Beauty in Homekeeping

I recently came to a realization that I’m living the life I swore I’d never want to live, yet deep down, I knew I truly desired it. Let me explain.

If your feed is anything like mine, everyone has been talking lately about the “trad wife” trend. (If you ask me, this is a misnomer because something traditional is inherently not a trend.) We’re seeing a resurgence of articles and content about slow living and intentional homemaking as a lifestyle.

I must admit, this conversation resonates deeply with me. It’s a concept that has been on my mind for the past five or so years for my personal life, and living with intentionality and mindfulness is what I’ve built my coaching business around.

As the topic gains more traction, I can’t help but reflect on my own relationship with embodying the traditional home keeper role and adopting the slow lifestyle.

Since becoming a mother six years ago, I’ve yearned to slow down life. I want to escape the hustle culture and prioritize presence and peace over productivity driven by perfectionism and people-pleasing.

However, these weren’t always my aspirations. In fact, I recall a partner in my early twenties telling me that if we married, he’d prefer I stay home. WHAT?! I was offended, this felt misogynistic. How could I abandon my college degree I was working so hard to earn? How could I stay home and not contribute to society with my clearly specialized capacity to achieve? How could this man devalue my worth in the workforce? After all, I was proud of my capacity to produce, overachieve, and generally keep everyone around me happy through my productivity.

Fortunately, when I met my current husband, his perspective on the subject was much more open. While he made it evident that he didn’t love my aspiration to become a law enforcement officer, with the intention of joining the SWAT team and climbing the organizational ladder, he wasn’t going to hinder my progress. He loved me and wanted to pursue our relationship, and he was committed to supporting whatever path I chose. Perhaps this was his manifestation of healthy masculinity, or perhaps he somehow intuitively understood that I was bullshitting even myself with those goals.

However, the moment I became pregnant with my daughter, everything changed. I realized that juggling high-level career aspirations was directly at odds with my heart’s desires.

In fact, this past weekend, my dad even asked me if I ever regretted being a law enforcement officer, and my response was a resounding no. Not because I detested my job, but because there were aspects I genuinely enjoyed about it, and I am eternally grateful for the valuable lessons learned and the relationships I cultivated. Nevertheless, I don’t miss it because I was never meant to simultaneously pursue a demanding career and care for my family. That was my life then, and this is my life now. And I’m certain there are other soul paths laid out ahead of me (likely involving milking cows if I continue on this path hehe!)

Many people allow layers of career and family to coexist, but it doesn't sit right for me in this season.

Because not only did I birth my daughter, I birthed an entirely new version of myself. A version of me that couldn’t care less about my own achievements, if it means sacrificing precious time and energy stores for my babies. A version of me that knows that anytime we say yes to one path, we are also saying no to many others.

At first this felt so foreign to me. I had spent my whole life thinking I needed to do ALL of the things.

Let me pause and here clarify that I was not the kind of girl growing up who had clear career goals, like knowing I wanted to be a doctor or anything specific, I think this is very different and I’m grateful our culture has progressed to allow women to follow these paths when the drive is real. And I know many moms who do a beautiful job of juggling a flourishing career alongside nurturing family.

The pressure I felt to have a career was rooted in expectations. My drive was really about BECAUSE women could do anything men could do (better), I should therefore want to do more, to be more than a mom. I came to see staying at home as a less than role.

My own mom had stayed home with my brother and I, but it wasn’t what she wanted for her life, and she had made certain that I knew I had access to other opportunities. I can appreciate this about her and how her generation shaped this ideal. The beauty of women being able to access higher degrees and enter the workforce, at its core I believe is expansive for our species, allowing us to learn from and receive from the feminine perspective.

But the truth is, there is a reason our tradition echoes women as the primary home-keepers. Women are by our very essence, more natural at holding the unique qualities it takes to make a house a home.

Afterall, our body is our baby’s home for the first 9 months of their lives. Our bodies are constantly at work building hormones and the inner landscape to carry life, to create resources to build new life. We cycle through this every single month, whether we want to become pregnant or not, our bodies do this work. We carry the foundational knowing of creating safe, healthy, stable life inside our very DNA.

Our hormonal rhythm lends itself to a brain and nervous system that is more sensitive to the needs of what it takes to create a deep energetic sense of the word home. Considering that our hormone cycle runs significantly slower (28ish days vs men’s 24 hours), it makes biological sense that we are more suited for living at a slower pace alongside our kids. For tending to the slow, monotonous work involved in homemaking. Strengths of patience, deep intuition, compassion, nurturing, and giving are inside of every woman, waiting to be tapped into and put to use.

The problem is that culture has convinced us that the invisible work at home is less important than our output, our productivity. What we can do is lifted higher than who our family needs us to be. And unfortunately, as many women find out along the way (myself included) just because we can do whatever we want, doesn't mean our bodies will adapt well to the stressors of work we aren't designed for.

The doing (the more masculine energy) engages the brain’s motor and cognitive senses, while the being (feminine) engages the sensory and emotional systems requiring deeper awareness and consciousness.

I’ve found that I have to relentlessly let go of idolizing doing to avoid getting trapped in pressure to make my day more stressful so it can mean something.

I love my work, my business, and physical work of getting my hands dirty with homesteading activities, and I do aspire as my children grow and increase in their independent capacities, I’ll be able to contribute in different creative ways to my family’s financial needs (I think women have always done this throughout traditions and generations in some way bartering or working small jobs or alongside their husbands.) I just have also come to believe tending to the inner, invisible needs of my home should come first, in particular while my children are young and have a greater need for reliance on my physical and emotional body.

The message I want to share here today is to remember that even when we think our invisible work at home isn't what we want to be doing or when it feels unimportant, our bodies are designed to do it, and it gets to feel more life-giving when we slow down and ritualize versus seeing it as something trivial in the background.

Whether you work out of the home, work from home with your kiddos underfoot, or are simply a stay-at-home mom, next time you're wrapped up in the 'invisible' load and feeling resentful, I want to encourage you to tap into the experience happening inside your body.

What would it look like if you could slow down and weave a sense of presence into your chores. Here are some ways in which I like to bring ritual and meaning into my day:

1. I try to ensure feeding myself and my children always comes first. I feel way more resentful of caring for my home when I'm hungry OR when my children are cranky (which is often because they are hungry).

2. I love to start up a calming playlist in the morning and light a candle, I find my children play more independently and I can focus more on whatever I need to work on, too.

3. Remembering to slow down and involve the kids when I can. Instead of rushing to fold a load of laundry so we can do something else, sit on the floor to fold it with your baby letting them feel the different fabrics, let your toddler "help", chat while you lovingly fold each garment. One trick I find helpful for slowing down and infusing presence is to remember when each garment was last worn as I fold it, what happened that day. (example: "oh Ceanna wore this dress to the farm on Tuesday, we built forts, she was so dirty, that was a really fun day.")

4. Related to presence is infusing a gratitude practice (example: while cooking, connect with gratitude for the food in your home and electricity to cook with)

5. I like to think of other women, and even my female ancestors doing this work all together to remove the sense of loneliness. This one in particular feels helpful on late nights up rocking my baby, it may feel lonely, but we are never alone.

6. When all else fails, and the day is just grumpy-filled, take your kiddos outside, sit on the earth, go for a walk; nature is so calming for everyone.

Finally, remember that although household chores may seem insignificant, putting everything together ultimately creates a home—an environment that fosters connections, epigenetic changes, brain-building proteins, and stable nervous systems, all of which contribute to strong, emotionally intelligent humans.

This work holds immense significance, and I am profoundly grateful for the opportunity to invest my time in making it meaningful. This life is exactly where I’m meant to be, even if I didn’t always know it was what I wanted. I am not flawless, and it is not always easy to maintain a positive outlook. I can feel touched out, overwhelmed, and exhausted at times. However, I have come to realize that the way I show up truly makes a difference in my day. And I can see how it lifts my children’s energy as well.