In the March issue of Women’s Health, Grammy award winner and The Voice host, Christina Aguilera, opened up about her family life. Aguilera and her fiancé Matthew Rutler have two children together—Max, age 8, and Summer, 17 months.
Aguilera, as bold as ever, openly discussed the pressures of motherhood and the expectations it puts on you as a woman.
“Mothers are constantly expected to be the nurturers, the givers, the providers of a comfortable home. We’re expected to be pregnant, have the kids, breastfeed once we have the babies. And we’re expected to look amazing after baby, right? Keep our husbands and boyfriends interested—because we’re supposed to get back to sexy and keep things exciting in the bedroom. There’s such a long list.”
“Having children is the ultimate joy, and I love my kids, but women have to find time to nurture themselves. If someone has a baby, the first thing I’m like is, ‘OK, are you taking care of you?’”
Sometimes we forget that we are our own person, away from our roles as parents and all of our daily responsibilities. Aguilera mentioned a few ways that she likes to spend her free time, to boost her confidence and keep herself stress-free:
Time at the spa: “On my days off, if I can plan some quality spa time, that is like my heaven. A spa vacation that literally is not just a spa day, with a massage and maybe a bath, but a spa ‘experience’ is the ultimate. It’s everything.”
Yoga on the daily: “It takes time, I think, to build confidence and to grow into feeling comfortable in your own skin. It is what you feel inside and how you can exude it and how you own it, sometimes in front of a camera. It’s difficult on days when you don’t feel it, but it is things like yoga that has helped me to know how to center myself and how to bring myself into that place of awareness and just being able to breathe into my own body. My whole life, I feel like I’ve lived many years growing up in this business, from 7-years-old on, and very much a fight-or-flight mode and its things like yoga that brings you outside of that chaotic moment and then draws you inside to connect with what really is meaningful to you and sort of your inner light which then connects with your confidence.”
Positive self-talk: “I would say to any woman: ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself!’ If you’re not feeling confident on a certain day, you have to let that go, and own, ‘Yeah, I’m not feeling confident today,’ and you move on and try to enjoy the best you can. I’m not into deprivation; I’m not into suffering into getting a great body or the body that you want. I’m into enjoying life, being conscious and aware, but also breathing into yourself and owning what you got.”
It gets busy so, I soak in the tub at day’s end when I can as I also clean it before I leave. I’m glad I found exercises I can do regularly and on off days that are easy to follow.