As I celebrate this Mother’s Day, I cannot help but think about the point of this day. When I thanked my husband for treating me to a wonderful day, his face showed uncertainty. It said, “Are you sure it was good enough? Did I buy the right gifts or do enough for you?” I think to myself, is he kidding? Did I put that kind of pressure on him or is it a global thing? If you don’t thank Mom on Mother’s day, you are going to be in big trouble!
Again we have a day with a lot of expectation and pressure. Yes, being a Mom is probably one of the hardest jobs. But, when did it turn into that? As a society, we have turned it into that. If we stop listening to what our culture tells us is a “good” Mom, we might be able to sit back, be ourselves, and be “real” and who we genuinely are to our kids.
We come from generations of people that tell us what is a good Mom, what we should wear, how we should discipline, care for crying babies, when to stop breast feeding, how we should not watch TV, how we need to stay home or go to work to be good Moms. We are supposed to clean, to cook, to work, to have careers, to take vacations, care for the sick, keep up with technology, the internet, look pretty, blame men for our mishaps, take care of basically everything, and then be nice and sweet, loving and warm to the people who need it the most, our children. Does it sound like we need to get ourselves up with the times? Sounds like an impossible juggling act? So if I don’t all this, am I a bad Mom and a bad person? And will doing all of this lend to having time to just love, love self, and love children. Just be.
Geez, lets stop the judgements and leave everybody be just who they want to be. How about creating a life in which he or she really enjoys or feels confident about. If I want to work, feed my children what I have time to prepare, and in a messy house, that’s my choice. The one thing I am sure of, all mothers, deep down, want one thing and one thing only- to be the best darn mother that they know how. We may not know what the best is, but sitting with oneself and knowing that is a heck of a better Mom than the one feeling guilty because she didn’t “do” something somewhere, a book or a column, or somebody said was the thing to do. Guilt is an issue that lies within most of us, and is something I spend much of my time with clients trying to rid and relieve itself from. I cannot emphasize how much time is wasted in our culture because of that G word. So many ideas and decisions are based on guilt and I have yet to see one of those decisions that gets that person somewhere positive.
There was somebody somewhere who decided that hitting your child is the way to teaching discipline and earning respect as a parent. Show me one healthy family that truly believes that using this technique led them to a life of independence, high self esteem, respect, and positive life attitudes. We are not listening to ourselves, we are spending to much time listening to people and thus, creating more guilt.
Guilt is what leads to depression, anxiety and all those awful places of the mind that torture us. Instead of celebrating how hard it is for Moms because of all the things they “should do” lets celebrate just by taking the heat off everyone. Being a mother is a natural, human right. It is beautiful, instinctual, and refreshing. The best thing that comes from it is the enjoyment in each moment, positive or negative. As a culture, lets focus on who we are as selves, what we have learned from our past that is positive, what we want to carry to our offspring, what we do not and accepting this independence in each of us. Without judgement there is no guilt, without guilt there is positive self esteem, with positive self esteem we have happier people, with happier people we have more accepting Moms.
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