They Told Me I Am a Woman

They said I can do anything.

Who “they” are, I don’t know.

But I suppose they were right.

I’ve not yet tried something I couldn’t do. I am completely confident that with sufficient time and persistence, I could do anything.  

I don’t think that’s vain. After all, I didn’t say it would be easy. I just said I could do it. Eventually.

So they were right. I can do anything.

But they were wrong, too.

See, they also said that “can” means “should” and “anything” means “everything.”

They said I can do anything, but what I heard, what I’ve recently realized I believe, is:

  I should do everything.

I can’t be the only one who heard that. Right?

Given our societies obsession with feminism, women’s lib, girl power, and strong female characters, how could we not? How could we not feel pressure to do everything and do it perfectly? Because we can. Because we should.

I’m a stay at home mom, but I feel like I should also provide a supplementary income in some creative way that takes absolutely no time away from my son. I feel like I should be a handyman, able to fix every problem around the house myself. I should handle car problems. I should have an amazing meal prepared at the same time every night. I should pre-pack aesthetically

pleasing and healthy lunches for my husband and son. I should get plenty of exercise every day. I should make sure my husband, son and dog get plenty of exercise every day.

I should host fabulous parties with all of my friends, where everything is homemade and the table is laid out with expensive dishes and centerpieces. I should have lots of friends in the first place. I should host play groups. I should spend hours reading to my son and teach him the ABC’s now that he’s almost two. (Because we’re so so behind on Kindergarten prep.)  

I should have an entire summer of fun, age appropriate “sensory” activities (whatever that means) planned for my son. I should spend hours on crafts for our five-minute family home evening lesson, because everyone knows you can’t learn anything by simply reading scriptures together.

I should be happy all the time, but my gosh! I’m exhausted just typing all of the things I should be doing. It makes me crazy just to think about it all. And I haven’t listed a small fraction of the things floating around in my head that belong on that list.

I’m sure you have your own, very long list. I don’t know if you’re a working mom, a single mom, or if you have any kids at all, but I know you have a list.

And ladies, I truly think that we can do everything. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think so. Whether we should is another question—one that I don’t have an answer to.

But should or should not, here is my confession: I don’t want to.

There. I said it. I don’t want to. I don’t want to work to supplement our income, or fix cars, or so many other things on the list that’s been imprisoning me.

There are so many things I don’t want to do, but there are just as many that I do.

I love cooking for my family. I love reading with my son. I love spending hours on a craft for our five-minute lesson. But when I try to do everything, I end up not loving any of it.

I want to love being a mom. I want to love being a wife. I want to love being a homemaker. So I’m going to let myself love it. I’m going to joyfully fulfill those responsibilities that I choose to take on. I’m going to let my husband fulfill the responsibilities he’s chosen to take on, and we’re going to let go of the ones that aren't that important to us.

Because I’m a woman, and I can do that too.




Do you think you should do everything? What things will you let go of?

How To: Nearly Kill Your Family

Photo by H. Berends via stock.xchng

Check the clock. 11:30 pm. Wonder what you were thinking staying up so late. Again! Pull yourself up off the couch and away from your knitting. Stretch out your fingers. This will probably hurt. You've been knitting since the baby went to bed three hours ago.

Head into the bathroom so you can start your nightly routine. Brush your teeth. Skip the floss. (Yes, that's routine too.) Wash your face somewhat less than thoroughly.  Turn off the lights, climb into bed, pull up the covers, and…STOP! It’s Saturday. Tomorrow is Sunday. And you neglected laundry this week. Roll out of bed. Check the closet. Bad news. You don’t have a clean shirt for church.

Try not to cry as you sort through the "whites" bin and carry your pile of smelly clothes through the house to the laundry room.  You’re mad now. Why did J. make you stay up so late? Why did the neighbor decide to walk the dog at midnight? Why does said neighbor always yell at said dog at midnight? Why did Hallmark air that movie in October that you had to record and had to watch tonight? Why hasn’t someone invented a laundry-bot yet? Ignore that small yet persistent voice of reason in the back of your mind saying you should only be mad at yourself. This isn’t your fault.

Because you’re exhausted, it’s best to move slowly. Carefully transfer the dirty clothes from the floor to the washing machine, one article at a time. Notice black stains in the armpits of the shirt you were hoping to wear tomorrow—your favorite, most expensive Caslon white t-shirt that you were hoping to wear tomorrow. Pretend that something is in your eye. You don’t cry over laundry. Vow to never, never, never wear a black cardi over a white t-shirt again!

Grab your glass bowl and fill it with warm water. Mix in a heaping scoop of that DIY laundry detergent you're so proud of and slosh the shirt around in there. Scrub the stains vigorously for a few minutes. Stop. You’re getting nowhere. Spot the bleach on shelve. Recklessly grab the bottle and dump some in your shirt/detergent/armpit-stain mixture.

Wonder why it’s fizzing. Wonder what that smell is. Dump it all down the drain pronto! Panic as you google the ill-effects of mixing bleach with every single ingredient you put in that laundry detergent. Find little helpful info. Fels-naptha? Borax? Washing Soda? Oxiclean? Oxiclean. Read right on the Oxiclean label, “Do not mix with products containing ammonia, chlorine bleach, or with other household chemicals.” 

Well, s%@&t!¹   

Frantically run around with your shirt up over your face bandit style, eyes squinted, and arms flapping. Open every window. Turn on every fan and vent. Run the tap water down the drain where you poured your poison, just in case. Who knows what chemicals are floating all over your house, waiting for an unsuspecting victim to breath them in so they can wreak havoc all over your insides!?

Check the baby. Check the hubby. Check the dog. Everyone is still breathing. For now.

Spend another thirty minutes googling chlorine gas poisoning, bleach, and Oxiclean. Spend way too much time reading about chlorine gas poisoning and WWI. Pray really hard that you and your family won’t wake up dead. Throughout this whole process you should intermittently zone out, giving yourself time to mentally compose your hate letter to Oxiclean. (Or Clorox? No, Clorox has been around longer. Oxiclean it is.)

Why, Why, Why would anyone make a laundry detergent that cannot be mixed with bleach, a known laundry detergent!  

Decide not to send that letter. But you’ll definitely be switching detergents. Your mom’s been telling you about a great non-toxic, totally natural one for months. And if you’re going to be doing laundry at midnight again, it’s probably safer anyway.

¹ Shoot. What did you think I meant?

My Mommy Mission Statement

Image by Elisa Nobe via stock.xchange

Since learning I was pregnant with my first baby almost two years ago, I’ve wondered what kind of mom I’d be. I naively thought that by the time my baby was born, I’d have it all figured out. After all, I did have nine months to research. And research I did! I began reading article after article, blog after blog, trying to figure out how to be the best mom I could. My goal, in essence, was to have a “Mommy Mission Statement” written, notarized, and set in stone. In my mind, this mission statement would guide all of my parenting decisions. If I ever became confused, I could just refer back to my core set of beliefs about parenthood and they’d essentially make the right choice for me.

I became obsessed. I read about the Cry It Out method, and I agreed with some of its tenants. It made perfect sense in my mind that if we reward crying with love and cuddles, babies will learn that crying equates to attention. And who wants that!? But then I read about some Eastern cultures that practice co-sleeping and pick up their babies at the first little squawk. Their belief was that this helps children feel more secure and confident. And I certainly wanted my baby to know that I’d always be there for him, good or bad.

I read about spankings vs. time-outs. I read about natural or attachment parenting vs. the Babywise method. I learned how you should breastfeed exclusively until your baby turned one and I read about how you should let your baby direct weaning and feed him solids as soon as he showed interest.  I read that you shouldn’t use pacifiers if you are nursing, but that pacifiers also seem to help prevent SIDS. For every situation no matter how insignificant, I read about two, completely opposite methods of parenting. And I agreed with something from both sides in nearly every case.

My Mommy Mission Statement was not going well at all. Although I learned a great deal about everyone else’s beliefs’ about the right way to parent, I still had no idea what kind of parent I was going to be. I wasn’t sure what I believed about parenting. And just when I stumbled upon something I thought I could come to believe, I read something else that completely contradicted it. And I thought I could believe that too.

Labor and delivery rolled around as it inevitably does, but I still had not figured this motherhood thing out. So I kept reading. I hadn’t yet accepted the fact that there will always be two opposite ways of doing things; or that one of my virtues and vices is the ability to see and agree with both sides. This was useful when I had to write an argumentative essay in high school because I could successfully argue for either side. It will also probably come in handy when I have to mediate fights between children, but it’s really inconvenient when I need to have a strong opinion on something.  It made writing my mission statement incredibly difficult.

Difficult as it was, I felt that this endeavor was too important to quit on. So I kept on reading. I felt kind of like Forrest Gump. I just kept on reading. And reading. And reading. And reading. Until I just didn’t feel like it anymore. And so I stopped.

That point for me was this past month. I did not give up on my mission statement. But reading wasn’t getting me there. I’d read all I could. I read about me. What I, as a parent, should do. Over and over again, I read about me. And the question suddenly occurred to me, “When did parenting become about the parents?”

 When my sister and I were fighting, I don’t remember my mom saying, ”Ok. Now, I’m an attachment parent. What would an attachment parent do in this situation?”  When my baby sister was born, my mom didn’t say, “What sleep training method should I use?” And when her baby cried, my mom didn’t think, “Oh no! If I pick her up now, I’ll  be teaching her that crying gets attention and I’ll ruin her forever!” My mom didn’t do any of those things.

What she did do was love us. She listened to us. She got to know us. My mom recognized that she had three, individual daughters.  She knew and loved each of us, and she let that guide her parenting choices. She didn’t parent Mallary and Shaylee the same way she parented me, because she knew we were different people and we would respond best to different things. My mom and dad’s method of parenting wasn’t about them. It was about us.

So after twenty-three months of obsessing and researching, this realization has finally allowed me to begin writing my Mommy Mission Statement.

“I am a parent committed to raising a healthy, happy, responsible, and kind child. I will do this by being a “child-focused” parent. I will get to know my child as an individual by listening both to what he says, and what he doesn’t say. I will love him no matter what. I recognize that when I have more children, each of them will be different and as such will need different things. I believe this means there is no one right parenting style and I believe that as I listen to, love, and get to know my children, I will learn what type of parent each child needs. My abundant love for them will allow me to be that parent.”

I didn’t end up with the clear cut, notarized mission statement I wanted.  It won’t make decisions for me. It certainly leaves room for me to change my mind.  But it’s not about me. It’s about my children. Don’t get me wrong. I definitely see value in being a self-aware parent. How else will you recognize your mistakes and fix them?  But I see more value in being aware of your child and what they need. I’m not going to stop reading parenting articles. But my goal is to make informed decisions based on what each of my children need and not on what some scholar or parenting expert believes is best. After all, they don’t know my child. I do. I believe the best type of parent is one whose parenting decisions are more focused on their children than themselves. Those are the type of parents I had and that’s the type of parent I choose to be. That’s my Mommy Mission Statement.

Do you have a Mommy Mission Statement? What does/would it include?