How Practicing Re-parenting On Myself Has Made Me A More Mindful Mother by Lindsay Rein

Becoming a mamma wasn’t always something I believed that I wanted. To me, raising children meant clipping your wings. It meant that a commitment to an untethered life would be tossed to the wayside.

The ‘not having children’ mindset became a sort of identity in my early twenties. When my husband and I got engaged and decided having a baby was likely not for us, I said to him, “I’m so glad we get to be so free.”

So, you can imagine his surprise, years later, when holding a positive pregnancy test in my hand, I cried tears of full-body knowing, “This is the happiest moment of my life!”

And it was the happiest moment of my life. It was also a cross-roads.

One where I parted ways, in so many ways, with younger parts of myself so afraid of roots. Younger parts of myself that let fear and unworthiness and doubt choose the direction of my life.

It took years of therapy and healing work and intense reparenting skills to get to a place where my inner-children trusted me, to get to a place where my inner-world felt whole.

It took me sitting with each inner-child as they showed up and saying, “I will never leave you,” and “You are safe to stay.”

It took nearly five years, but the healing path I walked brought me to the most divine truth – I was ready to become a mother because I had finally learned how to mother me. 

Nothing would make me feel more free, more alive, than the love I’d feel towards my baby girl.

And as it turned out, I’d get a new set of wings, the truest set of wings, on the other side of birth.

Lindsay Ellen Rein is a writer and inner-freedom coaching supporting women + new mammas in their healing journey.
Follow Lindsay @lindsayellenrein