Mom Guilt - It's an epidemic

It’s 8 am on a Wednesday morning and I am writing this on a plane to Dallas.  This trip marks my sixth (seventh?) in three months.  Luckily, JetBlue has internet access because as I was taking off I was furiously texting Steve instructions for the day (this one needs to go to the walker line – make sure to write a note, this one has a doctor appointment, no walking Wednesday, blah blah blah).  I was also talking to the woman next to me (CFO for Dunkin Donuts, so basically my hero) about some struggles our 9 and 10 year old daughters are having and how hard it is to leave them behind knowing this.  All around I am feeling pretty awful about leaving again.  You see, I have this condition that causes me to always feel like I am never doing enough for my children and too much for myself.  Some of you might have it too…the medical term for it is “mom guilt”.  Sadly there is no cure for it as this time, but I know many people in the medical profession are working hard to find one.  Seriously though, mom guilt is a very real thing today and I know most of my mom friends struggle with it.  But has it always been there?  Or are we, the newest generations of moms, bringing this on ourselves?

This weekend I had a conversation with my own mother about her experiences raising my brother and me.  She was a single mom in the late 70s, 80s and 90s, working full-time and managing the best she could.  The conversation started when I told her about how awful I was feeling for yelling at Mia for yelling at Steve and me because (wait for it)…her pony tail was messed up.  We were to blame and we were going to feel her wrath.  She hated us. We never did anything right.  She was never going to listen to us ever again.  It went on and on and on.  Eventually I snapped and yelled at her for being disrespectful.  And I really yelled.  You see, I have the patience of a saint.  Until I don’t.  And in this particular instance, I did not.  But back to my mom.  I am telling my mom this and telling her how bad I felt after the fact for making Mia feel bad and for not teaching her the correct way to deal with anger…my mom just looked at me and laughed.  She really laughed.  I think she might have even snorted.  When she composed herself, she asked me why I was beating myself up about this because, in her opinion, yelling at your kids is completely normal when they act out.  I tried to explain to her that times are different and that parents are now encouraged to NOT yell at their kids in an effort to teach them by example.  Her response?  “That’s stupid!”  (For those of you that know my mom, you know that she isn’t really one to mince words and she usually says it like she sees it.)

At first, I was annoyed that my mom wasn’t empathizing with me.  But I started to think about her role raising us.  My mom sacrificed a lot for us.  She and my dad split when my brother and I were very young and she worked full time and did her to best to provide anything we needed in a time when divorce and working moms weren’t “things”.  We spent a lot of time with my very Italian grandparents who resorted to the very old school Italian way of disciplining (yelling!).  But with them we were really loved …and really well fed.  When we were with my mom, she didn’t really stress about how we were getting to activities or if we did our homework.  In fact, she never really asked.  We just kind of figured it out.  She never felt compelled to entertain us or worried if we watched too much tv.  She just aimed to keep us alive.  My mom didn’t feel bad about her parenting mistakes.  When she yelled, she yelled.  We obviously deserved it (duh!) and she easily moved on.  Apparently we did too because I don’t remember any instances of her yelling.  She was a working woman and had bigger things to worry about.  She also didn’t feel bad about spending time with girlfriends or doing things she liked (like her bowling league!).  Doesn’t this sound amazing?

Maybe my mother is unique and other moms of her generation were suffering from mom guilt just like us moms today.  But I really don’t think so.  I don’t think previous generations worried so much about making sure that their kids were well-rounded and active or that they were screwing them up by yelling at them or punishing them.  They didn’t feel bad about taking time for themselves.  But they didn’t love any differently than we do today either.  Or any less.  So, what’s happened?  How have we gotten here?  How are we so inflicted with guilt that we can’t even enjoy well-deserved time away from our kids?  The truth is that the mom guilt is absolutely fruitless.  Feeling bad isn’t going to make us better mothers and it’s definitely not going to teach our daughters how they should live their lives if they choose to have kids.  So we need to overcome it.  NOW.  I don’t have an easy answer as to how we do that (YET) but I am working hard to find a cure.  In the meantime, do your best to talk yourself (and other moms) down from it.  Tell yourself how important it is for your children to see you NOT beating yourself all the time, so they don’t do the same, AND to see you prioritizing yourself, so they do too.  If you’re not even there yet, remind yourself…If you yell at your kids, they’ll live.  The likely won’t even remember it.  If you go on a trip, work or otherwise, they’ll live. They likely will have a good time without you.  If you don’t manage to get your kids to practice on time or miss a game, they’ll live.  There are only 1,456,768 more practices and games until graduation…

Until next time…

Hashtags and Follows and Likes, Oh No...

In an attempt to get my blog up and running, I have been trying to up my social media game and it is a lot harder than I thought.  First of all, I really suck at it.  I love posting the occasional picture, but it feels so daunting to try to post everyday with something just as good as, or better than, the day before.  Second, I feel incredibly vulnerable putting myself out there day after day.  It is scary knowing that people are judging me (and maybe even unfollowing me – so harsh!) based on a series of pictures.  Nothing more.  Just pictures.  But here’s the real issue…my objective in writing my blog is to help other moms stop putting pressure on themselves to be perfect.  I really want to be authentic in what I write and post, to let others know just how messy and crazy my life as a working mom of three is.  I don’t think it should all be neat and pretty because motherhood may be rewarding but it is not glamourous.  But I'm realizing SOCIAL MEDIA IS ALL ABOUT THE IDEAL!   I'm finding it really hard to stay authentic while keeping it interesting. And, even worse, for a bit I was totally getting caught up in what other accounts looked like...

For any of you that use Instagram, you are well aware of what some of the most successful (in terms of number of followers) accounts look like.  They are absolutely beautiful.  Literally.  They look like something out of a magazine.  Especially the mom accounts.  Beautiful parents in beautiful clothes with cute kids also beautifully dressed, all smiling at the camera in beautiful places.  Honestly, kudos to these parents because I don’t even look as good on my best day as some of these women do two days post-partum.  I am not criticizing the owners of these accounts AT ALL.  In fact, I envy them and what they can do aesthetically.  But, the rest of us shouldn’t misconstrue this for real life…which is really tough.  For example, when I look at an account named “keepin’ in real mama” (honestly just made that up – might steal it someday) and see a gorgeous woman standing on a beach on an island in Greece in a white bikini, flowing caftan, with long flowing hair, and a big straw hat, holding a toddler wearing a completely impractical but adorable beach outfit in one hand and a champagne flute in the other, I can feel “less than”.  I mean, she's keepin' it real, right???  It doesn’t help when I look up from my phone to see a house in complete shambles and realize that I am wearing the same worn out running pants I had on the day before and that my scalp hurts from being in a top knot all week.  And I don’t think that I am alone in this. 

Everyone wants to be that mom on the beach in Greece with well-coiffed kids who never seem to misbehave (at least once in a while), but that isn’t real.  It may be real for five, ten, or even fifteen minutes during a photo shoot, but it’s not long term real.  These accounts should be something enjoyable to admire, but we have to remind ourselves (until it sinks in) that they should not be the ideal that we feel we have to live up to.  What you see on an Instagram page or on Facebook are someone’s selected pictures (for full timers, they usually include makeup and hair artists and are shot by a photographer); they don’t tell it all.  Even for people like me that try to be authentic in their posts, the pictures only tell you so much.  They don’t tell you about my eight year old’s anxiety attack that led to an hour of comforting minutes before I caught her on camera smiling, or the constant fighting between my nine and six-year old that subsided for five minutes for a picture, or the argument that Steve and I had because he brought home the wrong kind of pizza right before we snapped a photo together (BTW, the stupidity of husband-wife fights becomes so much more obvious when you write them down on paper).  In fact, they don’t really tell you all that much, at all.  When you see these things, you have to remind yourself that they are just a few moments in someone’s day and they can be very staged. 

Some moms are fashionable and more put together.  Some moms are amazing decorators or bakers.  Some moms are super patient and great teachers.  Some moms have killer Instagram pages.  And some moms (ME!) are great moms despite not being particularly good at any of these things.  Although it’s nice, it really isn’t important if you have beautiful pictures to post.  What really matters is that you have happy kids who know what it feels to be loved and cared for.  That is literally all that matters.  All.  That.  Matters.  If you are getting that even a little bit right, it’s time to cut yourself some slack.  We all won’t be “Instagram-worthy” or “pinterest-worthy” moms.  I’m not most of the time (I have my moments)!  In fact, I am a prime candidate for that show Nailed It (if you haven’t watched it yet, I HIGHLY recommend it).  No matter what your Instagram looks like, I encourage all of you to share your REAL stories with other moms, for your sanity and theirs.  Don’t polish it up.  Don’t make it sound like you have it all together and that your kids are angels (unless you are the unicorn of moms and they really are).  In your real life, be the real-life mom.  I think it will be the only way we all start to cut ourselves a break! 

For all of you moms who also get Instagram-envy from time to time, I get it.  Just don't let it make you feel bad about being you.  If you had the same resources and artistic vision, you could snap a pic like that too.  And if you still feel bad, just think about this keepin' it real mama.  My real-life moment is me sitting on a beach in New Hampshire, surrounded by cheap beach toys, wearing a mom-suit and shorts, drinking a juice box, and looking at my kids in their Old Navy hand-me-down swimsuits pushing each other in the water.  Nailed It! 

Until next time…