A Mother's Ode

My Mom's Day Gift

Dear Sons,

It's so easy to be power-over in my relationship with you

To pretend that your needs do not exist,

To attribute the actions I do not like to your being irresponsible, lazy, or "teenager",

or that your needs do not matter as much as mine.

You want autonomy?

Well, that's not as important as my need for acceptance.

When you wear crumpled clothes, I feel shame, "What will others think of me?"

Fold your clothes after they come out of the dryer RIGHT AWAY!

You want recreation?

Well, that's not as important as my need for organization.

Clear the dishwasher NOW!

Or else... 

Rewards and consequences,

And even praise with the veiled intention of manipulating your behavior,

"Such good kids"!

Sometimes I use NVC in ways that gives you the NVC allergy!

Pretending I'm requesting when I'm really demanding,

Or using NVC language, without NVC consciousness, so I can get my way!

What am I teaching you through these means?

That when you are older, you too can manipulate your power,

To have your needs prioritized,

Is this the world I want us to co-create?

To partner with you so that both our needs matter,

Whether they are met or unmet, 

They are brought to the table,

They are acknowledged,

And sometimes they are mourned.

Power-with!

It is my honor and privilege to be your mother, your teacher, your driver, your nurse, your cook, and your playmate,

Thank you for witnessing my journey of self-growth,

You see you were not born with an instruction manual!

Even thirteen years after I started on this journey, I don't have any of this figured out yet!

Thank you for your grace as I grow, with you, my dear sons.

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Mothering, the Ability to Orient to the Needs of Another, in the Spirit of Unilateral Giving

    Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is based on the principle that humans are a mothering species. This applies as much to males and children, as it does to those of us in the female body, whether we have been blessed with children or not. 

    Of all the species on this planet, humans have the longest period of complete dependency. Without a human's ability to orient to the needs of a baby in the spirit of unilateral giving, our species would not continue to survive. 

   So, on this Mother's Day, we can celebrate our innate tendency to want to care for the needs of others, if we just know what they are, and if there is no demand, guilt, veiled or unveiled coercion placed upon us to meet them. Similarly, those around us enjoy making our lives wonderful. They want to meet our needs, if we can express them without attachment to specific strategies, i.e., expecting a particular person, place, or thing to meet them.

Uncoupling Giving from Receiving

    A baby has complete comfort with unilateral receiving. But somehow, at some point, along life's journey, we become socialized to experience discomfort with receiving. We fear that someone is keeping a tab, and whether we will be able to meet their expectations in the relationship. We fear the intentions behind someone's giving to us. We wonder if they are giving freely, with joy. Given that we sometimes (or often) say "yes" when we mean "no" (to manage our image, hustle for our self-worth, or simply because we are not even aware of our needs), we wonder if the "yes" we are receiving is truly a yes, or perhaps a "mixed yes". Especially when there is a power differential and we are in an up-power role, we know that it can be hard for others to exercise their choice to say "no" to our needs.

    NVC gives us the fundament ability to uncouple giving from receiving and to exercise choice in unilateral giving and in unilateral receiving. Transactional exchange empties relationships. 

    Through the ability to distinguish needs from strategies, and through taking sole responsibility for meeting our needs, NVC provides us the tools to make requests for receiving unilaterally, in a spirit of interdependence.  NVC also helps us connect with our needs in giving to others, which allows us to give joyfully, unilaterally, without strings attached.

Looking at Ourselves with Compassion

    It is hard to be “always on”, which mothering has become, given our isolated, nuclear family situations. Even if we live in joint families, we truly don’t have the Vedic support, internally and interpersonally that is a true “village” bringing up a child. Anthropologists recognize that the ideal ratio of adults to children in traditional societies was 4:1. A child always had other resources to turn to for care, besides their biological parents. A mother who was getting triggered or overwhelmed could take a time out, in this support structure. What to speak of 4, in today’s world, we are sometimes raising children alone. This is sometimes true even for those who live with a partner, due to work travel demands or simply due to one partner not having the training or emotional bandwidth to be present for their children. 

    What makes mothering so hard is that we learn on the job. Most of us spend our entire lives before giving birth in the acquisition of very technical skills that leave us ill-equipped with the home science skills involved in mothering. Our competitive, STEM-centered education consciously discourages the softer human qualities such as empathy and perspective-taking, while encouraging very left-brain development.

    Given the pace of life we live in, is it any wonder that most of us mothers feel totally exhausted and under-resourced? While Krishna Consciousness is the greatest benediction that we could ever beg for our in our lives, improper application of principles can further place demands on us as mothers. We are unsure how to manage chanting 16 rounds, cooking everything at home, from scratch, keeping our children away from devices, and giving some semblance of a Bhagavatam-centric life to our children, while also managing our professional lives, services in the community as Vaishnavis, and other passion pursuits. We equate how our children behave in public to our worth as mothers. If our children are singing bhajans and playing mrdanga, we sense we are respected and belong in the devotee community. But if our children spend time on their devices during Maharaja’s class, we take that as our personal failure. “What will devotees think of me!” If all this is not enough to cause a short circuit, I don’t know what is! 

    If I cannot have compassion for myself as a mother for all this I am contending against, how can I be compassionate with my children? When I yell at my sons, if I retreat into shame, and guilt, judging myself as “useless in spite of trying to learn NVC for so many years”, how can I treat my children with any semblance of empathy?

    So first, I start with a lot of tenderness for the hard, hard, labor of love and service I am giving to this world by being a mother who is on her journey of self-improvement. At one point, the austerity of staying awake at night with my infant made me feel like a zombie. And now, it is the hard, hard work of trying to stay, moment by moment in an intention of power-with, with my teenager, that is taxing, for even though it is natural, the power-over paradigm has become habitual. 

    Seeing our children as living embodiments of beautiful needs is as if dust and soot are being cleared from our eyes, and we are seeing our children from a fresh, new set of eyes. It is neither permissiveness, where I allow my children to run amuck, nor authoritarianism, where their needs do not matter. I was afraid of coming to partnership, for I believed that everyone in my home would just goof off, while I would work as a slave. If the home is based on choice and an internal drive to meet others' needs, I would end up doing all the work, I thought!

    But I am finding that even the intention to partner or collaborate shifts my internal experience of mothering. I am often unable to access the internal resources to manifest this intention in my practical interactions with my children. Then, I give myself lots of empathy for the needs I was trying to meet by, for example, yelling at my son for not clearing his laundry basket. Without justifying and without “wronging” myself, I can sit with the beauty of my needs for order, cleanliness, organization, and responsibility, which led me to choose that strategy. I can also sit with the needs that were not met by my yelling, such as respect, partnership, collaboration, peace, and harmony. Then, I can go to my son with an NVC “broom and dustpan” to clean up my messes, by mourning that my actions and words were out of alignment with my values. 

    All of this is aspirational for me. I live and learn. I make messes and depend on the generosity of my family.

The Hand that Rocks the Cradle Rules the World

    It is hard to imagine a greater source of influence in a child’s life than their mother. Nor a more purifying service than motherhood. To those unsung heroines who are on this mothering journey with me, I offer my humble obeisances. 

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Happy Mother's Day to those that are mothers or have mothers. This includes all of us! 

Please share your thoughts on mothering and NVC by commenting below!