Isn’t motherhood messy? As a blogger, I have had my moments to vent about my exhaustion after a long day of cleaning up poopy underwear (yea, I didn’t say diapers. no one ever told me about the horrors of potty training). I was aghast at moments during my experience breastfeeding. Could nipples actually get so raw you need cream for them? Would I really spend hours in bathroom stalls hiding my boobs from strangers who just didn’t understand why my baby could possibly need milk while we were in public?
Then the moment hit me when my daughter was almost three. She had had a terrible virus, stopped eating, then decided to stop sleeping. After a collective amount of three hours of sleep three nights in a row I looked down at her and actually thought, “WHAT DID I GET MYSELF INTO? This is my life?!”. I wondered what my friends without babies were doing and imagined them watching a television show, drinking a glass of wine in peace, and then getting eight hours of solid sleep. I broke down crying that night.
Maybe today you feel like you want to quit, or you wonder how you will get through another day without sleep. Maybe you feel like you aren’t doing a great job as a mom. Maybe your house is a mess and you don’t know exactly what you did all day. Maybe your brain is all scattered, you don’t have many friends anymore, or you don’t remember the last time you went on a date with your spouse.
Being a mom is hard.
There is endless amounts of work to do, laundry to be done, meals to prepare, diapers to change, toys to put away, and goodnight books to read. It can feel endless, insignificant even.
The work may feel insignificant, but it is extremely significant. Yes, perhaps no one will ever thank us for cutting the grapes in half or finding the pacifier under the sofa, but there is one set of eyes ever upon us.
Our children. Every small act communicates something priceless: “You are worth it.I love you.”
Being a mom is magnificent. It allows us to walk the talk of love. Our affection for our children have less limitations than we could have ever imagined. We willingly wipe the snot from our kids’ nose with our shirt sleeve if we have no tissue, read “just one more book” through weary eyes, and wince with compassion when they throw up, again, on us.
The most encouraging thing we can do as mothers is to remind one another of the importance of our job, whether we work at home or in an office. All mothers get tired, feel burdened, have hard days, or feel discouraged.
Life is not barrier free, hurdle free, or fence free. In fact, there are walls and barriers all around us as mothers. What we must cling to is hope. Love never fails the people in our lives. My daughter does not want a perfect mom, a skinnier or prettier mom, or a more fun mom. She wants me. She wants to snuggle up in our little corner of the bed and press her body into mine and ask me, “Mom, am I your sunshine?”
She longs to hear: “Yes.”
Here is my challenge for you: Today, call one friend you have and tell her she is an amazing mom. Tell her what you admire about her, how important she is to her family, and why you are thankful for her. We grow up trying to get good grades, have to sit in job reviews, and have a credit score. Yet how often are we admonished for being a mother. You will make her day, or maybe her year.
Thank you, Tiffany. It can be difficult to remember how important your job is in the midst of cleaning up messes or arguing with the little “angel” that’s supposed to see reason, but it’s all part of the beautiful process of guiding a new mind through the mess of life. When you let go of perfection, you see the beauty of the chaos. It’s really not a matter of being perfect. It’s a matter of being an anchor that they know they can always come back to.