I have a good life and I am lucky enough to be a mom to 4 pretty fantastic kiddos, but there have been days where I have found myself hiding in my closet with my cellphone hoping to find a few minutes of peace, because these people I live with and care for can be completely exhausting sometimes!
If you haven’t ever gotten to that point with motherhood then I salute you, but I think the large majority of mothers have a shared camaraderie of their own version of my personal closet retreats.
Maybe you are hiding in the closet right now while you are reading this?
As a new mom I remember thinking if I could just survive the baby years, and then the toddler years it would get soo much easier after that. I am currently almost through the preschool years with my youngest child, but parenting teens, of which I have 2, also requires a heck of a lot of masterful parenting!
I am no expert, but I see so many of my fellow mothers exhaustedly dragging their brood around, worn out, and more often than not stressed out. I feel ya sister, because the motherhood life can be hard at times.
My personal wake-up call for dialing down the stress came when I developed a heart condition that my Dr. stated stems entirely from what he calls “worn out mommy syndrome.”
So are you feeling the stress?
Here is a little tip that just might help!
Simplify
We all have to work, whether it is in the home or out of it. More often than not these days it tends towards the both I think. So here’s a little suggestion, drop what ever isn’t bringing you joy. Of course we can’t stop parenting our children, even when those tween eye rolls make you want to ship your tween to China for a little life lesson.
Instead simplify.
I sat in a lesson at church last Sunday when the teacher quoted Leonardo Da Vinci with the following life gem, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
Think on that one for a minute. Your mental choice to simplify shows that you respect and understand your personal boundaries and chose that which is most important and valuable to you and your family.
This means you feel safe being authentically you and simply doing that which brings you joy and maybe even feeds your family occasionally….
See, because sometimes are we cooking elaborate time consuming diners because we love it and it makes us happy or because we think that doing something like that is what a “good” mom does?
I can tell you that my kids enjoy nights with simple quesadillas far better than the nights when they have to deal with a cranky mom who has just “slaved in the kitchen for hours on food no one enjoys anyways!”
Notice the quotation marks above? Those may or may not have been actual words that have come out of my mouth a time or two. But not more than two times I AM SURE.
So why do we do things like that to ourselves?
How about we bring out the mac and cheese and some fruit slices and call it good, right?
Or heck bring in the pizza!
I just wish that I could hug every stressed out mother I see and tell her that she is enough.
Maybe I might just start doing that.
Although perhaps I might want to forego the hugs since I don’t fancy being picked up by the police…
Anyways, mom friends, you are enough.
What you are doing is enough.
Motherhood can be all consuming, but remember this as you casually try to wipe the jelly off your shirt that you didn’t realize was there until you left the house, do what you can.
Do it in the best way you know how, and if you don’t love it and it isn’t of value to your life, maybe it is one of those things that can simply get put away until a later date.
Hugs to you! You’ve got this!
Jen
