Category: Fulfillment

Motherhood shouldn’t just be a drudgery. Find fulfillment in your most important calling–mother.

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Fulfillment

Every minute of my day

timw-coverA couple weeks ago, I read a book that I just thought was fabulous (so did Jane of Seagull Fountain, which is where I heard about it). It was one of those books where the characters really seemed to come alive.

Sarah, the protagonist, becomes a mother fairly early on in the book. Although this isn’t a major theme in the book, she struggles with motherhood at first, starting with a very difficult labor, and continuing with a hard adjustment to motherhood, for her and for her marriage. In her journal, Sarah writes:

I wonder if every new mother feels as if there is nothing left of herself. Every minute of my day and every last thing I do is tied to this little someone else.

—Nancy E. Turner, These is my Words, p 120

That was very much how I felt when I first became a mother. It was supposed to be all joy and roses, but it seemed to be all baby, all work, all the time.

Now, though, I’m beginning to get a little distance from that work. Hayden is pretty independent—he can open the fridge by himself now. He seems to be turning more and more into a small person (instead of a baby or a toddler) every time I look at him.

Rebecca with my cousin LindsayRebecca is eleven months old now, and, as I’ve said a number of times in the last couple days, her cuteness quotient has leapt to near-lethal levels. I’m able to have time to myself, play with the kids, and (due very largely to the support and efforts of my husband), the house hasn’t fallen down around my ears.

Every minute of my day and every last thing I do isn’t tied to them (though still many if not most of my minutes and most of the things I do, especially during their waking hours). I’ve gotten to the point where I can get some, if not all, of “my” own, personal stuff done—and I think it’s done wonders for my sense of fulfillment and accomplishment overall.

What do you think? Is being able to do something by yourself, for yourself vital to fulfillment?

(By the way, has anyone read the sequels to These is my Words? Are they as good as the first (or at least worth reading 😉 )?)

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Fulfillment

Life as a juggler

carol_bartzCarol Bartz is a busy woman. She’s a CEO (again), a breast cancer survivor, a community volunteer—and, oh yeah, a mom. While her children are now grown, she’s had all these balls in the air at the same time,

Five years ago, when she still had children at home, Business Week interviewed her. Toward the end of their article, they highlighted her commitment to family:

Bartz showed up for a board meeting one night with a hugely swollen leg. Turns out, she had rushed from work to her daughter’s soccer game and slipped, twisting her ankle. She hobbled to the game, then limped to the board meeting. Because the . . . freezer had no ice, she ended up sitting with a bag of frozen peas on her foot. But she carried on as usual, Nierenberg says. . . .

Bartz encourages her employees to have a life outside of work as well. Autodesk’s staffers can receive several hours off a month to help out at their children’s schools. A few weeks ago, Bartz taught 60 or so of her employees’ kids, who showed up for the company’s bring-your-kids-to-work day, how to execute a real business handshake (hand should not be limp, look the person in the eye).

How does Carol Bartz juggle all these roles? The interview hinted at that as well—but I think the two biggest keys are perspective and priorities.

First, she placed her family as her highest priority:

Ever since her daughter, who’s now 15, was in elementary school, Bartz would sit down with her at the beginning of each school year and promise to come to certain school events — say, a Christmas concert or the Halloween party. “I don’t care if the Pope comes to Autodesk, I’m still going to spend that time with her,” she says. Recently, she canceled a business dinner to attend her daughter’s first prom.

juggle_ballsSecond, Carol recognized that she wasn’t going to be perfect:

I have a belief that life isn’t about balance, because balance is perfection. Rather, it’s about catching the ball before it hits the floor.

I may not be a CEO, or even employed outside the home, but I take encouragement from that counsel. And you know what? Sometimes even the best jugglers drop the balls. What do they do? They pick them up and keep practicing.

How have you caught the ball before it hit the floor? How have you continued after dropping the ball?

Photo credit: juggle balls—Dani Simmonds

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Ryan/Married Life Fulfillment

Happy Father’s Day

I don’t think a blog about motherhood would be quite complete without a suitable tribute to fathers. After all, good dads capable, responsible and important.

I probably can’t say enough about fathers, or say enough to thank the father of my children. The man does dishes, reads with Hayden, and can even put the kids to bed.

hayden-5-months-042crop

fathers-day-2006-003crop

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Thank you, Ryan!

So go ahead, brag on Dad here!

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Fulfillment

Motherhood: it’s not about you

Ever notice when someone says you’re being selfish, what they really mean is “You’re not thinking about ME?”

Yeah. So, while we talk a lot and focus a lot here (and lots of other places, naturally) on what it means to be a mother, how hard it is to be a mother and so on and so forth, somehow, we often seem to miss the real “why” of motherhood.

I know this is pretty obvious, but we’re mothers because we have children, and because we care about them. That’s the long and the short of it—that’s why it’s easy (they’re ours), and that’s why it’s hard (we care).

Now, I know when I say this, many of you will think, “Oh, but kids already think they’re the center of the universe. They need to see that they’re not!” I agree—children, especially those with SAHMs, grow up with someone around who might seem to them to exist only to fulfill their nutritional and entertainment needs.

But when I want to demonstrate, for example, that they’re not the center of the universe by taking excessive time for myself to their detriment, am I really teaching them not “You’re not the center of the universe,” but “I am?”

I don’t know. It’s a hard question to even state, since that’s seldom the problem with me time (usually the problem is that we martyr-mothers don’t take enough). And certainly there are other, better, healthier ways to teach our children to respect and value other people and their time.

What do you think? Are children too much the center of a mother’s universe? Which is the lesser of two evils: focusing too much on our children’s needs or focusing too much on our own? How do you find a balance?

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Fulfillment Faith

You are true nobility

knightly_helmetAs I pondered a title for this post, I thought I should come up with a definition of nobility—and the first thing that popped into my head was that nobility is the opposite of playing the martyr.

I think if any of us had to draw a picture of nobility, we would show someone with their head held high. We think of knights and soldiers in acts of bravery; we think of true martyrs who sacrificed all that they had, even their lives, for their faith; we think of true saints who dedicated their living hours to those around them.

We don’t think of mothers. (Remember? Most moms are the bad kind of martyrs.)

This is especially interesting in light of the quotation that inspired this post:

The noblest calling in the world is motherhood. True motherhood is the most beautiful of all arts, the greatest of all professions. She who can paint a masterpiece, or who can write a book that will influence millions, deserves the admiration and plaudits of mankind; but she who rears successfully a family of healthy, beautiful sons and daughters, whose immortal souls will exert an influence throughout the ages long after paintings shall have faded, and books and statues shall have decayed or have been destroyed, deserves the highest honor that man can give, and the choicest blessings of God.

—David O. McKay in Pathways to Happiness

Being a mother is the most important thing we can do. On this note, I do want to note that most of us are doing well at the most beautiful of all arts, the greatest of all professions. This doesn’t mean we have our families on home-grown organic raw-food vegetarian diets that we spend six hours a day planning, preparing and tending (the garden). It doesn’t mean we have our children in every single conceivable extracurricular from archery to zoobotany club. It doesn’t mean we subjugate our every desire to every whim of our children’s.

It means, as Jane put it so well today, that:

being a good mother takes two things: 1) the desire to be a good mother. . . . And 2) the will to do those things that she determines to be important for the well-being of her children. Even those that require sacrifice, change of habit, or a lot of w-o-r-k.

And that work—as deeply challenging as it sometimes feels—is a beautiful art that, no matter what else I write or do or say, will be my magnum opus.

What do you think? Will your profession as a mother be your magnum opus? How do you strive to perfect your motherly art? Are you a “good” mother?

Photo by salssa

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Fulfillment

Of martyrs and mothers

Mothers have a reputation (especially in movies and television!) for being martyrs. “Oh, I’ve given you so much—life, food, everything you ever wanted,” a mother moans, “and now you won’t even come to Sunday dinner! I see how you repay working my fingers to the bone, my 352 hours of laboring with you, the 15 years of bedwetting, I see what that all meant to you.”

523790_regretAs children of mothers, naturally, just about everyone hates these characters. Yeah, we laugh, but it’s a knowing laugh. We’ve seen mothers or perhaps even had our own mothers act that way—woe is me, I reared you, it was hard and you’re ungrateful.

And I think we’ve had such a strong reaction to this cultural archetype of the mother as martyr that any complaining about how hard it is to be a mom makes some people say (or at least think) “Oh, quit being a martyr.” (I also like the backhanded compliment, “Glad you got over being a martyr.” Thanks.)

Another stereotype in the media (that’s gotten to be passé, but still persists) is the mom who does everything for everyone all the time (except herself) and is smiley and happy and overjoyed. This one, I think, is even less rooted in reality, unless you’re stuck in 1957. Oh, and TVLand. (Or, like in this archive photo, it’s your first baby’s first birthday.)

Although that image isn’t portrayed as often these days, it’s still ingrained an impossible standard that persists today—if you don’t love every second of motherhood, you’re a bad mother, you must hate your children, and you’re just voicing your discouragement because you’re a helpless martyr (who was, apparently, too stupid to realize that you were never meant to have children in the first place).

This lie is insidious. Pernicious. As a society, we have subconsciously accepted this expectation for years—decades. A good mother is always happy, and it is only a bad mother who ever complains (and then, she’s trying to emotionally blackmail her grown children into her outrageous demands—which just goes to show how bad she is.).

But acknowledging our struggles with motherhood doesn’t make us less of a mother—or more of a martyr. It’s okay to acknowledge that my ten-month-old has been grumpy and fussy for five days and by the time my husband gets home I can hardly stand to hear her and I really not into playing trains. It doesn’t mean I’m not right where I belong or that I hate my children or even that I hate motherhood. It just means that it’s hard for me—and that’s okay.

So go ahead and vent: here, on this post, and always. There are no judgments or competitions here—and there are no bad mothers or martyrs.

What are you dealing with right now?

Photo by Dez Pain