Struggling with Mom Guilt? Here's How to Use Masculine vs. Feminine Polarity to Navigate It.

Let’s talk about mom guilt. Have you felt it yet? 

Mom guilt the nagging, niggling feeling that there is always more you “should” be doing for your children. It’s the self-criticism you inflict because you didn’t live up to an expectation of yourself as a parent. It’s painful, prevalent and pervasive (mmm triple P’s!).

Mom guilt pops up like a weed in the gap between your idealized mama self and your real, actual mama self. It’s everywhere your ideals diverge from your reality. 

For example, I said while I was pregnant that I wouldn’t let my children watch screens until they were older. Then my husband and I and our 2 year old get sick, all in bed, and watch a whole Frozen movie. Cue: mom guilt. 

Or I sit down to play with my kids, hoping it’s going to be this really fun, connected time. And I spend the time, half-heartedly playing with stuffed animals, while really thinking about my work to-dos. Oops! I lost my presence. Cue: mom guilt. 

Or I see the still-empty baby books sitting on my shelf, remembering my intention while pregnant was to lovingly fill those out with each of my babies’ firsts - first smile, first tooth, first time rolling over. And yet, they are still empty. Cue: mom guilt. 

Or Lila is crying because she wants to play with me but I’m going to work. And I think I “should” feel bad, but I’m actually just so excited to go to my office and have some kid-free time. Does that make me a bad mom? Cue: mom guilt. 

Or I buy the adorable brand new plastic doll because my toddler really wants it, even though I’m trying to not buy plastic and get most of our things second-hand. Cue: mom guilt.

You get the idea? Mom guilt can be everywhere. 

I see two distinct ways of working with “mom guilt” - a feminine path and a masculine path. The feminine path asks us to drop the “shoulds”, tune in to our desire, and trust our intuitive yearnings. The masculine path asks us to reflect on the “shoulds” to reveal our values and align our life behind them. The compass for the feminine is desire, while for the masculine, its values. 

I wonder which one resonates more with you? Remember we all have both energies inside us, and at different times in our life, different energies will appeal to us more. I’ll outline both approaches below. 

The Masculine Path 

The “shoulds” we tell ourselves, the moments of guilt or regret, the itchy uncomfortable feeling that we could be a better mom than we’re being… this is part of the inherent tension of growth that happens in motherhood. It’s creative tension. 

When I first felt the painful stings of mom guilt, my first instinct was to find a way to get rid of it. I just wanted to stop feeling bad about my actions as a mother. Can you relate? Yet if we try to “get rid” of mom guilt without first listening to it and understanding it, we miss a valuable lesson on who we are. 

By the way - perhaps your guilt isn’t around mothering. I’ve heard other moms say they have “partner guilt” but not mom guilt, or “work guilt”, or whatever. The same method works for all of these types of guilt. 

How do you work with mom guilt?

1. Look at your “shoulds”. Write out all the things you think you “should” be doing or feeling as a mama (or partner, or employee). For example, here are some of mine:

• I should be present and attuned to my kids 

• I should love spending time with them 

• I should only buy second-hand items with minimal chemicals 

• I should be recording all their firsts in the baby book 

• I should be ready to play when Lila gets home from school 

• I should only work when the kids are sleeping 

2. Find your values embedded in your “shoulds”. Each “should” is reflecting your idealized version of yourself as a mama, and in a very real way, it’s revealing your values. What is important to you? What qualities do you want to embody as a mama? Here is my list again, with the values highlighted. 

• I should be present and attuned to my kids (presence)

• I should love spending time with them (delighting in them)

• I should only buy second-hand items with minimal chemicals (eco-awareness)

• I should be recording all their firsts in the baby book (presence)

• I should be ready to play when Lila gets home from school (presence)

• I should only work when the kids are sleeping (quality time with the kids)

3. Make a list of your values. Take out any that are redundant and simplify your list. Now you have a beautiful list of what you value as a mother. 

• Presence

• Quality time together 

• Delighting in my children

• Eco-awareness

4. Reframe mom guilt. Now you can see the beautiful values hidden inside the insidious voices of mom guilt. There is gold here, you just have to clear through the muck. The trick is when you feel a moment of mom guilt is to a) notice the values you hold that aren’t being lived in that moment (presence, attunement, etc.), and b) have compassion for yourself when you aren’t living 100% up to those values. None of us will be. 

The masculine part of us asks us to look at this moment as a chance to reveal our values, and to make choices more in alignment with our values (e.g. if you value presence but are always on your phone in front of your kids… that’s an opportunity to realign behind your values). This is how we create integrity in our mothering and clarity on how we want to show up. The masculine gift here is clarity, integrity, and honor. 

The Feminine Path 

Meanwhile, the feminine part of us scoffs at our mom guilt, because she intuits that these voices are conditioned, cultural doctrines that have nothing to do with our inherent truth. 
When you’re feeling guilty for going to work and leaving your children at home… Whose voice is that anyway? Where did you learn to feel bad about that? 

Mom guilt is born from mind-based “shoulds”, an unrealistic ideal, likely passed down to us through our cultural conditioning, while our innate truth resides in our body’s intuition and desire. 

The feminine asks - what feels good to me? Where is my desire calling me? She trusts her desire above all else, especially when it “makes no sense”. 

For example, maybe you grew up with a working mom and always thought you’d be a boss babe, creating your empire while raising your family. But when your baby was born, all you wanted to do was spend all day with him, cuddling him, cooking, and tending to the home. When you thought about going back to work, you felt itchy and unhappy. 

So you chose to leave work and focus on your family. Maybe you feel immense guilt for not earning money for the family, or guilt that “all” you do is stay home. Yet at the same time? You feel such relief and joy in getting to be with your kids. Your heart feels so full, so nourished by it. 

That? That is working the feminine path of desire. 

Or maybe your story is the opposite! Maybe you waited your whole life to be a mother and imagined that you’d want to be home with the little ones because “it goes by so fast” you always hear, yet when the time comes? You crave the freedom and creative joy of being back at work. 

You might feel guilty leaving your little ones, but once you’re in your office, diving into your service to the world, you feel such joy and enthusiasm for what you’re doing. It just feels right.

That’s also the feminine path. 
All this to say - from a feminine perspective, mom guilt and “shoulds“ are not a good compass for your life. They are mental confusion and mind pollution that block you from the crystal clear knowing of your desire, of the wisdom of your body.

Here is an analogy for you: Imagine you’re at a concert. Your friend tries to whisper in your ear, something truly important, but you can’t hear it because the room is so noisy. The “mom guilt” is the noise of the concert, blaring and persistent. While your friend’s message? That’s your body’s wisdom. So the trick is to get quiet enough, still enough, to hear the subtle whispers of your body’s yearning. Then to trust that above all else. 

________

Both of these ways of working with “mom guilt” (or any “should” voice!) are so valid. The masculine side of us demands integrity, calling us to live up to our highest values, while the feminine side of us whispers that the deepest, truest version of ourselves are not found in any “shoulds”, but in our moment-to-moment desires. 

Which path resonates more with you right now? Also notice - which path feels more familiar to you vs. foreign? Sometimes the more foreign or unfamiliar path is actually the one to take, because it offers fresh and novel wisdom you may need. 

However you travel, may you find the wisdom that lies just behind the feelings of “mom guilt”, and may you stumble into a lush place of delicious self-love and self-awareness.