Fill Your Own Cup (and why it’s vitally important to do so)

I had a post yesterday about filling your own cup and it got me thinking about the importance of taking care of ourselves as parents as much as we do with our own kids. Coincidentally, I also started a chapter entitled “You First” in Jennifer Breheny Wallace’s book, Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic- and What We Can Do About It. In it, Wallace highlights the pressures parents face to be perfect parents while putting our needs second, if not totally unmet due to excessive levels of sacrifice parents subject themselves to.

It comes as no surprise that mothers bear the heaviest brunt of the demands to be perfect parents raising perfect children. That is not to say that fathers too aren’t carrying a heavy load. She highlights how the “good father effect” the benefits of involved fathers in children’s lives are becoming more prevalent and practiced. But even so, it is mothers who seem to have a harder time filling their own cup and maintaining a sense of self because we devote so much of ourselves to our children, sometimes to the point of overextension. But this is what we are taught to do, societal expectations that teach us to give and give of ourselves to our children, to be hyper present for our children. However, this is counter intuitive to fulfilling our own needs. In fact, Wallace notes that a study found that the more empathetic the mother is, the more likely she is to experience chronic, low-grade inflammation which can lead to serious health issues.

It is a common misconception that as children get older, more independent, they rely less on their parents thus helping lighten the parental load and stress burden. Although yes, children do become more independent and self-reliant, the relationship dynamics shift, and it is not necessarily guaranteed the parental load and stress lessens – especially if as children get older, we are more focused on their academic success or trying to help them find their calling or what they are “special” at. In fact, Wallace notes that its mothers with middle school children have less emotional return in exchange for their sacrifices causing anxiety and depression coupled with feelings of loneliness, emptiness and the lowest levels of life satisfaction and fulfillment! And those mothers who stay at home, as well as parents who don’t have hobbies, or dwindling friendships are susceptible to mental health declines.

Wallace goes on to remind us on an ugly theory we, as a society, put on to ourselves – “good mothers [and fathers] put their needs last.” In Gabrielle Bernstein’s book The Universe Has Your Back: Transform Fear to Faith also highlights the connotation that we are conditioned to believe that we must struggle and fight to prove value and worthiness. If it isn’t hard, we aren’t doing it right. But why do we put this pressure on ourselves?

I can clearly remember my mother telling my sister and I stories about how she was in desperate need of a new pair of shoes, and just as she was about to purchase some, we came to her, also in need of new shoes. She sacrificed her new shoes to buy us some. The lesson she was trying to teach us is that responsibilities come first, and we were her responsibility. But what I got from the story was her underlying resentment that she could never get or have what she wanted because we always needed something. And that is very true – children need a lot from parents, from attention and time, love and support, to food and material items. But after I realized the story was laced with resentment, I told myself that when I became a mother, I would make sure to fill my own cup! Fast forward to 2018 when my son was born – I was struggling to maintain one on my longer standing friendship, feeling like a stranger to myself and that I had little support to fill my own cups and the demands of being a new stay at home mother (something I had not anticipated becoming), maintaining the home, and supporting my husbands blossoming and demanding job. Just when I finally got my footing, I was pregnant with our daughter then my husband and I were in Covid lockdown with a two-year-old son bouncing off the ceiling and a newborn daughter, and I had no way to fill my own cup, let alone have time to hear myself think. My cup was so empty. Those were dark days where now I don’t even recognize myself or how I spoke to or acted towards my family. I had a hairline trigger temper, I was hormonal, I was beyond stressed, over touched, angry that my perfect plans for daycare for my son while I got to bond with my daughter were thwarted and there was literally nothing I could do about it. I realize now my nervous system was in fight or flight mode, and because I couldn’t go anywhere, I was in fight mode. I can only pray that I didn’t do irreparable damage during a sensitive emotional developmental period for my son. Luckily, truly pouring into your child, consistently working to fix fractured connections can reverse damage, both actualized and perceived. And I told myself that once we got out of that whole Covid situation, I would unapologetically fill my own cup.

I can hear Michelle Obama talking in an interview about how Barack would go workout, play basketball, fill his cup, seemingly without a second thought while she juggled motherhood and her career. I looked at my own husband and thought the same thing. Michelle said she decided she had to be “selfish” and make the time for herself. Wallace also says the same thing: “put yourself on your calendar” to make sure it actually happens. And although it is a constant point of contention between me and my husband, I make it a point to find something that truly is for me, for my mental and physical health. For me, that usually means working out. And even in doing so, it is with sacrifice – whether it’s working out at 5am and sacrificing spending time with my husband the night before so I can go to bed early or sacrificing sleep the morning of to wake up early before my kids wake up. My husband sacrifices his sleep because he’s with the kids while I’m downstairs. But this brings me back to equilibrium, it calms me, it helps me blow off the same type of energy that hyper kids need to release. I am a better me, a better wife, and a better mother because of it. I say this recognizing the privilege of being able to fill my own cup. To have a partner to lean on, the financial means to do so, even being a stay-at-home mom is in some ways a luxury. However, my stance remains unchanged because I’ve been on the other side of an empty cup, both as a mother and as a child whose mother’s cup was empty and felt the resentment from it.

It is vitally important that we take the time to pour into ourselves. We must maintain some aspect of ourselves that existed before children. I am aware that most parenting advice sounds time consuming. Parents always ask things like “how long do we need to do special time?” or “how long should I read with my child?” and the answer is never that long. And the time allotment for filling your own cup is also the same, it doesn’t need to be that long or excessive or expensive. Even if it’s doing five minutes of breath work or meditation. But this is a vitally important task we need to partake in. Not only for our physical and mental health, but because it helps us be better versions of ourselves and better parents. Filling our own cup allows us to be more patient, kind and compassionate, levelheaded and less reactive parents and citizens of the world. It also teaches our children to find ways to pour into themselves and that it isn’t selfish to do. We matter as much as our children do. And as important as it is to show our children how they matter by doing all the things we already do for them; it is important to remember that we matter too.