Walking in the Working Mom's Shoes

This is a guest post by my sister, Kelly Lingle, mom to my four year old niece Addison and two year old nephew, Paxton. She's a working mom as a hospital social worker. My sister is one of the hardest working mommas I know. She puts in 40 plus hours a week as a lead social worker and works frequent weekends on call after her 40 hour work week. I've always called her superwoman with her immaculate clean house, what always seems like caught up laundry (guess not always), the recognition and praise she gets from the great job she does as a social worker, and the wonderful and dedicated mom that she is to my niece and nephew. She married her high school sweetheart, and they really are the perfect opposites. Just as my perfect opposite knows if you think to question what all I do as a working mom you maybe bit off a little more than you can chew. Just as I tend to fire back with sarcasm, you'll see we share that same gene.

 

We have all experienced that day from hell where we all we want to do when we get home is put on our biggest pair of sweats pants, drink something very strong and eat a whole gallon of ice cream.

 

My day from hell consist of that crazy patient- delirious out of her mind screaming “may Jesus strike you down.” (I will be on the look out for random lighting strikes on the way home.) , sitting on a bench in a patient’s hospital room to speak with the patient and family only to learn after the fact that the exact spot I just sat was recently pissed on twice by that crazy delirious patient’s spouse who apparently is now incontinent-who knew?  So I can now include burn my clothes to the list of things I MUST do when I get home.

 

However, when I finally make it home an hour and a half late- the sweats pants are not clean (because nobody has done laundry for a week). Kool-Aid is as strong as it gets in this house, and I must have finished all the ice cream last night; therefore, the day from hell continues.

 

Now that work is over and I made it home for day- let the real work begin: it’s time to cook dinner, clean up dinner, give baths, maybe do some laundry so I can wear those sweat pants tomorrow night, story time and finally bedtime.

 

Finally after all the chores are done, the kids are in bed (and the hubs too), it’s time for me to have some time to myself, but at this point I am so exhausted I use my shower as my me-time and fall exhausted into to bed. Always the last to fall asleep and the first to get up-doesn’t seem fair does it? But I do it- day in and day out- be that full- time working mommy who bust her butt at work and home so she can get home and take care of her family and her home.

 

Walking in these working mom shoes is hard. My husband likes to remind me how he's supposedly more tired because he works harder because it's more "physical" work. However, as much as we love our husbands and as much as they may help one day in our shoes and they would end up under the desk in the fetal position sucking their thumbs. You may sweat more than me at work because the job is more "physical" but these shoes I walk in are made of steel. You have to be pretty tough to walk in the shoes of the working momma. We can take a lot and get right back up and do it again tomorrow. Never underestimate how hard a woman works.


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