Mothering Is a Practice, Not a Person

I didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a mother. Having a baby of my own. The thought never actually occurred to me as a choice even. I was one of those girls that didn’t play with dolls + you could almost always find me climbing a tree or riding the four-wheeler. Somewhere covered in mud, bugs + dirt for sure. Being raised in a time where the expectation was for me to go to school, get married + start a family. There was never any emphasis on any part of the plan outside of making sure you didn’t have said baby out of wedlock. To which…. ooops

One of the most interesting parts of being an entrepreneur is the questions I get. Especially now that I have made my way back to writing more consistently + talking more openly about the work I do. Somebody asked me over the summer how house managing, doula work + coaching all fit together. Like they were three businesses I was running out of the same email address. I’ll be honest in the very beginning it did feel like I was attempting to make 3 things “fit”. Looking back 7 years later I understand they are not three things. They have never been three things.

They are all mothering.

Let me define the word: What Mothering Means

Mothering is not a person. It is a practice. A devotion even.

Mothering is a role. Something you do. Mothering is love in action.

You do not need to have given birth. To be qualified you do not need to have children at all. You do not need to be somebody’s mother in any legal or biological sense for a seal of approval.

Mothering is being gentle with somebody. Being a soft place. A place of compassion. Somebody’s keeper without being asked + without keeping score.

That’s the whole of it. That’s the entire definition + anybody can do it.

What it looks like when it is obvious

In a birth room, mothering is the plain version. Nobody has to squint or even question it.

I have been in rooms where a woman has nobody. No mother, no partner who knew what to do, no friend holding her hand, or auntie in the corner. What was needed in that room wasn’t clinical. That woman needed somebody to look at her in the face, in the eyes + remind her that she was capable. That she was doing it. That I wasn’t going anywhere.

This is not a technique that I learned in a class or received from a certification. That is the mothering. It is the thing a mother does, being done by whoever is in the room.

It’s the same way in postpartum. A woman who is maybe four days out, leaking, crying + convinced she is failing, doesn’t need another pamphlet. She needs somebody to sit her down, take the baby, tell her that what she is feeling is valid + it will not always feel like this.

What it looks like when nobody calls it that

Here is what can get lost in the connection + translation.

When I go into a home to house manage, I come into the family as a partner. This might look like meal prep or laundry. Often times it is about getting the whole household set up so the week does not eat them alive. Sometimes I am working alongside a parent + we are a team. Sometimes I am doing the heavy lifting specifically so that parent can sit on the floor + be with their child instead of folding towels.

On paper this can look + sound like domestic labor. In many ways it is. In practice it is mothering, because the point was never the laundry. The point was making room for somebody to be a person again. It’s giving a momma a lifeline so she can breathe. It is witnessing that woman right where she is + lending support without her asking.

And then there is the coaching. The icing on the cake that is Double Dose Wellness. Women come to me in transition, wanting something different, unable to name exactly what. Big transitions, small transitions, at a crossroad of some sort. What I actually do in those containers isn’t strategy. It is being a steady place while somebody figures out who she is now. It is helping her organize her thoughts so she can move forward. Sometimes it is being the container that she can unravel in. Not rushing her. Not fixing her. Being a constant. Staying.

Truth Moment? It’s all the same job. Just packaged under different names.

Why Mothering Gets Mistaken for Weakness

Listen. I know what happens when I say this out loud.

Some people hear mothering + soft, they instantly think weak or docile. They think tenderness is what you do when you are not strong enough to do something harder. They think maid, housekeeper + do girl.

That is backwards + wrong.

Staying is much harder than fixing. Anybody can come up with a solution. That part actually takes almost nothing. Sitting with a woman in the hardest hour of her life without trying to make the discomfort stop while validating her experience is the difficult thing + most people cannot do it. They interrupt, they relate it back to themselves, they rush to a lesson because someone else’s pain makes them anxious + fixing helps ease that anxiety away.

Tenderness is not the absence of strength. It is what the strength is for.

Why this matters beyond me

If mothering is a role that only mothers can do, then everybody else is off the hook.

If mothering is a practice, a devotion available to us all the time, the fact that so few people are doing it starts to look more like a choice vs a shortage.

Mothering is a choice. I wholeheartedly believe that. I think we all decided at some point along the way that this kind of care was somebody else’s job. Then we outsourced it + now we have a whole population of competent adults who have never once been held genuinely.

That’s the next piece of this bigger puzzle.

Mothering is a practice. A devotion. Does not require a child. It does not require a title. The only requirement is to be soft + genuine on purpose, for someone, without keeping score.

If you want to practice your mothering this week, pick one person. The one that never asks for help. Do one soft/mothering thing for them without being asked + without telling anybody you did it. That’s it. That’s mothering.

Everything I do is a version of that.

XO

Denawa Deniece

If you missed the beginning of the mothering series, read Nobody Made Me Ask

Question, Answered

What people have asked me about mothering

• Can you mother someone without having children? Yes. Mothering is something you do, not something you have to qualify for. The auntie, the grandmother, the friend who shows up with food, the coworker who notices you’ve been quiet. If you have ever been somebody’s soft place without being asked, you have already done it.
• What’s the difference between mothering + motherhood? Motherhood is the role. The title + every expectation stacked on top of it. Mothering is the practice. You can carry the title + do very little of the practice, + you can do the practice your whole life without ever having the title.
• What does it look like to mother a grown woman? It looks like care she didn’t have to ask for. Somebody taking the baby so she can shower. A plate of food she didn’t cook. Somebody sitting with her while she figures out who she is now, without rushing her to answer.
• Is mothering the same as people-pleasing? No. People pleasing keeps score + it runs on fear of what happens if you stop. Mothering is a choice you make on purpose. You get to choose who, you get to choose when + you are allowed to put yourself on that list too.