It Takes A Village

We’ve all heard it said a million times over again. The famous phrase “it takes a village”. More often than not the phrase is referring to raising children. And yes, it does take a village to raise children. It’s hard work. However, I want to stir your thinking today.

It takes a village to support and encourage expecting, birthing, and postpartum mothers and I’m saying it loud and clear for all the people in the back.

Now, I didn’t understand this in it’s fullness until becoming a mother myself. There’s truly no way to do so until you’ve walked it for yourself.

In my experience becoming a mother to my own two children, I began to put 2 and 2 together. Motherhood is hard. It comes with so many incredibly beautiful aspects, but there are so many challenges mothers have to overcome. It’s a learning curve. So why does society tell us that all aspects of motherhood should to come natural to each of us? What a lie.

This is where the mama village comes in.

For your expecting friends, check in! Her hormones are running wild right now and some days she’s happy and joyful and other days she feels like she’s going crazy and can’t stop crying for no reason. She deserve to feel seen and heard and you can make that happen so simply. Send her a Starbucks gift card or a “thinking of you” card with her favorite candy inside. It doesn’t take much to make a pregnant mama feel overwhelmingly loved.

For your friends who are about to give birth, help her fill out her birth plan or throw her a nesting party and help prepare her space to bring home baby. This can be so simple and helps out a nesting mama more than you can imagine. She shouldn’t be preparing the home all on her own anyway. She deserves to enjoy this time as stress free as possible.

For your newly postpartum friends or family, she is most likely sleep deprived and silently searching for any help she can get her hands on. Purchase her a postpartum meal train so she doesn’t have to think about grocery shopping or meal prepping for a couple weeks. Help her catch up on dishes. Don’t ask, simply knock on her door and be there. Let her care for baby and nothing else. If she wants a shower or a nap, you care for baby so she can do that. She will be so appreciative.

We can’t all do everything. That’s why it takes a village.

No mother deserves to feel like she’s in this on her own. We all deserve to feel adequately supported in this life changing season.

So wherever you are in your own motherhood journey, and maybe your journey hasn’t begun yet, it’s never too early or too late to become a part of another mothers village. And remember, small things become very big things in this stage of life.

So today find a mama, choose a small thing, and be a huge part of her life. I pray it comes back for you 100 fold when you need it most.