This last month has really been a great one for me because I’ve had a chance to connect with lots of friends that I haven’t seen in a long time. Most of my friends are now mothers and so we spend a fair share of time exchanging stories about life as mothers. I’ve started to notice a trend, and not just with my friends, of apologizing for the type of mothering that we’re all doing. Nobody is doing it the same as the next person, but we all feel so damn guilty about what we’re doing and the choices we’ve made. We’re explaining away our own ideas/ideals and intuition and it is exhausting to feel any sense of judgement from anybody.
Yet, we all pass judgement on one another. Can we stop doing that? And can we do away with the phrases, “she’s just a mom” and “she never worked” because it is simply insulting to the women that grew up to do the full-time, forever work of mothering. I love and admire those women….I say this because I feel myself apologizing/explaining to people when I meet them, that I’m a teacher on leave to be at home to raise my girls. It’s because I’ve heard so many times that my current job, of being a mama to my two little sugar pies, isn’t enough for the rest of society. I’m supposed to want to rush out the door early in the morning leaving my girls in the care of somebody else to go work.
But I don’t want that for me, my girls, or even Barry right now. Being home is where I want to be and I’m lucky enough that I get to be here. Lots of days are hard, tiring and I wish that I could curl up into a ball on the floor and sip wine sometimes, but most of the time I’m doing an internal high-five that this is my life right now. I’ve got a friend that I saw recently and she is a mother….and she embraces that role to her core. Why can’t I be like that? Because I do love it without shame.
I’m not just a mother, I have other interests and hobbies, but this season of my life is mostly about being a mom. I’m tired of apologizing for it because I’m so proud, so happy, so pleased to be just a mom. And yes, it is the very best, most rewarding work that I will ever do.
