Mommy Guilt Solutions

Welcome back!

Mommy guilt.  You know how I encourage other moms to release their guilt?  Well, I’ve been dealing with some of my own.  Turns out, some mommies I know are already in full swing with back-to-school preparation.  Their children have perfectly coordinated back to school outfits, reusable, earth friendly lunch bags, and all their school materials are lined up.  Mine do not. 

Now, either these mommies are incredibly eager for their little ones to move along into school, or they are way too organized.  Or both.  Either way, I’m not quite there.  It’s not that I don’t look forward to the prospect of my firstborn entering school.  I actually am.  It’s that I don’t seem to find enough hours in the day, or even the desire, to do that level of preparation this far in advance. 

It is possible to talk myself into feeling guilty that I’m not intrinsically motivated to spend my days as a domestic diva.   Like the day I visited a friend who apologized for not completing her floor cleaning before I arrived.  Turns out she had mopped, but hadn’t finished scrubbing out the grooves with a toothbrush.  Like I would care.  I can guarantee that a toothbrush has never touched my floor for the purposes of cleaning.  I do enjoy a clean house, but I do NOT find cleaning to be therapeutic.  Unless someone else is cleaning it for me. 

So I turned to one of my favorite interviews with twitter friend Kathy Buckworth on The Mommy-Muse Is In.  Kathy talked about her book Journey to the Dark Side:  Super Mom Goes Home, sharing about the image shift that occurs when we come home from the career world and switch to spending time at home with our kids. There is a whole new crazy world of guilt that goes on with this world, in terms of if we are doing the right thing, or are doing the right job. 

Here are Kathy’s wise words for those of us who might be right smack in the middle of that kind of guilt and stress situation, to help us navigate into a place that feels better and more balanced in our lives:

What I do and what a lot of women do is to compare ourselves to other people.  We compare ourselves to what happens in the media, super models that give birth and look perfect three weeks later, or women who seem to have it all together with career and home, and other ones who are at home and always seem to have everything together. 

            I always say you are seeing them for just a moment in time.  You’re seeing them in that particular “super mom moment.”  We can all have it together for a minute.  Sometimes we might even have it all together for five minutes, but sort of living someone else’s life and carrying on that way is not sustainable. 

            It’s stopping the comparison but at the same time it’s finding like women.  I’m a great supporter of moms’ groups and a big supporter of getting together with women in your neighborhood and sharing these things.  Chances are you are going to find someone else is going through exactly what you’re going through and it’s a little bit of “misery loves company,” but it’s also just “thank goodness I’m not insane,” if someone else is going through this at the same time.

            I think talking about it is really good.  Looking at the twitters from all the mom groups, there are a lot of women I see that I follow, joking about how they’re going to run away from home or how things aren’t quite turning out the way they thought they would be.  I think that makes us all laugh and feel a little bit better about the times we feel pretty stressed and guilty about not being perfect all the time.

            So join in, share your mommy guilt moments by commenting on this blog, and connect with us on Twitter – @kathybuckworth @mommymuse – we’ll be looking for you!

Related Posts

• Speak to Yourself as Though You Were a Friend Today on The Mommy-Muse Is In: Empowering Your Journey into Motherhood, I was delighted to share Debi Silber, TheMojoCoach.com with you on the air.  Debi is fondly known as "The Mojo Coach," and has been motivating moms for nearly 20 years to get their mojo back!  Here is an excerpt from one......
• Fresh Serving of The Week's Best PPD Posts Wow! My hat goes off to Katherine Stone of Postpartum Progress for her amazing work with the Sisterhood of Warrior Moms.  She is an potentadvocate for women's health, and has helped all of us who have run the gauntlet of postpartum mood disorders to connect with and support new families......
• Postpartum Mood Disorders: Are You Crazy or Normal?         New mothers rarely admit to the full extent of their stress level or to the difficult emotions they live with.  After all, women with new babies are supposed to feel blissful, loving and grateful for the miracle of new life in their care, right?  Many women are scared to......
• Kathy Ireland on Defining and Creating Our Own Happiness On a beautiful interview with Kathy Ireland on The Mommy-Muse Is In: Empowering Your Journey into Motherhood this week, I inquired about the chapter "Every Home Needs Happiness" in her upcoming book Real Solutions for Busy Moms: Your Guide to Success and Sanity.  Kathy strongly recommends that each of us......
• Come Play in My Sandbox! There's a recurrent theme in my conversations with mothers over the last few weeks.  Essentially, women are telling me that they don't feel like they belong well enough to "play in other people's sandboxes."  I've heard this from unconventional moms of all ages  - they feel too old (grandmothers raising......

Tagged as: kathy buckworth, mommy guilt, Supermom Goes Home, the mommy-muse is in