Throughout a given day, most moms have effectively beaten the CRAP out of themselves.
From a single day, how easy is it to have convinced yourself via your inner-mom-guilt-monologue that you are failing? That you suck? That you are messing your kids up? How many ways have you said and thought it?
There is always something out there telling you how to do something different, or “better” in raising your kids. There is always something that will make you question or worry about the way you have done something or approached something as a parent.
And now that “always” is constant and overwhelming—we are seeing these things pop on our phones, in articles, social media, the news. There more and more and more to worry about. And we are getting alerted to it in real time! And that always is becoming hard to shut off.
There is always the trade-off of some kind of fear— ultimately of doing harm, or doing wrong by our children. You know, “messing them up”. From what they eat, to screen time, to how we talk to them, what we do with them. To the times we have lost our crap a little bit, or eye-rolled, or lost our patience. Being constantly on-guard for our potential failings and the ways our decisions may inadvertently be harmful to our kids is exhausting. It’s an inner search in guilt and shame and ‘not good enough’.
Consider the things that are actually OK. Consider what you may be pouring too much weight or credit into. Assess how many of these (millions of!) things you carry that aren’t deserving of the weight they put on you.
We all do it. With brains wired to seek out the negatives and dangers, it’s in our nature to worry and stress over our kids. The problem is, our ‘nature’ isn’t always our best guide. Its okay to assess and question your thoughts. And to understand that sometimes they are just these baseless, exaggerated, negative, self-oriented thoughts.
Every single day, we add more to our mom-guilt pile. Again and again. And again. And again.
What can you scrap from the guilt pile? What is actually okay and human and doesn’t actually make you a terrible mother?
