that feelings come with the territory of raising tiny humans.
Heck, it comes with the territory of just being human.
Emotional mamas are not afraid of those feelings. They want to learn and then teach how to embrace those feelings, how to let them color and amplify life, how to use them to understand themselves and the world around them, and how to essentially get comfortable in the discomfort.
I hope you will join me on this journey. I am not sure what the road will look like or where exactly we will all end up, but I hope we end up making the most of the time we’ve been given with these tiny humans.
Because parenthood is a trip. It knocks you down, fills you up, tears you apart, and puts you back together again. All before you’ve had your coffee.
