Throwing Mommy Out with the Bathwater
What is this angst, this trouble that myself and so many of my friends seem to be having with motherhood? Has it been just this way all generations of mothers? Or is there something unique about us?
We were born into a culture exploding with new opportunities for women like no other time in history (thanks to our amazing mothers and grandmothers), and waltzed into our twenties with the world at our feet and birth control pills in our front pocket. We graduated from college with a big shiny ring on our finger, and a stack of carefully-written resumes in the mail. (Or we felt bad if we didn’t.)
We had finished college. We had survived finals, while in the honors program, working part-time, and coping with relationship meltdown. How much harder could it get? Maybe we even had a Master’s Degree. Thank God our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers had done the whole “Women’s Lib” thing, because now we were finally poised to do everything we always wanted to do.
We were going to change the world (as though women and mothers hadn’t been doing that since the dawn of time already.) We were going to burst like a star rookie into our profession. We’d have babies if and when we decided we were ready.
We figured we’d be content and rested while enjoying a rewarding full-time career, taking the girls to soccer and ballet, reading novels, going to church on Sundays and Wednesdays (and teaching at both), volunteering for local and national causes, baking fresh cookies with protein added, helping kids with homework, growing our own organic vegetables, getting up early for prayer and devotion, having romantic dates with our partners, knitting, rushing to help our friends whenever they had a crisis, and training for half-marathons.
What a shock to discover that just being a mom, something barely on our list, was the hardest thing we’d ever do?
That being exhausted after two weeks of cramming for finals didn’t scratch the surface of the exhaustion of mothering babies? That dealing with toddlers was so much harder than dealing with the assholes at work? That Thanksgiving, Winter, Spring, and Summer Break just means that things get harder? That just because women can do anything doesn’t mean that one woman can do everything all at once.
Somewhere along the empowered way, had we accidentally thrown the idea of Mommy out with the bathwater?
And we are devastated.
Silly as it may sound, we are flabbergasted.
We are thrown into a pit of angst and identity crisis.
I know it almost sounds like a joke when I say it this way,
but it’s not funny and I know doesn’t feel like a f***ing joke.
And to make life feel even more complicated, this is while genuinely loving, cherishing, and taking joy in the miracle that is our children. We suddenly remember reading (or at least starting) The Tale of Two Cities by Dickens in some high school English class, and the meaning of “the best of times, the worst of times” suddenly snaps into place.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think so… talk to me.
Wow..you definitely have a great way of describing things…soo true! I can totally relate to so many of your points!! I have a master’s degree and here I am being a stay-at-home mommy..never thought that would happen! Not in a million years!
Some days, it is the greatest gift in the world to be able to stay home with him and others it is the most frustrating and I wish I could do anything else (at least these aren’t as frequent as they were).
Anyway, thanks again for sharing your wisdom with everyone and also making us feel better for not being the only ones who feel this way! It helps me more than you know!
Love you, Naomi!!
Yes! Amen! You describe exactly what I’ve been wrestling with the last six months–Wyatt is 6 years old, and I’m just now really dealing with my identity as a mother because I’m not working much anymore. I had thought that this lay-off would give me some “time off.” Instead, I’m working hard and being confronted with the worst of myself (some days) and just plain exhausted other days. I woke up yesterday morning and said to myself, “My primary job today is to love to the kids. Everything else is less important.” I didn’t try to blog or bake, but took them all to the zoo. For me, this represents a shift in thinking that I’m still working through–thinking of mothering as a calling, as a job that I can get better at, something at the top of the list. I love when you say, “What a shock to discover that being a mom, something barely on our list, was the hardest thing we’d ever do.” That describes me perfectly. Thank you.
This is the line that really gets to me. Each of the individual tasks seems manageable; it’s that all at the same time that gets to me.
Yesterday for me:
- Get kid to Mountain Scholars on time and not looking like he crawled out of worm bin
- Get in the car with other kid who is going on a cruise and needs clothes
- Turn around after two minutes realizing that the plumber is coming
- Make crepes for teen girl who is hungry. Scramble eggs, add spinach (which she muttered about)
- Call plumber who says “I have you down for Monday”. pffft. You told me Friday. whatever.
- Get back in car. Go to bank. Go to house. Get fancy dresses and shoes.
- Find out I have medical insurance for 5 days and quickly make appt for 2:45pm.
(Side note: At this point, there is no going to class. Ain’t gonna happen.)
- Go to drug store while on the phone with friend. Giving her update on my recommendation for a position she’s applying for.
- Get to house-sitting house. Shower. Get the two work phone calls I’d been waiting for within minutes of having to be at the doctor’s office.
- Get financial aid paperwork finished. Drop off at office.
- Go to doctor. Get poked … there. Get blood drawn.
- Pick up daughter’s friends for cruise that night while sorting out son’s plans for Transformers 2.
- Get back to house with friends and do daughter’s make up.
- Take daughter and friends to cruise through rush hour traffic after seeing son for 3 minutes, on his way to Red Mill and movie.
- Taken to dinner by friend, thinking I have a couple of hours. Get call from daughter, cruise ended early.
- Rush to pick up daughter and friends; drop friends off at house.
- Get to house.
10pm. I’ve done “nothing” of importance. No homework got done. No work on new business got done (sans two phone calls). No house cleaning, no dishes.
Doubled over in pain about 11pm, I give up and fall asleep.
I love to tell people that I’m lazy, that I don’t do things like other moms. I don’t bake cookies, or volunteer at the school, or run the block watch or block party, or run the soccer team, or even work a full-time job.
Just getting through the day seems hard enough. How the hell am I supposed to work too?
Sidenote: While my legs were in stirrups the doc asked if I had a partner or if I was doing it on my own. After hearing I was single, she said “That’s rough”. No shit Sherlock.
pds, sarah, sharlene: I know that the three of you came from very different places and homes growing up. And yet here we all are. Checking back in to see your three replies at once is very touching for me. As you may guess, I’ve been pondering this one for a long time, working up to it if you will. Thanks so much for sharing in this with me. I do think (and really hope)that somehow acknowledging this truth together will help make us all happier, healthier women and mothers.
But how do we undo all of the years of “you must do it all”? How do we stop feeling like failures? And when do we actually get to admit that we did fail?
Wow. Yes. Wow. I laughed and cried through this whole post.
The thing is we really did think we could have it all. You phrased it better than I’ve ever seen.
We were told we could do it all.
And the sad part is that we still can’t shake the feeling that we really should. My daughter is only one year old and I’m already trying to figure out how to raise her without the same “set-up”.
naomi, thank you for articulating what many of us (most of us?)feel. you so eloquently portray the conflicting, rewarding, debilitating, invigorating role of motherhood. you saying it like this is very validating.
Oh pds, I just don’t know. It does feel to me that my post should end with a big — “therefore, here’s what we should do” kind of thing.
I hope if we start describing it and talking about it, we can help support each other and get some perspective.
(I’m squeezing this reply in while holding Roo in my lap, watching Little Einsteins, and hoping Roo stays distracted enough with Rocket to keep from banging on my keyboard for a few minutes.)
HEY Naomi!
Great to read your post… I have missed our conversations. Anyway… in answer to your musings about motherhood… Yes… being a mother is the hardest thing I have ever done and I only have one child so far. Of course I had him while my husband was fighting terrorists in Iraq, and I have raised him while my dear husband was ousting insurgents in Afghanistan…or was it insurgents in Irag, and terrorists in Afghanistan… its so hard to keep these things straight. Either way, being a mom with or without a husband around to help out a bit is just plain hard. I do wonder if I will ever get to pursue those intrinsically satisfying dreams and aspirations that once were my whole identity. Now it seems… I’m just a mom, and long suffering military spouse and not a whole lot of anything else. I have definately been feeling the oncoming of a mid-life crisis, but I try to keep myself focused by the knowledge that although being a mother is hard, and being a wife is hard, not being a mother and not being a wife would be unbearable at this point in my life. Maybe someday I will get back to art, or writing, or my music, but in the meantime I am going back to school to become an elementary school teacher, where I will be something of a surrogate parent to many children. I guess at the end of the day, being a parent, is just what I want to be most. Anything else besides parenthood is kind of just frosting on the cake… although I could do without the hemroids… next time I think we are going to adopt… or at least opt for the epidural… maybe even a c-section.
Tana Davis
I agree with the statement it is the worst and best of times. I chose this path and sometimes I dont think I really understood what all I was choosing. I feel now that I was not as mature and prepared as I thought and I also didnt think I would end up parenting two children with special needs by myself, while having a disability and about to go into menopause, I say none of that to gain anyone’s pity but just sometimes I wonder if I knew all that was ahead would I have made that choice and thankfully I didnt because as hard as it has been it has been the most rewarding part of my life and I cant fathom what my life would have been otherwise even if it may seem to possibly have been easier. Now being at the end of it as far as the raising part and somewhat the most difficult really being the mom of two teens and almost 50, I find myself longing for those younger years…lol…sounds nuts but true. I miss them and I know I will miss these days some day also. I enjoy reading your thoughts and it takes me back a few years and lets me relive some of those same thoughts and feelings and joys and pain. Again I have to say my life is truly been beauty from ashes.
I love this post and all the comments. So very true. One of these days maybe we’ll feel liberated by just being ourselves.
Hello Naomi–we are fellow readers of inpraiseof and I was touched by your comment today about your boys eating and seeing food as life. So here I am on your blog and I read your post on mothering. So much of what you wrote rings true to me as well. I think it rings true to most mothers if we’re honest with ourselves. When you wrote about finals not comparing at all with the trials of mothering, or that being a mom is the hardest thing I’ll ever do–YES YES YES times infinity. I don’t always feel like I’m doing a good job. There are days I feel like I should just leave, because I feel like my kids would be better off without me. It’s this constant juggling act and so many of my balls are falling. But it helps me to not focus on the balls that fell, but keep going with the ones I am juggling and slowly incorporate the fallen ones back in. Or there are times when I need to let those metaphorical balls just lay there because they’re screwing with me. I definitely know I can offer grace to people much more quickly than I can receive it, which is a must as a mother. It’s the thing that gets me through the hour. Thanks for your raw honesty.
kamille
Kamille, thank you so much for coming over from Sarah’s blog to vist! It’s wonderful to hear the thoughts and stories of other moms. I think it’s going to help me a lot and I hope we can all manage to help each other along a little better this way. YES, there’s this crazy idea of being more compassionate with ourselves. Those balls are screwing with us. I agree, that’s what it feels like, but I’d like to figure out a way to transform that feeling into something more positive and helpful. Like… weaving or building or something. At the end of a day juggling balls, all we have left are the balls. But at the end of a day of building, we can see what we’ve done. Okay… I think I’ll be pondering this and hopefully it will come out as a blog post sometime soon…
I just returned to work after my 12-week maternity leave … never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that working an 8 hour day would be exponentially easier, and less rewarding, than staying home with my infant son. I would much rather be at home with him if I could, but - coming to work feels like a BREAK! The irony makes me giggle every time I think of it.