All day I’m busy.
I do not stop from the moment my eyes are open.
Mental load
I’m constantly teaching, watching for negatives, alert for danger, setting an example, worrying about my children, my husband, my home and trying to be present whilst also micro-managing every aspect of my life and multi -tasking the entire day to fit in my own needs.
Physical load
On top of the mental load, there is also the very real physical load mother’s carry.
Hundreds of cups of tea, never ending meals and snacks and not to mention the cleaning… I am always cleaning something.
Who cares?
And do you know who notices ?
No one!
Do you know who cares?
No one?
Do you know who praises me? Who says Thank you ?
Yes, you guessed it …
No one!
Not alone
But
I am not alone in this. I am joined by every other woman who has a home and family.
Every new mom hoping their child’s green poo is normal and every grandmother who still worries if she should have let little Billy cry it out or if her child’s inabity to stay in a stable relationship at 35 is her doing!
Yes, as moms we carry the unspoken mental and physical load of raising our families, working, looking after our home, being a partner, a good friend and still trying to remember who we are.
And more often than not we cry into showers and worry late into the night if we are doing it right …
Are we being good moms?
Judgmental motherhood
Surprisingly,
Although we know we are not alone in our overwhelmed and busy mom/wife life.
Although we wished someone knew how we felt and saw all we did….we loudly and competitively judge the mom next door.
We judge her for her parental differences.
We judge her for her beliefs, her cultural differences and the choices she makes believing they are the best for her family as she cries in the shower hoping she is doing this mom thing right.
We judge Mary for not breastfeeding and Sally from church for still co-sleeping.
We look at Jill disapprovingly, whispering how her child was expelled and to the lady in the bus we shake our head whilst her toddler screams through it’s 5th temper tantrum of the morning and we tsk! under our breath judging them for being bad parents.
Change of mindset
How strange our behaviour!
We long for approval, support and acknowledgement and yet, as moms …as women …we are the first to criticize and judge another mother who only wants the same as us.
A mom with the same worries, the same fears and the same tired black marks under he eyes as she tie up her unwashed hair into a mom bun.
This seems illogical and totally counter productive.
What if instead of judging and running down mothers we reached into the pockets of our empathy and became their greatest supporters?
What if we changed our mindset to see ourselves in that new mom, to identify our children in the toddler throwing yet another tantrum, to support the mom walking a hard journey the way we would want to be supported.
What if we stopped judging and started praising?
What if we looked at every fellow mother and told her what a great mother she really is.
