Repeat After Me...I am Not a Super Woman...



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My mommy friends will occasionally ask me, "Have you felt guilty about (insert your biggest guilt here)?", and the answer is always a resounding YES!

ALL THE TIME!

Let's face it: MotherWomanhood is fraught with a measure of guilt. It seems like we can always find something to feel guilty about...not spending enough time with our children...not giving them enough space. The list of possibilities is endless. You are probably thinking of something you feel guilty about right now.

Speaking of guilt, every night before I go to bed, I stop by my children's rooms after they have fallen asleep and I check on them. I make sure the temperature in their room is just right, that they are not falling out of their beds, as I usually find them asleep as if they just collapsed onto their beds in mid-flight, and I hug and kiss them. Then, I take a step back, and I just stare at them. There is nothing more beautiful to me than a sleeping child. I study their ever-changing faces. I close my eyes and try to freeze-frame a picture of them in my mind. Then, I always find myself coming back to the same question...

If I could live this day all over again,

what would I have done differently?

I'll pause and reflect on my day, and I'll usually think of at least one thing I said or did or didn't do that I wish I had done differently. Someone once told me that being a parent is not the hardest thing in the world, no, it's being a parent while trying to be everything else that's truly hard. Unfortunately, it's this delicate balancing act where I struggle the most. Often, it's when I'm exhausted and frustrated from "everything else" that I lose my patience with my children, and it usually has nothing to do with anything in particular that they did or didn't do; it was just that "one last straw" on top of everything else. That's when I remind myself that I am not a super woman. I am a MotherWoman.

I try not to second-guess myself at the time, and I realize that given more time to think on a matter, of course I might have come to another solution or alternative as to how I could have handled the situation. Any mother will tell you that hindsight is 20/20. At some point, I have to learn to live with myself, and accepting my own shortcomings is a start.

So, instead of recalling something I wish I could change, I'll try to recall a magical moment that happened that day that I wouldn't change a thing about, and then I will replay it again and again in my mind, hoping to remember it forever.

At the end of the day, I never want these moments to be overshadowed by guilt.

So when you are feeling overwhelmed or guilty for not being everything to everyone exactly as you'd like to be...repeat after me: I am not a super woman, I am a MotherWoman.