The monthly kozēkozē Supermama Support Circle—co-hosted by founder Garrett Kusmierz and health coach and prenatal/postpartum certified movement specialist, Lauren Mages—is a place to come to chat and show up authentically in whatever you’re going through—sleepless nights, big frustrations in your marriage, or wondering how to go back to work after having a baby.

Last month, our topic was family expansion and fertility. So many people in the community are going through fertility challenges, and there was also discussion around how you know what you want and how you know if you want a second, a third—or if you just want one.

The answer was really about “being in the question” and allowing ourselves to “be in the question”—and part of that includes looking at our values.

We are always living our values. How we spend our time makes us who we are.

Yet, when we enter motherhood, a large chunk of our time must now be directed at keeping a tiny human alive.

So, how can you reconfigure your values in order to reconnect to yourself after baby?

I am a huge fan of values work. I was introduced to values work through Alexandra Joy Smith, who was my spiritual mentor for many years—and she introduced me to Dr. John Demartini, who wrote the books “Inspired Destiny” and “The Values Factor.”

The notion is that we are always living our values. You can say that you have values like honesty, integrity, and trust—which are great—but he looks at values as things we’re actually doing.

For example, my husband and I work out every single day. So, it’s very safe to say that fitness and wellness is a value of ours. We could take that 20 minutes or an hour that we’re spending each and every day and do something completely different—like sleep more, watch the news with a coffee, go on a walk holding hands, or hike in the wilderness. Those are precious moments of our day that we are doing exercise very consistently.

If you are someone that is meeting up with friends at least once a week, then being social is definitely a value for you.

The reason motherhood gets really rocky in the beginning—especially as a first-time mom—is because we don’t get to live the values we’ve spent our whole lives cultivating.

For me, my pre-baby list was—

• Fitness, Wellness, and Beauty
• Partnership (My husband)
• Career
• Being Social
• Spiritual Development/Personal Growth

Part of spiritual development and personal growth for me was getting up early to journal before I even opened my laptop or social media.

I thought motherhood would be so easy because I was already really good at waking up early, so I would have no problem waking up early before my kid to take the time to journal by myself.

For the most part now—at two years, ten months postpartum—that is true. I do that, and it’s a very big part of my life.

But, when I was nursing all night and then waking up at 4am to do a feed, you better believe I wasn’t waking up extra early at 5:45am to have that time to myself. I was sleeping as long as I could after that 4am feed until Decklen screamed, and then I would wake up around 7 or 7:30am or sometimes, if we were lucky, 8am. I would wake up and immediately be nursing, and Jeff would bring me my coffee.

It was so hard because I wasn’t able to live my value of journaling, so it had to start looking a little different—like squeezing in a spiritual podcast in the shower. Or, sometimes, I’d put AirPods in when he was sleeping in the stroller on a walk. Or, I would carve out some time when he was napping to listen to a spiritual podcast or take a minute with my journal. I definitely journaled the least when I had Decklen as a postpartum mom.

The other thing that shifted for me—which I think it did for a lot of us during the pandemic—was being social. I moved to New Hampshire and, yes, I was comfortable because Jeff had a cabin here for about three years before we made the move before the pandemic hit, but I didn’t know anyone or have a really lively social circle. Then, I was a new mom. So, not only was I a new mom not really knowing how to leave the house very well anyway, but where do I go and where do I meet friends or where do people hang out?

So, my value of being social was very strained.

I know the pandemic turned all of our values on their heads and really made us reconsider them, but so does postpartum in general.

We reconsider what we really want to spend that precious time on because we will always spend our time doing what we value.

Motherhood teaches us what values are really strong for us because where there’s a will, there’s a way.

You think of people who take their babies all around the world because travel is one of their highest values.

For me, travel is definitely one of my values. It’s always been there and has been tied to self-growth and -development because I always learn something about myself when I travel. But when being social fell off the face of my personal universe during the pandemic, I still traveled. Decklen took over 30 flights before he was one.

Part of reconfiguring what our values are as we shift into motherhood is “being in the question” and being in the pause—not rushing to anything.

How do we allow ourselves to not know?

It’s a very common spiritual lesson, but not knowing is actually knowing.

Knowing that you don’t know is an aspect of knowing—a spiritual knowing, an intuitive knowing, about something greater.

When we’re in new, early-stage motherhood and reconfiguring our values, we get to be in that pause.

Maybe you’re still finding your values with a two-year-old, but giving yourself a moment to let yourself not know is how you start knowing.

One of my friends isn’t sure if she wants to have another child, so she has chosen to just sit in it and not know. Going through my own secondary infertility journey has created a massive pause in my life, and I look at her and see so much wisdom in her pause.

I was just doing what I was conditioned to do because, from age zero to seven, I saw my mom have three kids under three and a half years. So, my subconscious was just wired to think that’s what we do. I didn’t think about it consciously.

Now that I’m in a pause, I’m grateful that it’s allowed me to reflect on so many other aspects of what motherhood means to me, why and how I value it, and what my values are in motherhood. I’m much more scaffolded as a mom, meaning really embodied, before having another.

It’s always happening for us.

Think about how many places in your life that you don’t have answers in right now.

Building in the pause—or the void—is where the magic happens, because it allows us to let go of expectations, all of our preconceived notions, logical minds and thoughts, and it allows our ego to be completely surrendered to the highest and best potential.

But when we’re gripping, we’ve relegated ourselves to just those options.

Destruction. The Void. Creation. Sustaining.

I pretty much come back to this process every time, but it’s true.

We can look at this long-term, but we can also look at it daily.

But, let’s interchange the word “void” with “magic”—because the void of not knowing is where the universe has space to work its magic.

Motherhood shakes us up because it’s very hard to understand what our values are when, out of nowhere, the time that was 100 percent ours goes toward a little tiny human being that needs us to thrive.

So, now we only have a little bit of time in the day to spend on ourselves. If you’re a postpartum mom, then you know that pretty much goes to eating, peeing, and showering—not even make-up or brushing your teeth!

It feels very stripping to the ego, because the ego likes to feel safe—and what makes us feel safe are the things around us that are known.

The question I get a lot is “Does motherhood have to be a value?”

On some level, a lot of us who consciously choose to have children choose to add motherhood onto the list of our values and, when kids are little, they need so much from us that it does have to be a top five.

The top five are what make us feel the most “us.” So, not doing those makes us feel like we’re losing ourselves.

Because I was putting motherhood first—especially because I was breastfeeding, so logistically and biologically, it had to be—everything else in my life was shaken up. Even my marriage.

So, as I started to pick up the pieces coming out of it, I realized that motherhood is still a top five—even coming in front of career.

What’s hard about that is that now career and partnership end up duking it out—which I’m not happy to admit—but is the reality right now because kozēkozē is like a second baby that needs a lot from me.

I guess if I were to leave you with some parting wisdom, support, or help, it’s to just keep track each day, each week, or each month you move through early motherhood of where you are looking forward to spending your time.

How we spend our time is a value and, once we become a mom, we will be spending time caring for little humans. The time invested daily becomes less and less as they get older. So, your time investment then doesn’t mean you don’t philosophically value it, it just means that you’re not living it at as high of an index, day-to-day, moment-to-moment.

If you’re pregnant, write down your values now—where you’re spending your time.

When you become a new mom, especially in those first few weeks, knowing that you have a little human to take care of, it will be interesting to see which ones you miss the most and yearn for—and there becomes the reconfiguration of your values.

We only have so much time in a day, so it helps to categorize what we really want to be spending our time on—just like we would do with money.

Time and money are energy. Where are we putting our energy? Where are we putting our time?

But, just remember—it is so magical, so potent, to be in the void, to be in the question, and to allow yourself to know that you don’t know yet.

The not knowing will give you a more magical breakthrough of knowing when it’s time to come through.

Have less attachment to knowing and more openness to magic and not knowing.

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This blog post was written based on kozēkozē Podcast Episode 348: Values in Motherhood.

If you’d like to listen to the solocast first-hand, tune in here.

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Email garrettkusmierz@kozekoze.com if you’d like to join our next Supermama Support Circle.