As much as the Mommy Guilt is present in my mind, I figured I may as well entertain it for a second post. I realize that by writing about it that I am, to some extent, giving into it. I am opening the door and serving it a cup of tea. I think that is OK though; in fact, I think I need it. I need to get it out of my head and see it on the written page. I need to stop struggling against the Mommy Guilt so I can study it and learn from it.
I don’t want to give the impression that the Mommy Guilt is completely immobilizing (which the dramatic ending to my last post may have led some to believe). I am still going, still moving forward. Am I moving in the right direction? Who knows! But, at least I am moving; right? I keep getting up and going to work; I keep putting 110% into making my team successful. I keep loving my kids and showing them that in any way I can; I keep trying to raise them the way God wants me to. I keep trying to balance my husband, children, career, housework, other family, and friends. These are all blessings, and I know that. I think that is why I tend to underplay the affect the Mommy Guilt has on me. I don’t want to be a complainer; I don’t want people to say that I don’t know how good I have it. I do realize that my life is more blessed than I could have ever imagined. That doesn’t make it easy though. And that definitely doesn’t do anything to defend me against the mommy guilt. In fact, it makes the Guilt worse. I feel like I am not properly caring for the blessings that God has bestowed into my care.
I need to go back to something specific I said in my last post. I stated that I have struggled against Mommy Guilt daily since going back to work after Barrett’s birth. That was a slight exaggeration. There are days when I don’t feel it, when I don’t even know it’s there. In fact, there were periods of time when it was tolerable and easily controlled. It really started to get bad in March of this year. That is when my job became insanely stressful; there were changes in direction beyond our control, and we had to adapt. That meant many long days in the office with back to back meetings followed by evenings logged into my work laptop at home to get caught up on emails after the children went to bed. I could have handled it if the workload was at that level for a week or two, but this lasted for months. In mid-May, we went to Florida on a family vacation. The day we left, I spent the morning working from home while Billy got the kids ready and loaded the car; then I worked in the car for the first four hours of our 12 hour drive. I did manage to relax and not log in every day but spent another few hours on the drive home cleaning through emails in preparation for my return to the office. I’ve had to cancel a couple of vacation days and rearrange my personal schedule to accommodate my job related work. That said, I guess the Mommy Guilt has really built its force over the past 4 months, because the demands of my job have been completely shattering any semblance of balance my life once had.
My job is starting to return to what I would consider normal, but even normal means stress, travel, and sometimes late nights staring into the light of my laptop screen. When it was really bad, I kept telling myself things would slow down and get back to normal. But, now that normal has returned, I still don’t think it is what I want. I realize how selfish that sounds. Here, God has given me the blessing of a solid career with a promising future, and I am going to throw it back in his face and tell him I don’t want it. I feel like I am a spoiled brat that got two brown ponies for Christmas, but throws a fit and pouts because I wanted a white one. For goodness sake, there are 2 ponies and not just one. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I drown out the Mommy Guilt and just be thankful for my promising career that provides for me and my family? Don’t get me wrong, I am thankful for all of my blessings. I praise God for his kindness and thank Him for giving them to me. That just doesn’t quiet the part of me that desires to spend my days working around the house and taking care of my children.
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