Mothers' Day

Today was Mothers' - for those of you who may have forgot - you can still run out and order flowers for Monday! Anyway, Mothers' Day is not one of my favorite days. It seems to be a day that we celebrate all that is "motherly" - the woman who tireless sacrifices her self to take care of her children by making their lunch, fixing their boo-boos, doing their laundry and making sure they have a wonderful safe environment to come home to. Even the working mothers of the 80s (like my Mom) were these types of women who seem to make the home wonderful - and their work was secondary. This all reminds me of my complete inadequacy in this department. Don't get me wrong - I do my fair share. I am a good provider, I ensure we have a house over our heads, that the bills get paid, that we can take vacations once in a while. I just don't feel like a woman.

There is a voice in my head that keeps telling me that I'm not a real woman. A real woman would be so wonderful that she would have someone to take care of her. She would be able to do all these things - like organize her home, bake cookies all the time, clean clothes, fix boo-boos, etc. I feel like crap when my son asks if we can bake cookies and I am just too tired after a stressful day at the office. In my head - I know this isn't realistic. In my head I know that I am a hard worker and contributor to our family. But in my heart, I feel like a failure as a woman. And Mothers' Day is just a big reminder of that. Even the comics in the paper are all about women who are wonderful care-givers... It reminds me that I am not normal.

I totally respect women who do work at home, especially those who make that choice to stay at home over furthering their career. I think our society needs more of that - families who make the choice to have a caregiver at home. Our kids need that. In our family, that is my husband. He is a great dad. But I really wish I could have the opportunity to stay at home myself. As each days passes and our boys grow up a little more, I see that opportunity slipping away. And I have so many ideas of how to make our home life better - to get our house in order and our lives more efficient. But I just don't have the energy or time to do any of it. Every day that I come home and it is a mess, or if we lose an important piece of paper, or if we miss a key date in my sons' school agenda - I take it as another personal failure. Another way I have let everyone down. When people come over to our house, I feel like I'm being judged for the state it is in. When people give me advice on how to get things in order, i feel like they must think I am too lazy or stupid to have order in my house - that I am a bad mother and wife. That I am a bad person.

The little voice says "if you worked harder, you could get things in order, you could make life better for your family - then they would have something worthy of appreciating." I feel I am not enough - and perhaps they feel the same. Perhaps that is why I never feel appreciated - because I am not worthy of it. Perhaps that is why I feel like the older people in my life are always looking down on me. Perhaps that is why life seems so overwhelming and impossible and lonely.

Or maybe I just need to kill the little voice.