“Be where your feet are.”

~Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn

When do we stop mothering long enough to feel and appreciate the experience of mothering?

Blue skies, green leaves, wind coursing through. A bird’s soft whistle. And I often can’t seem to pause long enough to let my feet feel the dirt on the ground.

On this Mother’s Day, 2026, I want to be grateful for my health and my growing mental clarity.

I want to give myself the gift of spaciousness. An opening up of time. Time expanding, the ground under my feet expanding, my heart expanding.

What would it look like for life to feel more expansive while mothering? Perhaps the two don’t need to be in conflict.

May I put down the stop watch that is my mind. May I realize I’m not in a race anymore. Not unless I’m actually running, which is another goal this year!

May I stop and feel my feet on the ground. The sand between my toes. The warmth on my cheeks in the sun, all while chasing a growing child and exhaling after another “can you please say that a little kinder” or “you’re not being safe right now with your body.”

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What if I could see and experience the world as though I were a child again, as though the sensory input around me was as scintillating as it often seems to be for my daughter.

What if my whole world could light up when my favorite characters skate out on ice, floating through thin air and electrifying my mind and heart.

Of course, worries and obsessions to “get it right” will always be there. But instead of beating myself up for them, what if I could start to talk back to this childhood inner critic and offer comfort and reassurance that I’m okay now. That now at age 44 these parts that still feel the need to protect me from failure and making a mistake can take a rest. That it is okay for things to get messy (literally and figuratively). That I can embrace the colorful mess that is my life and slip and slide in the rainbow of colors as they bleed together.

On this mother’s day, I wish myself and all the mothers out there a breath of solace and reassurance that we can hold two things at once… a reality packed with obligations AND an opportunity to liberate ourselves from old burdens. Instead, may we all plant ourselves in the expanding sense of space and time that is ours for the taking.

Happy Mother’s Day dear ones. And thank you, for reminding me that we are all in this together.