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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........

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