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Or, How to Rekindle Obsessions and Create Family Culture
No matter how much delight or lack thereof one discovers in the demanding days of early motherhood, it’s a time of profound disorientation. In a kind of whole life pin-the-tail on the donkey, wherein you are spun around and blindfolded, your odds of finding your previously held destination are slim. My first (and only) novel Perfect Reader was published four months after my first child was born and I’ve described in earlier pages here the identity shift I experienced, and the great alarm I felt to suddenly care so much less about work I’d built my sense of self around. What do I even care about—other than this baby who needs me—now? Am I still me? These are questions motherhood plunges many women into, questions many men do not face until retirement. There is mourning in finding yourself unmoored from old versions of self, even when you’re ready to move on to something new.
I was reminded of all this at a recent Parenting Book Club discussion I facilitated. The book was Outdoor Kids in an Inside World, and in it author Steven Rinella makes a passionate case for getting your kids radically into nature —through camping, gardening, fishing, foraging and hunting. He is a professional outdoorsman, and though his argument is persuasive, it got me thinking that nature is just one excellent lens you can apply to family life. There’s no question that having a strong family culture is grounding for kids. But there are many ways to do that, and it’s not going to look the same for all of us. Not all of us are going to mentor our kids through a caribou hunt in Alaska, but we can still introduce our kids to novel ways of approaching and sharing the experience of being alive.
The Book Club talk turned to allowing and nurturing our own obsessions as parents — in this case we were all moms—and building a family culture around them. How can we bring these deeply held parts of ourselves into parenthood, and put our unique stamp on family life while at the same time offering our families the centering practice of unique traditions?
But when I asked this question to the group —how can you build a strong rich family culture around whatever it is your obsession is? —one smart and funny mom of three kids under 6, said self-deprecatingly, “I don’t even know what my obsessions are anymore—making chicken nuggets?”
Oof. I felt that deeply. I remembered that feeling. I’ve been thinking about the question since. So, if you are in a season of, for whatever reason, losing your north star (maybe you are caretaking an aging parent, grieving a big loss, or facing a transition) how might you remember and rekindle your obsessions? How do we tune into our peculiarities of self at times when getting through the day meeting everyone’s needs takes so much of our energy? Because spending time in ways that fulfill your idiosyncratic yearnings may give you more energy and spaciousness. Feeling like yourself is rejuvenating. And bringing others along for the ride builds closeness.
