The world is a very fake place. All day every day we are bombarded by perfection. Perfect parenting, the perfect home, the perfect crafts, "I had the prefect day with me perfect child!" the perfect pile of shit that makes me feel totally inadequate as a human being.
Today I got together with the amazing Sarah Joseph. She is currently hosting a 6 week long facilitate conversations that revolve around motherhood and the struggles we face. It was nervous at first, sharing my chaos with women I didn't know. They will surly judge me by my tattoos, messy hair, and cavalier attitude towards cleanliness. I am the first to admit, I struggle as a parent. Todays talk was about self care. I am sure you are rolling your eyes already. We all know that we should be taking time for self care, but we don't, for a million different reasons. Its a mystery. I have to say that after our ninety minute talk, I walked away feeling so great. It was amazing to listen to other moms worry about the same things as me. It was so great to know that I wasn't the only one doesn't always want to play with their kids! It was just awesome. We all talked about sacrificing a clean house for motherhood and we all had similar stories. So today I actually gave myself permission to be ok with being messy. That's just me right now, and I have better things to do and stress about. I picked up the boys after school and told them they didn't have to put laundry away anymore. I bought them each two laundry baskets. One for dirty one for clean. I also bought myself two other laundry baskets. I'm taking out all of the dressers with tiny little drawers that I spend hours organizing and putting things away. From now on my closet will be filled with laundry baskets. "Dirty" and "Clean". I feel so liberated. There are no rules that say I have to be a perfectly organized mom to be a good mom. And now that I know that non of us think we are really winning. I can rest assured that I'm not the only messed up, cranky, overworked, underpaid mom.
If you have the means to attend Sarah's workshops, I highly recommend that you do. Or at the very least, lets start talking for real. Share your struggles, be brave, be real. Motherhood is hard. Lets not make it harder.
Ahhh.. What a refreshing message. Thank you.
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