Health / Wellness

Lawyer-Moms Who Think Their Life Is Too Messy For Mindfulness Should Read This

Let go of those Google images of what mindfulness allegedly looks like.

By Claire E. Parsons  
on

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts on motherhood in the legal profession, in partnership with our friends at MothersEsquire. Welcome Claire E. Parsons back to our pages. Click here if you’d like to donate to MothersEsquire.

Do a Google image search for the word “mindfulness” and pictures will appear of beautifully kempt women, swathed in pastels or sepia tones, sitting serenely near a lake, in a field, or on some mountaintop. Then do a Google image search for “lawyer mom” and up pops the ubiquitous lady in a suit, often in a messy kitchen, juggling a baby and a briefcase or laptop. Based on this, it would seem that mindfulness just isn’t for the lawyer-mom. We aren’t those ladies in soft colors who have the time to sit around in nature. We’re the ones in dark suits with too many demands, too little help, and — implicitly the images accuse — too much ambition.

But I’m a lawyer-mom and have an active meditation practice. In fact, I went so far down that path that I’m now a certified meditation teacher. I didn’t start a meditation practice in spite of my dual roles as mom and attorney. I started one because of them. I’ve written here before about my difficult pregnancy with my first daughter and how my firm helped my practice survive by supporting me through that pregnancy. The rest of that story is how a mindfulness practice helped me heal from that experience and undo the mental frameworks that caused it, so I could grow and thrive.

I had read about mindfulness practices before I became pregnant with my daughter, but I never was able to establish a regular practice until it became so clear that I needed it. The year after my daughter was born, I had a two-week wrongful-death trial coming up. My husband and I still had not gotten our daughter to sleep through the night. I had so many things to do that I struggled to decide what to do next. I was so tired that I was seriously considering going part-time or even changing careers because I felt like I was bad at everything. I can’t even remember why, but one day I just decided to try meditating.

I had no lake to sit near or mountaintop to climb, but in increments of one to two minutes I found serenity in my closet (the quietest spot in the house). At first it was startling to watch the churning in my mind, but it also felt good to stop for a second and sit in silence. Over time, I upgraded to a real meditation cushion, gradually extended the time I could sit, and found guided meditations and books to help me along. As I advanced, I noticed that I didn’t get bogged down in thoughts so much, wasn’t rushing all of the time, and had far fewer stress-induced headaches.

When I explored other kinds of meditation, loving-kindness in particular, it was like a damn broke open. My Catholic school education had stressed kindness and compassion, but never explicitly and systematically for me. Traditional loving-kindness practices, rightly so, start by wishing yourself well before you even think about anyone else. It was this that helped me see where I had gone wrong with my first pregnancy. I had let my overthinking run wild with worries about whether I was good enough as a mom. So lost in the thoughts and judgment, I made no time to feel and care for my own pain, and I certainly didn’t ask for help because I was too ashamed.

Sponsored

Meditation helped me get out of that cycle because it helped me see the thought “am I good enough?” and critically examine it by asking “compared to what?” or “what is good enough anyway?” Once I was able to let go (at least a little bit) of these worries, I could handle more skillfully the times when I felt like a mess. Instead of launching into judgment about not meeting standards, I could acknowledge I was hurt, or scared, or confused, or frustrated. I could experience that and offer myself care by encouraging myself, taking a breath or a walk, or asking for support.

And once I healed, the logical next step was to grow. I found risks and new ventures, like blogging or leadership roles, weren’t so hard to take now that I had a softer way of handling setbacks and adversity. I found handling tasks much easier now that I knew ways to manage my energy, monitor my signs of stress and fatigue, and take breaks. I found that stressful situations in my life and law practice were easier to manage when I was able to take a pause, choose a response instead of always reacting, and fix the problem instead of making it worse.

Over the years, it has often been hard to find the time to practice. There have been many days and even one long period where I missed. I was often frustrated by distractions and interruptions or exhausted and fell asleep. I regularly trailed off in thoughts about useless things and wasted whole sessions in fantasies about the future that never came to pass. I repeatedly went through phases where I didn’t “feel like” meditating because I just wanted to ignore what I was feeling. After more than seven years of consistent practice, I have only had brief snatches of time where I felt anywhere near as serene as those lovely women on the mountaintops.

But I kept going, and I keep going today because I don’t live on a mountaintop. I don’t live in sepia tones. I live as a lawyer in a dark suit and a mom in a messy house, and I juggle too many things and — maybe it’s true — I have too much ambition. But with my mindfulness practice, I have heart and wisdom and compassion and stability, too. And all those things are necessary if I am to be the lawyer and the mom I want to be.

So here’s my advice to you. If you are thinking about a meditation practice, let go of those Google images of what mindfulness allegedly looks like. Remember, you aren’t meditating just to make a pretty stock picture. You are meditating to make a beautiful life. That doesn’t come to most of us in prepackaged sepia tones and curated nature scenes. It comes from finding comfort and offering care to ourselves, over and over and over again, as we sit in the mess.  As lawyer-moms with too many demands and too little help, we are experts of the mess and making order out of chaos. So, if you are starting a meditation practice, don’t try to be like that serene lady on the mountaintop. Be you, because, in my opinion, she could learn a thing or two from us.

Sponsored

Claire E. Parsons is a Member at Adams Law, PLLC in Covington, Kentucky where she focuses her practice in local government practice, school law, and civil litigation. She is the mother of two girls and the Content and Communications Chair for MothersEsquire. She completed her meditation teacher training with The Mindfulness Center and writes about mindfulness for lawyers on her blog, Brilliant Legal Mind. You can follow Claire’s blog on WordPress or social media and you can find more of Claire’s content or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Topics

, ,