C.Jane, a blogger that I read from time to time, recently posed the question via her Twitter about the life of a Stay at Home Mother (SAHM) and if what we see on blogs, Pintrest, Instagram, Facebook, etc. is a true representation of the ‘career choice.’ First, I’ve never looked at choosing to be home right now as a career choice, but I realized that I do consider raising the girls a ‘job’. So, I guess right now my career is being at home.
I never knew that I wanted to stay home and be a mother until I had Maggie, and in the last 3.5 years, I have learned more about myself, my marriage, my friends, my life-choices, how I spend/value my time than I had in my previous 30 years. Adding a second, totally awesome, baby into the mix has brought me back to the basics of why I’m choosing to be home right now. Since Audrey was born, nearly 9 months ago, time has flown by at supersonic speeed. She’s about two-shakes away from crawling and just a couple days ago she started to wave. She’s been clapping for a couple weeks now. It’s the sweetest thing, especially when she busts out a wave and then claps for herself, as if she’s congratulating herself on the wave. These moments are why I feel lucky to be home. It isn’t about my latest craft project or how clean my house is, it’s about being a mom and being present.
But I digress, when I saw the series of tweets come through my feed, I had an immediate reaction of ‘Of course not!’ and then I realized that I’m guilty of writing/posting about the happy/easy/joy-filled times more than the ‘what the hell has happened to my life’ times.
I would never say that this mothering job is easy. Without a doubting bone in my body, it is the hardest, most challenging job I’ve ever had. It has brought me worry, dread, tears, and made those same non-doubting bones….bone tired. But it is also the most rewarding, thrilling, nerve-wrecking, humbling, and honest job I have ever had. Most importantly, it is also the job where I have experienced the most love (and I know this because as a first grade teacher, I got a whole ton of love from my students!).
I hardly ever want to share a picture of my messy house, crying kids or frazzled look. I’d much rather share a picture of us doing life in a way that is worth remembering. We’ve all got dirty laundry (and dishes) and nobody is ever going to forget that. The people that inspire me, other mothers, friends, writers, photographers, my family, are the ones that know how to say ‘ My God, this is hard, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.’
Does the image of the stay at home mother need to be correctly reflected by what we see in social media? At first I thought that we, the mothers staying home, need to be more real and share what it’s like, being in these trenches. But then, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that we do share and anybody that makes claims about the day-to-day life of raising children being easy, well, I’d like to know what their secret is.