Adventurous Mom

Posts Tagged ‘mommy guilt’

I would be lying if I said that being a mom was what I wanted to be when I grew up. In fact it was the last thing on my mind. Our old­est son came into our life a total sur­prise when I was 24. At 18 years old, I walked out of church ser­mon when the pas­tor was insist­ing that a woman’s place was at home with her kids. No way, no how.…hell no!

It was 15 years later that I would even think about step­ping foot into a church again. Why? For my kids. Curi­ous isn’t it?

It is such an inter­est­ing evo­lu­tion that one’s life takes from being totally solo, to now fly­ing with lit­tle wing­men. I’m the mamma plane and they fol­low my every move. For the last 7 years, I have to admit, I was some­what annoyed that I couldn’t fly on my own, they were in my flight formation.

I really fought being a mother, every last ounce in me. It wasn’t that I didn’t love them, I loved them so much. What I hated is what I thought being a mom meant. I thought it meant I had to bake cook­ies, I had to be extra car­ing, I had to be atten­tive, I had to be “soft.” That wasn’t who I thought I was.

The fun­ni­est thing is that, when I decided to quit fight­ing moth­er­hood, I learned an inter­est­ing fact about myself: I don’t think I’m a typ­i­cal mom, and that’s okay–it’s really okay. And then, I found out that I really really like these lit­tle wing­men! In fact, I find that I learn more from them per­haps than they do from me for instance:

Life is Sim­ple and Not Complicated

Chil­dren do not see a rea­son to com­pli­cate life. They wake up…no…they bounce out of bed, hop-hop-hop down the hall to the kitchen table. They’re just happy to see the sun shin­ing and be awake! They don’t carry the bag­gage from yesterday’s events with them, they’re excited to see what today brings!
Rarely do they scour their closet for the per­fect out­fit, won­der­ing who they may need to impress today. Nope. They get dressed in what­ever clothes fit, and carry on about cre­at­ing fun!

Ques­tion Even the Basic Assumptions

My older son asked me one day: “Mom, why do peo­ple con­fuse their Left and Right, but they don’t con­fuse their Up and Down?” *Silence* Um…ummmm…hmmm… That’s a really good ques­tion son, I am not quite sure how to answer that. Up, down, left, right, all direc­tional, but maybe if our head was mounted in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, we wouldn’t be so con­fused about the left and right? I have no idea.

For­give­ness is Natural

Yes, we get frus­trated with our kids, and some­times irra­tionally so. We get tired, we get cranky, and then they have to screech at the top of their lungs the most annoy­ing sound in the world! Then here comes the evil mommy scream and yell.… Only to feel guilty about doing that 10 min­utes later. We go to apol­o­gize, and they eas­ily and read­ily accept the apol­ogy, it is nat­ural for them to for­give. Car­ry­ing grudges, hat­ing peo­ple and dis­dain is very for­eign to them.

There is Fun Around Every Corner

As I am writ­ing this post, my 5 year old has found my kitchen rolling pin, sit­ting on the office chair and play­ing “make the pizza” with his older brother. (Although hon­estly, I am wait­ing for one to hit the other over the head with the makeshift weapon!) Every wak­ing moment is fun and excit­ing. No won­der they love to pop out of bed! Where did we lose this fun and excite­ment as adults? Per­haps we don’t see the won­der and fun in everyday…everyday becomes a chore for us.

Since I became the Adven­tur­ous Mom, I have real­ized that I appre­ci­ate my chil­dren more than they could know. I strive to become more like them, more curi­ous, more for­giv­ing, liv­ing sim­pler, ques­tion­ing assump­tions, for­giv­ing quickly and hav­ing fun…every day!

What have your beau­ti­ful chil­dren taught you?

Yes, I dropped the ball this week. At least that’s what it felt like. I have to admit that as hard as I try to bal­ance and spin all of my plates, or to jug­gle all of my balls, I, like all, am human. Like a lot of full time work­ing moms, I have a lot of things going on at once. I have my first shift which is my work shift which is career work, my sec­ond shift or wife and mom shift, and then some­where in between I make room for self-renewal, self– care, and per­sonal devel­op­ment. All three are a pri­or­ity to me, but by-far the most del­i­cate of all my respon­si­bil­i­ties is that of being a mother. At this point I am not only respon­si­ble for myself but I have two very spe­cial lit­tle men for which I take respon­si­bil­ity. Luck­ily my lit­tle men are very resilient and for­giv­ing. This week I received word from my son’s teacher that unless his writ­ing skills improved there may be a pos­si­bil­ity he wouldn’t move onto sec­ond grade. “Ouch!” That news stung worse than a dozen wasp stings.

How could I be such a bad mother? How could I drop this frag­ile ball? How did I not see this com­ing? What other balls might I be drop­ping next? I was com­ing off of my “I’m so lucky to be alive” High.…how can this hap­pen now?

I was dis­traught to say the least. It took me sev­eral days, meet­ings with the prin­ci­pal and sched­uled meet­ings with the teacher, phone calls to my mom, dis­cus­sions with my sis­ters and hus­band, my coach, and prob­a­bly half a dozen oth­ers to real­ize that yes Virginia.…I am human. Per­haps my reac­tion was an over-reaction because of the emo­tional nature of this sit­u­a­tion. But another hard les­son learned.…I must real­ize and be okay with the pain that may come by my human fail­ures. Fail­ing is merely a judg­ment, so did I really fail? Who is my biggest judge of this, ME?

Tak­ing a step back, my hus­band and I real­ize that our First Grader WILL be mov­ing onto Sec­ond Grade next year. He is read­ing at Third Grade level and zooms through math like a lit­tle savant. He is a Cy Young award win­ning pitcher that stinks at bat­ting. He needs some bat­ting prac­tice, and he’ll even­tu­ally be mak­ing base hits and RBIs.

So, solu­tion num­ber one is get­ting my son the help he needs with writing.…EASY! Solu­tion num­ber two is learn­ing how to curb my emo­tional response when I have these big upsets. Not so easy, but do-able. In pre­vi­ous blogs, I describe the pain/pleasure con­tin­uum and how life’s dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions are used to teach us lessons. This was a big les­son for me, for two rea­sons: 1. I feel I should com­mu­ni­cate more effec­tively with my children’s teach­ers so I don’t get blind-sighted with this kind of news. 2. Antic­i­pate (but don’t expect) emo­tional upsets and learn a con­struc­tive emo­tional response to these set-backs. I don’t think that I refuse to get “mad, sad, angry, or frus­trated”, but allow myself to feel these emo­tions with­out being per­son­ally destruc­tive with these emo­tions. They’re healthy emo­tions to set us back on the right course, help us regain our bal­ance and then to become bet­ter bal­anced so we don’t get thrown off-kilter so eas­ily again.

So, yes, I am human. I do have “bad days”, I am learn­ing to keep my bad days fewer and far between. I strive to live each day enjoy­ably, with pas­sion and doing what I love. My chil­dren deserve a mom that is passionate.…teaching them this life les­son is invaluable!