MOTHERING AND CAREGIVING.

Changing the Landscape of Care for Mothering. 

“Mother is a verb not a noun” A mothers health is crucial to the fabric of society, with them begins a cycle of intergenerational health, a mother being defined by more than the physical, a person who cares intimately for another.

There are many experiences that are encountered through the transitions into mothering and caregiving can land upon any part of us. We can experience challenges in conception, pregnancy, in birth or afterwards in the postpartum period. These, often unanticipated difficulties can expose our deepest vulnerabilities. The tumultuous becoming into mothering and caregiving is often seen through a singular and time focused lens, that divides, our physical body from the mind, the self from other, each phase of mothering or caregiving from the other. Health exists in wholeness, the balance and intertwining of all the various aspects of our lives, our mental, physical, emotional, social, financial and enviromental health.And the phases of caregiving and of motherhood seen along the same continuum. It is more than the absence of disease and indeed can exist within in it. For health to be realised and felt, these elements need to be considered together, a wider perspective of maternal and childhood health seen and celebrated, humanised. Threaded together with care, care lying in action, yet also in understanding.

This is lifegiving.

12. Jan. 2025

Kim Verdebo.