I love the first couple of weeks of a new year. I love a clean slate, a fresh outlook on life, and the chance to set goals and make plans for the year ahead. It’s also a time to look back on the past year and think about lessons learned, experiences had, and memories made. As I think back on 2017 in terms of motherhood, I feel like I had many days where I felt like I was an awesome mom. I also had many days where I am pretty sure (at least in my mind) I did a terrible job. As a planner, list-maker, and one who generally likes things in order, motherhood can sometimes give me a run for my money. Mom guilt can very quickly ruin an otherwise good day.
So a few months into 2017, I made a choice. I chose to let go of so much “mom guilt” that I had let build up inside me. There was one point where I could probably make myself feel guilty about just about every aspect of motherhood. Did I read five books to my kids today? Nope. Did I maintain a schedule for my kids with different activities, time for independent play, and one-on-one time with each child? Definitely not every day. Were we on our second trip to Chick-fil-a in a week? Try two days! Did my kids have less than an hour of screen time today? Haha.
These are all legitimate questions I asked myself at one time or another over the beginning months of last year. Finally, I had to decide to let all of that go. It was slowly driving me crazy and leaving me feeling overwhelmed, overworked, and just plain stressed out. So I let go of all that mom guilt (as much as I could, it definitely wasn’t perfect every day or every week). Almost immediately, I felt lighter, more free and happier in general.
Instead of trying to create “the perfect day in motherhood”, I instead focused on small moments. I gave myself credit for reading a few books before naptime instead of having one more episode of Little Einsteins. I focused on the fact that I built towers of blocks and put puzzles together with my toddler for 20 minutes, and then let them play independently while I cleaned the kitchen. Or read a book. I stopped feeling bad about dropping them off at the gym daycare for an hour while I went to a class. Because afterward, I was a happier and more carefree mom.
All of these small things that could have brought on mom guilt were turned into small moments of success that slowly built into me feeling like I was doing a pretty good job with things. There were still many days where I stressed over the fact that, seven years into motherhood, I still hadn’t found that “perfect” daily routine, or had let whatever other small detail wedge its way into my brain to make me feel guilty about my mothering. But overall, I cut myself a lot of slack. And it felt so good.
Now I’m beginning 2018 with the same mindset—finding the vision for my own motherhood and making small steps each day to reach those goals, all while giving myself a break (or two, or 20) along the way.
