I like to be busy. Not stressed-to-the-max, burning-the-candle-at-both-ends-constantly, chicken-with-its-head-cut-off busy, but full-days, people-can-depend-on-me-and-consider-me-capable-and-maybe-a-little-amazing busy. Sometimes, the really important stuff—my children—can get shuffled aside for the things I’ve volunteered to do, the self-imposed deadlines, the ME ME ME ness of it all.
However, the literal self-centeredness of focusing my life around what I want to accomplish and how I feel isn’t truly compatible with motherhood. I signed up for this (and re-enlisted!), and I do owe my children something: love, which is often best expressed not with gourmet dinners or immaculate houses (or awesome manuscripts!), but with my time.
I think Feeling fulfilled Fridays comes from a desire to do both. With FFF, my goal was to focus on the things that help me to feel like I’m doing a good job as a mom—which are almost always things that I think show my children how much I love them.
FFF should be simple, really: just talking about the things you did this week that made you feel like a good mother, or moments when you knew you were doing just the right thing. If you can plan for those and set them up in advance, great. If they just happen, great.
What do you think? What blog feature might help you focus on the good, the joy of the here-and-now?
It seems like, if we’re happy, we’re supposed to love every minute of our lives. If we enjoy motherhood, we should love every minute of it. And some people really do love every minute of being a mom—so if we don’t, there must be something wrong with us.
I don’t believe that’s true (and I sincerely hope it’s not!).
I say this because sometimes I struggle to love any minute of motherhood, for weeks at a time. Sure, there’s the occasional 30 seconds of bliss as I snuggle a finally-asleep-again-baby, and the flush of pride when Rachel starts crawling at six months or Rebecca successfully counts to 12(!) at <two and a half, and the smiles at Hayden’s first realistic full-body drawing:
But those tiny pleasures are so easily forgotten after hours of diapers, whining, crying, screaming, bickering, punishments, refereeing, and motherhood in general—hours where it feels like these tiny tyrants need everything you have to give and more.
When I dare to admit that feeling, I often get comments telling me I should go back to work. Give up, essentially. Focus on what will make you happiest (“giddy with delight”) immediately.
I do still think that what I’m doing as a stay-at-home mom is important. But sometimes, I’m so unhappy on a daily basis that I struggle to feel that what I’m doing is best for me and for the kids.
Choosing to be happy does not mean that we will automatically be happy all the time. It doesn’t mean we always choose whatever might make us happy right this second.
Choosing happiness means we choose the things we know are most important for our long term happiness.
But I think I need to put more effort into making better choices on a day-to-day basis. I don’t believe we’ll be “giddy with delight” every minute, no matter what we’re doing, but we can try to focus on the things that do make us feel good about motherhood. And it’s about time I recommit to doing that.
When I was good about working on Feeling Fulfilled Fridays, that’s what I was trying to do: focus on those things that I can do to affect the way I feel and we all function. Maybe it’s about time I work on those things again.
I stopped posting about it for several reasons: struggling with these feelings, being too busy, and the deafening lack of response and enthusiasm from 99% of my readership. However, I think that focusing on fulfillment again—refocusing—can help with the first two, since I think they’re really symptoms of the problem instead of side-effects.
The last one . . . well, that one’s up to you. Is there anything I can do to help encourage you to participate in Feeling Fulfilled Fridays?
Spread the word about FFF or the GWP on Twitter, Facebook or another social network (your privacy settings must be such that I can see the post so I can count it!)
Each post is an entry into the random drawing for the prize—but you mustuse the form to submit each entry (it’s too easy for me to miss them otherwise!).
That’s right, you can have multiple entries!
The Prize
A $30 Amazon gift card.
(If we get a lot of entries, I’ll give away more than one gift card!)
It’s feeling fulfilled Friday on MamaBlogga! Here’s how it works:
Make a list of things that make you feel accomplished (but aren’t so huge that they take more than a day or a week)
During the week, try to focus on those things that help us feel accomplished
Report on feeling fulfilled Friday and enter the GWP to win an Amazon gift card!
Ugh. I’m flattened by a rough cold.
But we’ve had some good days this week. I’ve done pretty well on making healthy dinners (until tonight), and when my in-laws were here, we watched almost no TV (and they made me take a nap because I was sick, woot!). And I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and Catching Fire this week—two good books. AND I worked on school stuff with the kids at least a little.
Make a list of things that make you feel accomplished (but aren’t so huge that they take more than a day or a week)
During the week, try to focus on those things that help us feel accomplished
Report on feeling fulfilled Friday
Post on your blog and submit on the form for a chance to win an Amazon gift card in the GWP this month!
My week: this week we started a home-preschool co-op with a couple other families in our neighborhood. Rebecca’s still a little young for the class, but we’ve been working on the lessons at home. In fact, there’s even a curriculum for Rachel (who turned four months on Tuesday!). Her curriculum involves reading her a story, scriptures and a poem, listening to Mozart, playing games (this week, little piggies) and nursery rhymes.
For Rebecca and Hayden, they learn letters, numbers, shapes, colors and a little vocabulary. Hayden is excelling so far—for the first time, he’s really eager to write the letter A all by himself. Rebecca, on the other hand, enjoys spending time together, but of course a lot of the lessons don’t “stick.” She’s only two, though; I don’t expect her to learn everything.
Teaching the kids something new is on my accomplishment list—but, notably, their learning something is not. When I made my list, I thought of a lot more things than what I put on there. It’s hard not to feel accomplished when the kids are angels, do whatever I want, and prove that they are the geniuses I’m convinced they are. And of course it’s okay to have those things on your list—it’s your list. For me, though,those things are out of my control, and feeling accomplished—and fulfilled—is too important to leave up to the mercy of my children’s whims.
What do you think? Would/did you include things that are out of your control on your accomplishment list?
And don’t forget: Post about your FFF and enter to win!
The foundation of Feeling Fulfilled Fridays is focusing on what makes us feel accomplished, as inspired by a post on Seagull Fountain. I thought about things that make me feel accomplished (mostly as a mother but also a person), things that I can do in a relatively short amount of time, perhaps daily.
I hope that as I focus on these simple things, I’ll be able to build on that sense of accomplishment and at the end of the day, I’ll be able to look back and see that I did something.
So here’s my list!
Read scriptures with the kids.
Exercise.
Make a healthy dinner and serve it before 7 PM.
Play with the kids.
Remain patient.
Recording precious moments.
Do laundry promptly.
Teach the kids something new.
Finish a good book.
Reach other stories to the kids.
Have a clean house.
Enforce rules (or chores).
Publish a good blog post.
Go out with the kids, especially for something fun for them.
However, the literal self-centeredness of focusing my life around what I want to accomplish and how I feel isn’t truly compatible with motherhood. I signed up for this (and re-enlisted!), and I do owe my children something: love, which is often best expressed not with gourmet dinners or immaculate houses (or awesome manuscripts!), but with my time.
Ugh. I’m flattened by a rough cold. 
perhaps daily.