Normally I wouldn't make a post like this but I feel I need to say this. Take it or leave it.
Today I went to my mom’s group. The speaker spoke on “mom competition”
touched briefly on all the different forms of it. If you are a mom then you know
what I am talking about, Pinterest, Facebook, Blogs…. The mom who only cooks
organic, the mom the has the 6-pack abs after she gave birth, the mom that has
those amazing birthday parties, the mom that has the smartest kids, the mom
that has the most well behaved kids, the
mom that has sacrificed the most… You know what I am talking about. Deep
down inside if you are honest with yourself you know you are guilty of it to
some degree or another.
This begs us to ask the question, “WHY?” Why are pitting
ourselves against each other? Why are we making other mothers feel like a
failure? Shame on us, all us. Motherhood is HARD. It’s going to beat you down, chew you up and spit you out. Let’s not do
it to each other. Let’s fix the problem.
First up, the problem. Why are we so fiercely completing
with ourselves? We have lost our identity. We go from getting attention, accolades, and sense of power to all the sudden being covered in spit up and counting how
many wet and poopy diapers we changed.
We feel invisible, undervalued. I went from being Sarah to Johnny and
Ben’s mom. Somewhere in between all that
spit-up and poop I lost my individual identity.
Last year I went to my husband’s Christmas party and that dreaded
question came around “what do you do?” I answered “I am just a stay at home
mom."
One solution that the speaker gave on the topic was to find
3 other words to describe yourself. I
thought to myself “well what a great idea!!!” Then it came to break into our small groups
and talk about it and well it became my turn to speak and I could think of all
of things I used to do, I realized all I could come up with is mom. Someone asked me “are you ok with that?” I
said “well no I wish I did have a title that sounded more important, but I have
pretty much given everything up to be a mom…”
Somewhere between the drive home, and putting my boys down
for naps, getting dinner in the Crockpot, starting laundry, I realized this… While we stay at home mom are trying so hard to sound
important in our identity, why not embrace the miracle of motherhood? Next time someone asks you what you do, very
proudly say “I am a stay at home mom!”
If we want to change the way world and society view us, it needs to
start with us. Be proud of what you do,
because fellow mom, you are doing one of the hardest, most important jobs out
there. Yeah, it’s hard, it’s messy but
you aren't losing your identity, you are becoming so much more. Being a mother has taught me so much about myself, much more than any job would have ever revealed to me. It is the hardest, yet most rewarding thing I have ever done. C.S. Lewis has a quote that sums it up nicely
“Homemaking is surely in reality the most important work in the world. What do
ships, railways, mines, cars and government exist for except that people may be
fed, warmed and safe in their own homes? The homemaker’s job is one for which
all other exist.”
So what are my three words? Child
of God. Wife. Mother. Those three are the most important, valuable words I could ever use to describe myself because, that is who I am.
