At first I was wondering how these writing moms got into my head. Then I realized: we’re all essentially the same. We have similar temperaments, which means we suffer from the same mental disorder that told us we could be successful as writers taking care of small children. So our experiences, anxieties, and thoughts are very, very similar, even if our pre-kid life histories are very different.
i have taken care of a toddler and worked at home and brought in an income every day for over 17 months without, until recently, any childcare. when did this happen? how the hell do i do that?…. oh god, i might be a supermom.
if i were truly a supermom, though, wouldn’t my house be cleaner? wouldn’t i cook something every now and again? wouldn’t i do a lot more active parenting (crafts! story time! field trips!)? wouldn’t i have a whole lot less guilt about the fact that i do only what is absolutely necessary and required to get by when it comes to day-to-day living, parenting hours, volunteering at the school, and so on? wouldn’t i spend a lot more time (or any time) fine tuning and perfecting my actual “momhood”? proving my “momhood” to the world!
or am i a supermom because i even consider these things in the first place?
Then Bethany wrote:
Groceries. Dishes. Laundry. Pick up Dry Cleaning. If the baby took a nap, I wanted to finish the work project. Get to that book I needed to read. Write the review… it went on and on and on. By minute four, the tears stared. What the hell am I doing? To-Do lists on a Saturday? Pre-child these were days of sleeping in til the afternoon, cold pizza, TNT movies, and hell, nothing. Here, I was cramming more than a normal days work of work into a few hours. And that included the day job. The one I am salaried to work in 40 hours.
But I also read this gem at Freelance Parent:
Being a procrastinator doesn’t mean that your work or your mental well-being has to suffer. In fact, when done correctly, procrastination can actually work for you. (N.B.: Read the list. That’s my life, too.)
It may be true that you feel you cannot procrastinate, because you simply have too much to do. But I really think that as writing mothers, we put too much pressure on ourselves. Our mothers’ generation was told they could have it all, except that they still felt torn between the old values and the new ones, so some thought they should have been working while they stayed home, while others maybe sacrificed a little too much as they went into the workforce.
They made sure we knew we could have it all, too, and I think that’s why many more of us work from home… and tell each other, “You can have it all. Just maybe not all at the same time.” Which, of course, doesn’t stop some of us from trying to have it all at the same time.
I wish I had better answers. I wish it weren’t so pat to say, “This too shall pass” or “Try to see the constant neediness as opportunity.” Because when you need a break NOW, none of that provides the perspective that the advice-offerers think it does.
The best I can say is, give yourselves a break. We’re all doing the best we can. Sometimes (okay, often) our best goes toward our children. Sometimes toward husband or work or home. And sometimes we can’t give our best at all. Writes Spyscribbler:
Sometimes, the only thing we have to hold on to is that there is worth in each of us, just by being. Not by what we do, or who we are, or how we act. There is still worth in us, even when we are confined to bed, “useless” to society.
So be nice to yourselves. Whatever we do is good. Maybe not great, maybe not what we think or know we can do. But enough.
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
Stacey Derbinshire
Hi Christa! Reading your thoughts touched my heart . . . . as a mother of “that”generation, who believed the lie that we could have it all.
“Our mothers’ generation was told they could have it all, except that they still felt torn between the old values and the new ones, so some thought they should have been working while they stayed home, while others maybe sacrificed a little too much as they went into the workforce.
They made sure we knew we could have it all, too, and I think that’s why many more of us work from home… and tell each other, “You can have it all. Just maybe not all at the same time.” Which, of course, doesn’t stop some of us from trying to have it all at the same time.”
(How do you get those great big quotation marks? See, there’s one clue which generation I belong to!) And here’s the key sentence, I think, for what you younger moms are experiencing: “They made sure we knew we could have it all, too, and I think that’s why many more of us work from home . . . .” My generation of moms failed our children in some ways, and allowing them to believe that it is even possible to be Super Mom was one of those ways. We were wrong. I always thought that trying to have a full-time “job” (read important career away from the kids and the house) AND trying to be Super Mom at the same time is a bit like saying “when I grow up I want to be a nurse . . . . and a teacher . . . . . all at the same time.” Being a mom can be a full-time job all by itself, if that’s what a woman chooses to devote her time to (sorry, bad sentence, I know, I know, all you editors out there!)
I think you have inspired me to write about this for my next blog post here: http://mamaslittletreasures.wordpress.com/
Anyway, thanks for sharing some important insights that need to be explored for all moms, everywhere, at all times. I’ll be thinking on this one, so let’s carry on the conversation. Nina
Thanks, Stacey! 🙂
Nina, it’s so good to see you over here too. 🙂 To answer your first question about the quotation marks – you select the text you want to quote, then click the “indent/blockquote” button in your composer. It’s toward the left-hand side (yours) and looks just like the indent button in Word.
I don’t know that baby boomer mothers “failed” us. I think the pendulum necessarily had to swing in the opposite direction from “June Cleaver” in order for us to come into our own. Your generation didn’t have the computers, etc. that make it possible for my generation to telecommute, for one thing. Or the Internet – how many mothers would become freelance writers without such easy access to information on how to do it?
Besides – if you don’t push the boundaries, how do you know where they are? I mean, I remember how torn my mother was. She was born in ’46, and I grew up hearing about how mothers “should” stay home with their children – yet when she went back to work (even though it was to stay current with technology like computers), she was so happy. It was clear that she needed to work, even if she wasn’t willing to admit it to us.
I am the same way. Miranda wrote that some women derive a great deal of satisfaction out of mothering in and of itself. I don’t. I’m just starting to come around to the idea that I’m not “weird” or “bad” for being the way I am. Just different, even though in the neverending Mommy Wars, it’s too bad that we aren’t more accepting of each other’s differences.
Thanks again for writing. I only just heard “You can have it all – just not all at the same time” a few weeks ago, so I’m still getting used to the idea! 😉
Ah, a mental disorder! Now I know what’s wrong with my desire to mix business with parenting!