If you’re like most moms, you don’t always feel important, particularly during the messier, more draining, and more overwhelming seasons of your life, when the less-than-glamorous aspects of motherhood take up the bulk of your time and energy. This is hardly helped by the fact that as our society defines importance, motherhood lies outside the margins.

But we are a big deal, mamas. I would even go so far as to say that modern-day mothers—the consumers, voters, value-shapers, lovers, and story weavers we are—are among the most influential forces on the planet. 

• We are healers of humanity’s wounds and dysfunction.
• We are nurturers of strengths and courage and confidence.
• We are cultivators of emotional intelligence and self-awareness.
• We are guardians of The Sacred Feminine and better equipped than any one group of women throughout history to promote and perpetuate Her direly-needed emergence.

This makes motherhood one of the most important roles in the healing of humanity. It’s a position of incredible honor, strength, and power… assuming we know how powerful we really are.

But we’ve been taught our whole lives to associate importance with things like:

• making money
• the acquisition of nice things
• power and prestige
• efficiency and speed
• measurable progress
• whatever’s currently “cool”

Though all these goals are presented as possible within the world of motherhood, most every mother I know who measures her worth according to these standards feels behind, insane, or defeated. In fact, by most of these measures, motherhood is practically the antithesis of what’s most important:

• It’s unpaid.
• It’s vulnerable.
• It’s messy.
• It’s immeasurable.
• Its rewards are largely intangible.
• It’s not exactly cool.

Claiming the right to decide what is most important, and what makes us important as mothers and unique individuals, is essential to shifting the many burdensome stories affecting us all. We must reclaim motherhood from those who’ve reduced its relevancy and cheapened cultural definitions of its worth.

Despite our wrestling with relevance, deep down, we know that our roles are essential. This is because we don’t merely learn but intuit our importance. Our intuition tells us that nurturing matters just as much, if not more than making money.

I see the exquisite value in you,