I have spent a lot of time thinking about patience especially since I completed my days of hands-on mothering. When I look back on this time, I distinctly remember regular feelings of impatience. This was often connected with pressure to complete a task or trying to live up to some external expectation or obligation. It was often at a cost of being present and staying in the moment with my child. I now understand that impatience was one of my Achilles heels which likely explains why I am drawn to write about it. I grew up not really valuing or understanding the power of patience.

Now I understand patience as an active dynamic, an intentionality. It is the ability to remain grounded, to stay present, when our outer and inner world threaten to destabilize us. A knowledge that in time things will work out and will be ok—somehow. It encourages us to respond with calm and fortitude and to shape a space to wait, rather than defaulting to an unthinking reaction when confronting uncertainty. It requires us to be generous with ourselves and others and not to rush, to persevere and endure. Patience values mindfulness, deliberation and thoughtfulness, while rushing is questionable. It prizes respect and forgiveness, and maintains an elastic rather than rigid attitude toward time. It accepts that interruption and challenges are part of everyday life.

It favors flow rather than rigidity.

Hands-on moms and patience: A contradiction in terms?

I continue to be curious about how hands-on moms who may be managing sleepless nights, and/or the tantrums of toddlers, and/or the trials of a tween who is being bullied, and/or a teenager who stays out all night and doesn’t inform you can possibly manage all this with patience and stay present? What are the barriers to patience? Patience forces us to face and negotiate uncertainty and to remain present when it may be easier to shut down. When our bodies rail against being patient. This can be scary and counterintuitive on so many levels.

No wonder patience is so sorely tested in hands-on mothering. The lived maternal experience stands out as a robust gauge of patience. The social expectations placed on mothers and how they collude with these ideals are core to mothering and grounded in the unique and impossible fantasies attached to mothering, such as unlimited patience. This is maintained by society, including the mothers themselves, and buoyed by the current cultural subscription to instant gratification.

In line with my work on maternal ambivalence. Moms are both patient and impatient, calm and harassed, composed and erratic. I marvel at the patience shown by hands-on mums, and I identify with and understand the lack of patience they show. Patience levels shift on a continuum which relies on time and variables linked to external and internal dynamics. Outer variables include how much support the mother receives from her partner, her family or other help, how sleep deprived she may be, her current economic and social situation. Her particular emotional experience includes her own historical experience of patience, how it has been modeled to her and how natural it is for her.

So how do we integrate and practice patience, especially if it’s not part of our inborn temperament?

A few hints:

1. Find a rhythm of patience by making a conscious decision to learn to be patient and present with ourselves.

• Slow down and develop a bodily awareness of when we are rushing and feeling pressured and ask whether this is serving me well.
• Find a way to slow down the world for a minute. Make a distinction between responding and reacting to demands, both internal and external. Responding means choosing to wait and think, rather than immediately answering or acting. This involves unsubscribing to instant gratification.
• Use the times when we lose our cool as a way to learn about ourselves, our bodily signals and triggers. Rather than reprimanding ourselves, be forgiving. We can arrive at patience, but it takes time, many missteps and backward movement along the way. When we “win,” let’s pat ourselves on the back.

2. Make a concerted effort to understand our personal relationship with patience and time. How do we think about time? Or do we? Are we aware of how it commands our days? Does time dominate us or are we in sync with it? Do we put so many commitments into our day that our patience becomes sorely tested? Are we willing to confront and change these behaviors?
3. Recognize that social media and its emphasis on instant gratification are tricky. They erode and improve our lives. Let’s continually monitor their worth and see how they pervade our internal and external world, dysregulate and distort us and are a barrier to patience.
4. Let’s introduce some truthful sayings that are helpful with patience:

• Life is messy and interrupted
• We learn from our missteps
• We make it up as we go along
• We are all muddling through

Flow is fundamental to patience. Words and concepts such as leaning into our struggles and missteps, forgiveness, acceptance, slowing down and presence are intentional and fluid.

In my first book¹ I wrote a section if only. In hindsight, I was talking about my previous lack of patience and how it affected my emotional presence in my hands-on mothering days. I was so overcome with doing that I often missed out on emotionally being in the space.

If only I had spent more time playing and laughing with my children, being less serious, enjoyed longer bubble bath times, being late to school more often, going to buy an ice cream instead of after-school activities.

It has taken me years to recognize the true meaning of patience and to hone this skill.

So far I’m working toward being proficient at it and I think I’m doing ok.

P.S. Let’s grant hands-on moms some grace and latitude.

It’s impossible to hold it together all the time but a little patience goes a long way.