Dear Mama,
Hey girl hey. How are you? Tired? I know, me too. Our reasons are probably similar. You had an unruly toddler or a teenager that you had to trek to and from various activities and I had well, an unruly toddler. Like you, I was up way later than I should have been stressing over things meal prep ideas. You were going over homework folders, catching up on emails and cleaning the 104th dish in the sink. The house is a mess and you’re too exhausted to care. Your hair is a mess but you’re too exhausted to care. You miss the days of your regular hair and nail appointments. You miss weekly happy hours with the girls. A vacation sounds nice but quiet time alone a bathroom is really all you want these days.
I get you because I am you. Motherhood is rough and yeah, girl…sometimes I miss those pre-kid days. They were great, weren’t they? It’s okay to think about them. Doing so doesn’t mean you love your babies any less. Mama had a life before kids. So what! Reminisce on that life and do so guilt-free.
I’ve got something else that I want to tell you. I want you to stop beating yourself up. Yes, you. You do it all the time. I am far from perfect and I do it quite a bit myself but can we work on this together? Can we both commit to not constantly beating ourselves up and give ourselves some credit? Because when you think about it – we’re pretty awesome.
So what if you’ve got split ends. You managed to keep a child alive AGAIN for another day. Um, hello! That is no easy feat. In addition to forcing a little (or big) to take a bath, you’ve also gotten some food in their stomachs. So dinner wasn’t that Organic Quinoa and Kale stew that you pinned on Pinterest. What you made was edible and that’s all that matters.
You may be in too much of a sleep fog to notice your achievements but I see them and you amaze me. How you’re able to load up that shopping cart with 3 kids chatting and/or fighting is beyond me. You make it look so easy. You leave work to take your oldest to soccer lesson and you still manage to finish up that report that’s due the next day. You work from home and manage a business and babies. Society wants to call you a stay at home mom but seriously? Stay where? Not in your bed curled up with a book, as you’d like. You are constantly on the move, rarely get time for yourself and somehow you still think you haven’t done enough. You struggle to keep the marriage alive or you’re a single mama who wants to date (or not). Either way, you’ve got aspirations, ideas and thoughts outside of motherhood and you put many of them on pause for motherhood.
You make so many sacrifices each and every day. Your kids don’t even notice it. It has become second nature to you. You give up your last piece of candy, or the corner of a pillow, or your very last dollar for daughter’s field trip. You miss out on trips to save money for your son’s tuition. You do SO much for everyone else. Don’t you see that? Don’t you see how you keep your family afloat? You are everyone’s everything. It’s the hardest job in the world but you keep waking up and doing it – even when the thank you’s are sparse. You’re a superhero. You’ve GOT to see that.
Come on, girlfriend. No more feeling bad for that one little error you made. You can’t do it all but you always make that attempt and still come out on top. I couldn’t be more proud of you. Please honor yourself. Love yourself. Reward yourself and pleeeease know your worth. Breathe. Be in the moment. Ask for help. Step back and look at your successes. There are soooo many.
You are Mom. You are beyond a noun. You’re a verb and you make mom’ing look SO good. You go girl.
Love,
Me
