MY BOGGY BLOG: find your way through the murk

025.htm

I've been in a funk today. Is it just the ups-and-downs of Motherhood,
or the voices of perfectionism or what? Maybe both. Motherhood just
seems like such a rollercoaster ride of emotions... there are the
moments when I feel together and powerful, an accomplished woman doing
the dance of nurturing my kids, making our lives tick, making sure
we're fullfilled on many levels (social, emotional, educational). At
those times, I'm doing the best that I can and I know it, and that's
okay.

Other days (or it could be one hour later) I'm dragging my ass,
annoyed by bickering kids, giving in to them so they'll just SHUT UP!,
feel like an utter failure because I've let messes build up around me
or spent too much at Target. I'm sure I'm screwing up my kids' lives
and am possibly one of the worst mothers in the world, especially
since I seem to be lacking the gene that enables people to keep up
with laundry in any reasonable fashion ("I have no clean underwear" is
a common morning mantra in our house).

It's like driving into a pothole, this moodshift, causing the whole
mama-van to break down.

You might say it's just hormones, or general neurosis, underlying
depression or stinkin' thinkin'. As crazy as I feel sometimes, I'm
guessing I'm not the only one who can relate to this Motherhood
Rollercoaster. I hear about various levels of it in mothers that I
speak to all the time. We are all doing our best and really thoughtful
about the ways we nurture and guide our kids... and yet full of doubt
and self-criticism, sure we are failing in some major motherly way.

My therapist tells me to trace these whirling thoughts back to the
underlying feelings... of course, it's all FEAR that I'm just
downright bad and unworthy because I've fallen short of some
unrealistic standard in my head... and the SHAME of falling short of
perfection-- how others will see me and judge me, especially my kids
as they age. I simply do not want them to think I was a bad mother to
them in any way.

Good mother, bad mother. The problem lies in the labels, the
categories, the black and white definitions. There is no place to just
BE, just a MOTHER, just who I am. It comes back to me reminding
myself, once again, that the point of this journey is not to end up in
some Perfect Mother category, but to have relationships with my
children that allow them to be who they are and me who I am. And if we
hurt one another along the way, to find a way to communicate that, and
to make peace and heal. That is what was lacking from my own
childhood. And that is the real goal, the real way to smooth out some
of the bumps on this Rollercoaster Ride of Motherhood.

Posted by sapphire at August 27, 2003 12:00 AM