Article by Sophie Patten

"Having three daughters is no joke. My life is a cautionary tale of ‘be careful what you wish for’. *Insert typical disclaimer about how I love my kids here*"

My latest Facebook status

I don’t mean that I wished for children and now I realize I’m over my head. No, no. I’m not over my head as such. I wished for children and they are the biggest blessing in my life, no doubt.

What I mean is that having girls is already incredibly challenging for me as a women. These little ladies are a mirror for me; a way to see myself with all my flaws and inadequacy. But that’s not all. They are also a way to see myself and all the love that I have to give them and how my sense of right and wrong and my strength of character, will shape and affect them in their lives.

Sometimes that feels like an incredible burden. It seems like too much for one person. Surely I can’t be the mother of three girls. Three?! Not me, I’m still 17 years old in my head. I know how much my mother has always meant to me; I was the kid who had to leave the sleepover late at night because I was too sad to be in a house away from my mom. I do have a kind of internal desperation to mean that much to my daughters.

I want to be like Marmie in Little Women :) Wise, nurturing and full of love and wholeness.

Pursing balance and wholeness feels like a lifelong mission that I am on and I feel like everyone else has it down and I stand alone in my pursuit. I sometimes feel like other moms are complete, and I still have so many desires for my life and a passion to do more than I’ve done. I have a vision for my life that hasn’t fully come to fruition yet. I get itchy feet and want to travel. Sometimes I want to go back to school; sometimes I get the crazy idea in my head that I want to open a bakery or be a teacher or a singer or an artist.

I look around at the other moms in my life and I wonder how deeply their happiness runs. I wonder if they ever dreamed a bigger dream for themselves; or if they’re satisfied with motherhood and finding themselves in that role.

Please don’t misunderstand me; being a mother really was my dream and it still is. It is because of the fullness of my love for them and the fact that I want to inspire and nurture them that I want to raise the bar for my dreaming. I want my girls to know that they can be career women, world travelers, mothers, wives, world leaders.. Whatever they want. I want them to look at me to know how to live their lives out loud, with vibrancy and energy.

This is by far the most intimidating challenge of my life. So far.