I hear so much struggle, sadness, and unhappiness among us mammas, especially online. I’d like to share my intro to young motherhood that has set the tone for lifelong mothering for me.When I was 22 years, I went to Italy with nothing but a backpack, a guitar, and my one-year-old baby girl. I was escaping an awful, mentally, and sometimes physically abusive relationship.
After a few months of wandering, resting, and enjoying my baby in safety, beauty, and bliss, I found myself in the farthest south tip of Sicily, in a little off-grid community of sweet people who wanted a slower, simpler life.
They were living in house caves in the hills—old houses built right into the mountains, the backs of each room being raw stone wall, some rooms open to the sky like the ancients left their rooms. Minimal furniture, most of it hand-made or very, very old. There was no electricity and water came from a spring gushing through some simple piping.
And they were HAPPY. Relaxed. Light-hearted. They kept very little schedule. There was little that HAD to be done. We cooked together, harvested together, and with no tv, radio, or screens of any kind, we were each other’s company and entertainment.
One resident mamma kept a trunk of fabric scraps for sewing with her young daughter. We all gathered herbs together and the children helped string them on thread to hang about the room for drying as food and medicine. The children put on plays with fig leaves as masks and literally played ring-around-the-rosie’s and the like for fun.
We sang together often, and visitors dropped by unannounced to sit, laugh, and socialize while the children played. When we got super bored, we’d go to town and play live music in the plaza for tips and get gelato or just walk around enjoying the town.
We also (drum roll please) had no clock. We went to bed when the sun went down and with candles for our only light that was easy to do! We rose early with the sunrise, feeling rested from early sleep.
What’s my point?
I didn’t know until that experience that there are many different ways to mother. Often the exhaustion I encounter in the mothers around me and sometimes myself when I fall into it, is from our lifestyle that we are doing to ourselves.
Over scheduling.
Too many lessons and engagements.
Postponing the joy of a friend’s company until Tuesday at 10:30 instead of welcoming each other into our now, our daily experience.
We plan to host a dinner perfectly in a perfectly clean house instead of cooking, gathering, and laughing together every step of the way as a normal part of our days, weeks, and months.
I have pictures of my Italian aunties ironing together on their front porches simultaneously working on their tan as well their housekeeping. They look genuinely happy, smiling and laughing from their bellies. I crave that togetherness of women that we have lost with all our modern conveniences that while making life “easier” has managed to isolate us into misery, often feeling like nothing more than managers for other people’s lives and expectations with literally no pay and very little to enjoy about it, with pretty much nothing left over for us.
Eventually I had to leave this dream-like paradise and face the music I had left behind, which resulted in 13 years of custody battle to save my daughter from that situation (story for another day).
But I never forgot the light-hearted freedom of these families, making something out of nothing and sharing all of it with their friends and family in the sweetest, simplest ways with literally ZERO slaving to societies’ expectations.
I get that a lot of us are locked into our lifestyle and communities and slipping away into a valley of dreams and personal freedom isn’t exactly an option. But what is an option is looking good and hard at what we put ourselves through in the name of expectations. Shoulds. Supposed to. Recommended to. . . Have to…
Do we?
Says who?
What if we are freer than we realize to make life sweet, simple, and enjoyable?
I would like to encourage you to make a list of what you really LOVE. What makes you feel like “aaaaaaaa” and what would it take to get that into your life?
What can you scale back in the name of simplicity, relief, and just time to BE? With your babies? With your love? With your soul sisters whoever they may be?
I saw, felt, and experienced that life and motherhood doesn’t have to look one way. We can craft it like a beautiful quilt to be what we need and want it to be. And our husbands, who were once just our sweethearts, I bet they miss that sweetness too.
God loves us SO much and believe it or not . . . it’s not Him demanding we run ourselves into the ground in a joyless grind of “should” and “have to’s.” It’s us. Doing it to ourselves. And maybe others around us expecting us to do it their way.
I now have six children and because of this amazing experience I’ve been blessed to experience, I am creating my own way and a unique Sicilian inspired home life with my children and husband, based on joy and the sweetness that Jesus is daily coaxing me to become and create for my family.
I hope that anyone struggling might take some time to think and maybe journal on what your life might look like in a perfect world. Just dream. And ask God how good it can get, how much of that and more can He bring into your days, moment by moment and deeper into the foundation of how you live your lives together?
How sweet can we make our lives with our babies, big children, husbands, and ourselves while we have the time?
GINA MARIE LO MONACO
Anchorage, Alaska, USA
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Picture: The Lo Monaco Keller Tribe in Sicily (Gina’s grandmother’s home town) a few months ago: Ian and Gina with their family—Denali (19), Lucia (10), Rosina (
, Shelah (6), Niko (4), and Monet (1).
, Shelah (6), Niko (4), and Monet (1).
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