To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

by Molly Millwood

Our own unmet needs may be behind the choices we make about where the baby sleeps, where the seven-year-old sleeps, how long to breastfeed, whether to breastfeed, whether to work late, whom to turn to for help with childcare, or whether to ask for help at all. Warner’s point is that “much of what we do in the name of perfect motherhood is really about ‘reparenting’ ourselves.

It’s about compensating for the various forms of lack or want or need or loneliness that we remember from our childhood.”

when we are aware of what motivates our actions as parents, it becomes possible to parent our actual child and our own “inner child” simultaneously.

We cannot undo the past, but in doing things differently with our own children—giving them what was not sufficiently given to us—we can change our relationship to the past.

The Mask of Motherhood,

Peter Breggin,

The Heart of Being Helpful,

Looking upon our internal experiences with benign curiosity is often enough to modify them.

“My partner is so supportive, and he also lets me down.” There are no dilemmas to resolve or apologies or justifications to be made.

As Adrienne Rich first articulated over forty years ago in the 1976 classic Of Woman Born, the experience of motherhood is both oppressive and empowering.

improvising and no music theory.

Are you there for me?

Striving for some unattainable fantasy version of ourselves, our children, or our relationships only brings heartache. It blinds us to the value and beauty in what already is, because we are too caught up in shame or resentment or self-improvement crusades to take in whatever the present moment may be offering. Contentment comes when we embrace, rather than deny or distort or resist or conceal or judge, all of what comes up in the endlessly complicated world of mothering. This is my hope for every woman, every marriage, every child, every family. Love unchained from illusions, and lives lived in full color.

The Practice of Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples: Creating Connection

The Practice of Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples, 26–27.

Gottman, The Science of Trust, 193.

H. Lerner, “Vulnerability and Other Lessons,” in Finding Your Inner Mama, 24.

The Girlfriends’ Guide to Surviving the First Year of Motherhood for