The mommy wars are a real thing. But the mom war is a personal nightmare and struggle. The sanctimonious mothers of the world do their best to make themselves look better and make you feel worse. You meager mother who is making scrambled eggs for the 4th straight week because it's all you've got in you. Or you, mom who has poured cereal for dinner again. These women...there just aren't words for them, and we could all be better off if they just toned it down a fucking notch. Do you know where the real struggle is though? It's amongst our own friends. We find our tribe, it's true. But sometimes within our own tribe of mothers we find our worst enemies are also our friends.
"I live for my kids." "I never knew what my purpose in life was until I had X." "love getting to stay home with Y and be his mommy." "I am so blessed to be able to work from home and spend more time with my babies."
They mean these things. These aren't sanctimommies. These are real mommies who often appreciate and can relate to the fact that you let your 2 year old eat a stale fry off the car floor that has NEVER been cleaned. They just also happen to be biologically engineered to love being mothers; it feeds their souls. Their social media is a mixture of light hearted mom oops and how much they love being mommy. They do the real damage to a mom's fragile state of mind. The mom that is hiding in the bathroom crying, door locked, kids banging on the door and screaming, baby screaming because the dog won't move out of the hallway so the baby can have a 2 foot clearance on either side. That mom, she might get herself all calmed down and take a moment to skim Facebook before braving the tiny dictators, and that is when she will fall apart all over again. Some friend will have just posted about how amazing being a mom is and how fulfilling it is. And our bathroom hiding mom will be in tears, again. She is not as good a mom as her friend. After all, her friend has similar struggles but she still loves being a mom. Our mom is terrified to get out of bed each morning because she isn't sure she can make it through another day. I'm not talking about all the moms out there that are struggling with mental health issues. Those moms are my heros, and they too fight an uphill battle every day. I mean the moms that are struggling to come to terms with being a mom.
Being a mom does not fulfill her. She is freaking out, why did she think she would be good at this? What was she thinking? She is about to snap her kid in half if he picks on his sister again. How the hell did her kid become such a little shit!? Being a mom is the most important work we do. Raising our kids not to be douchebags is incredibly important, giving them a good moral compass. This shit is hard. And when you don't live up to your own standards, and those of your family, it's even harder. You then have only your tribe to turn to and sometimes they can't even help. You fall apart. Our poor struggling mom is doubting everything in life because she feels like the world's biggest failure as a mom.
Nobody tells her that that feeling is actually what makes her a great mom. That feeling (as long as we aren't talking about clinical depression and/or anxiety) will push her to be better. That feeling will make her review her methods and do "better". I said "better" because that word is subjective. She may already be a kickass mom who is raising the kids on her own because she's a military spouse or single parent (there really isn't much difference-long distance emotional support), but in her mind there is better. As moms, as fellow travelers on this journey, we need to remind ech other that we are good enough. We need to be willing to help each other out and take the kids off each other's plates occasionally. And when it happens that the only thing that will make it better is daddy/husband/tequila-we need to be there extra for her. We need to help her get through until that can happen. Because she is NOT weak, she IS a good mom, and she is WORTHY of support. You can't even imagine how appreciative she will be when you reach out and support her. This is like a life's debt in the mommy world. She will have your back whenever you need her.
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