Our best advice is what we tell our best friends, not what we tell and do ourselves.

When your friend is feeling uber stressed, you tell her to go for a walk.

When your friend asks about how to manage everything, you tell her to prioritize and let go of a clean house and order take out.

When your friend vents about her job and shares how inadequate she feels, you tell her that she is doing great and to keep going.

How can you bring your best advice into your own life?

The world could use a lot more compassion.

As with many things, compassion cannot exist outside of us if it does not exist inside of us.

What is the self talk when you do something wrong? What do you for yourself when you’re tired? How do you treat yourself when you are running late?

All of this is likely reflected in how we speak to our children, our partners, and our closest loved ones.

Be kind. Be gentle. When you start feeling that self compassion, you will be able to bring it out to the world.

Our journeys are more alike than they are different. In fact, generations before us have lived similar journeys, faced similar challenges and celebrated similar achievements. And generations after us will do the same.

The idea that we and our journeys are special and unique may actually hurt us more than it helps us.

Yes, self identity and expression are so crucial for our happiness.

But community, relating to other humans and being in the presence of others fill our souls in ways that we can’t achieve alone.

We need both – to know and be ourselves in community.

In “sisterhood,” “brotherhood,” and “neighborhood,” the suffix “-hood” denotes the ‘state of being’ while somewhere along the way adopting the connotation of being in that state together and uplifting one another.

That hasn’t been the case for modern motherhood where many mothers forge ahead alone. Mothers are fed a narrative that asking for and receiving help are signs of weakness, that our problems are too unique for anyone to help, and that the culture of blame and shame among mothers is normal and acceptable.

But, what if we, in this moment, are able to redefine motherhood for ourselves? How can we bring the “-hood” back into motherhood?

Manufacturing enables us to mass produce to spec – exact and precise measures that indicate whether a process is accurate.

To create millions of widgets, economies of scale and standardization are practiced. Even schooling follows a similar model. Things meeting spec means that they are “perfect” – in comparison to a prototype.

When you are raised with these principles, it is hard to shake off. The Kool-Aid runs deep through the veins.

Then motherhood comes along and challenges the principles of modern industrialization.

There is no “meeting spec” for our children. There are no standard operating procedures for mothering. There is no “perfect” mother.