The Myth about Supermom

There's countless articles out there about supermom and about motherhood being enough, which at times is presented as the attack against supermom. I recently read a piece that shot down the supermom mentality and cried out for motherhood to be enough for today's woman. It's articles like these that leave us questioning our own vision of motherhood and happiness, and it leaves women like myself feeling like we have to defend ourselves for wanting more than motherhood. It's a quiet accusation that wanting more makes us bad mothers.

One of the things I did agree with though is supermom is a myth. She's not superhuman. She puts her pants on the same way as everyone else. She makes mistakes, she faces insecurities and doubts, she loves her kids to the moon and back but they still drive her crazy too. She has her good days; she has her bad days. Some days she feels like she has it all together, and other days she feels like it's a circus show of disaster after disaster. There are things she excels at but there are things she struggles with too.

So no, there is no supermom, but there are moms that are ambitious, that love a challenge, that thrive in setting and accomplishing goals. She maybe doesn't want to be taken care of but wants to be in charge. She knows what she wants and she's not content with just sitting back. Multiple things besides her children give her purpose.

I don't think there's anything wrong with this; it doesn't mean she loves her children any less than the mom that is content with motherhood being enough (just as there is nothing wrong with the mother that is content with motherhood being enough). We need to accept that different things make people feel fulfilled; it doesn't necessarily make them any less of a person. It doesn't mean you're better than them or they are better than you.

We're all mothers; we are all women. We all have goals; we all have a vision. Some of ours include our careers, our personal health and fitness, our homes and crafts, or whatever gives us passion and a purpose beyond our own children. No matter the difference the thing that all mothers, regardless of their ambitions, share is her love for her children  When we start attacking each other's choices and lifestyles the reason I think women get so defensive is because the quiet accusation is that we don't love our children enough. So no matter which side of the ambitious/supposedly supermom spectrum we're on it doesn't mean that we love our children any more or less than the mom that makes us feel like we're less or more.  So let's just lose the cape and just be happy women in whatever makes us happy and fulfills us.

Mom Outlet

I was part of this interview for a working mom article through a Moms Write group that I'm a part of earlier, and one of the questions stuck with me and came back up again later when I was talking to my sister. The question was about me time or as I posed the question to my sister the " mom outlet" activity.

The mom outlet to me is my lifeline. It's nothing in the hetic pace that is the working mom life to have a week or so that feels overwhelming, but there was a point where the weeks turned in months and eventually those months turned into over a year. I'm a control freak. I can handle feeling overwhelmed for a bit of time, but months on end can throw my life way out of balance.

One of the things I came to learn was I have to have balance. At least the majority of the time. It can tilt a little off balance from time to time, but I've come to see that too long off balance isn't just destructive to myself but it's like a ticking time bomb ready to explode and create casualties to those around me as well.

Those mom outlets are part of what pulls me back, and I'm all for supporting all mom choices and walks of life but I feel ALL moms need a mom outlet, something that is theirs. I grew up watching my mom enjoy her hobby of sewing, and I still remember her a few years back telling me I needed to find a hobby.  As I told my sister work projects and cleaning is NOT a qualifying mom outlet.  She escaped the big sister lecture of finding herself something that she does just for herself by reminding me that she reads pretty much on a daily basis.

I love to read too, but unfortunately, I tend to become so obsessed with books that I ignore the whole rest of my life-work, family, the house-to read nonstop for however long it takes me to read the whole book or series. I do read but only at particular times of the year when I can indulge in my obsessive way of reading. I also have the same habit with Netflix TV shows.

However, my other mom outlets work perfectly because they give me a bit of that me time almost daily but don't consume me for hours at a time. Both writing, exercising, and working on my photo books give me that bit of daily me time but don't take up much more than a half hour each, and I vary which one I do each day (except photo books if I get on a roll)   But when I do have the time I do love myself a reading or Netflix watching bingeathon..

Believe me there was a time I thought the idea of me time was maybe selfish, and it was not a priority on my list. It is a priority on my daily schedule now though, and I truly believe it has been huge in my search for balance and contentment. That is something again I think ALL moms, no matter their choices and lifestyles need to have in their lives. So, Moms, what's your mom outlet? I always love to hear the different things people enjoy doing to decompress.


 

Live it to Love It

I know as adults we have responsibilities and obligations, and I know as adults it's our jobs to teach children to be responsible. I get that. Believe me I really do. But we also need to not take life so seriously.

I want to raise responsible, hard working kids. It is important to me but I don't think it's anymore important to me than teaching my kids to live life to love it. We're all given the chance to live life but it's our choice to love it.

We choose every day how to live our lives. As I was looking back tonight at pictures from my childhood I was struck with even though in some ways I live my life differently than my parents did for no other reason sometimes than it's a different time and we're all different people, but I realized my parents  taught me to love life. Such a simple but fundamental thing I think.

I think growing up I thought everyone lived their life the way we did. I thought everyone's parents loved each other's company like my parents, spent time with their kids playing ball or on evening walks. I thought everyone's parents spent road trips singing to Alabama as loud as they could. I thought everyone ended almost every night around the dinner table telling dirty jokes, laughing about the day, or retelling highlights from the latest game.

My parents worked hard, they had their struggles, ones I really knew little about because they chose to focus on the good more so than the bad, but they lived a life they fell in love with. On my wedding card my mom wrote, "I hope you have a life together as wonderful as ours has been."

As I made way out of their sheltered embrace I came to see the true gift my sisters and I were given in our childhood. They lead so much by example. They made us work for what we wanted; they raised three very independent, pretty responsible, successful daughters. But along with the values of work ethic and responsibility was to live life to love it. To spend time with the people you love, to do things that make your heart happy, to laugh often, to not take yourself or life too seriously.

Even though I have my rough, down  days like everyone else, I have a life I fall more in love with every day. As the years add up and I look back on my adolescent years, my college years, my young adult years, and now my parenthood and early marriage years I smile at all the wonderful memories that are a part of my life story.  It's our choice to live life to hate it or to live it to love it. My parents were my teachers that taught me to love it and hopefully I can be as great as them one day in teaching my children to live life to love it. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for teaching me how to live and love. You taught me a lot but this is probably the most important thing.


                                              My parents at a high school softball tournament

                                                   True Love still going strong 34 years later

                                                A little family friendly driveway basketball

                                                                   Dad

                                                        Mom with road trip rally cap

                                             Dad shoved her in the pond in her nice clothes

                                                    

 

The Honey Do List

"What?  You mean I'm suppose to do it the first time you ask? Here all this time I thought there was this unspoken rule that it really didn't need to be done until it was stated at least half a dozen times," I teased.

Oh, yes, I'm referring to the wonderful "honey do list". I'm a little bit of a nut if you haven't figured that out yet. I have juggled a lot probably since I was a student athlete with a part time job. Along with the juggling act has come my love for sticky notes. I could seriously kiss whoever invented those. Best invention EVER! Seriously I don't know how I would function without. No, I do not literally hand my husband a list of to do s every week or every day. I just verbally remind him what I need him to take care of. I remind him frequently. Like every day. Depending on if it's the sixth day or so maybe every hour. I'm pretty sure sometimes he stalls on purpose to just drive me crazy.

He likes to tell me he's going to give me a honey do list since I'm always verbally giving him one. Of course I inform him I give myself a to do list for pretty much every day; that I write his honey do list for me down for him. I don't need his reminder because I remind myself enough as it is. I have one at the beginning of every month then I chunk it down to what I need to get done each week. If it's a crazy stressful week it's chunked down again to what needs to be done each day. (Nut, remember?)

So the other day he wanted to me clean up our old stove so he could show it to someone that was interested in buying it. He even wrote it down on this honey do list he created for me before he left for work (he never leaves me to do list. Guess he thought he'd go for the smart ass award for the day). I of coarse couldn't resist the temptation to ignore it, be a smart ass right back,  and let him know I thought the rule of the honey do list was to see how long you could ignore it until the other person either did it or got mad.

In the end we ended up cleaning it together but  is there some unspoken rule about ignoring the honey do list for a specific amount of time before taking it seriously. Maybe I missed it in the marriage manual.

Relieved or Disappointed?

That 25 year old girl that stood at the alter with her soon to be husband imagined and wanted a future with three or four kids. The 27 year old woman that welcomed that first baby girl still envisioned that she'd experience that surreal moment of meeting her baby for the first time at least two more times. The 30 year old mother who welcomed her second baby girl did not see all that baby's firsts as her last because she still imagined the bigger family of at least three kids. But now that almost 34 year old mother of two isn't sure what she wants anymore.

In the last year we've gone through the hope of finally bringing that envisioned third baby into our family to only be faced with the disappointment of losing it. As we've moved through trying for the third time for the third baby, with each month that passes I am left with trying to figure out if the feelings I feel are feelings of disappointment or relief. I have always been a girl that knows what I want and goes after what she wants. But at 33, at a point in my life where I assume I shouldn't feel so unsure and uncertain, I am faced with realizing I don't really know what I want.

Do I feel relieved  because it's an easier than facing the disappointment? Do I feel relieved because maybe deep down another baby isn't really what I want but what I think I want because others want it for us? Do I feel relief because for another month I avoid the daily fear of worrying if it's going to happen again and that not just me but the girls and Nate are going to get their hopes up to just end up disappointed again? Do I feel relieved because I'm scared and not ready yet to take on the emotional rollercoaster that I anticipate coming with the change of another baby?

I am not a run or avoid change kind of person. Usually I look for new change the way my girls look to change their clothes multiple times in one day. But our life is in a good place with balance, with each other, with work,  with the girls getting older, with finances and the house; however, as much as I have tackled change with moving, work, adding babies, taking on new commitments I also know all too well change is a lot of work, change is a lot of stress, not just on me but on my relationships. Am I relieved because I fear my capabilities to take it all on?

Or am I disappointed? Just as my newsfeed overloaded with the births of everyone's babies around the time the first pregnancy would have been due now as I close in on the due date of the second loss pregnancy my feed seems to fill with so many third pregnancy announcements. I am happy for my friends and family so please do not doubt that but can't help feeling disappointed for myself. Why do they get to have more children and I don't? Was I really not ready? Will I ever be ready? If not, why?

Am I disappointed because I feel that I let that 25 year old girl standing at the alter or that 27 year old first time mother down? Am I disappointed because I can't be what she envisioned. Am I relieved so I don't have to be disappointed? Or am I disappointed because deep down each month I feel relieved?

Here's the thing I do know though. This is part of my journey; I don't know if I fully understand the why of it. But I believe one day I will look back and understand why it all played out the way it did. For now I just hope I can have patience and have peace in the end with whatever the final outcome is.