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Guilt…the 🎁 that keeps on giving.
”The Grass is Greener on the other side…”
But it rarely {if ever} is.
I’ve recently gone back to work after having a few months off (How to make redundancy sound glamorous 101…!), and by recently, I literally mean less than 7 days ago. I’m back to a job that I know well and am bloody good at, a job I really enjoy with some
I’ll bloody tell you why…..because I have a severe case of the Guilty’s!
The Guilty’s. The MF’in Guilty’s. And this is not just any old guilt, but Mothers Guilt. FML.
Mothers Guilt. Sounds dramatic, right? Sounds like another Hashtag Mama (#Mama) complaining about her seemingly perfectly happy life, fulfilling job and strong support network, but no. JUST NO. NO NO NO NO NO.
This guilt that I speak of here, is a gut wrenching, nausea inducing, tear-jerking emotional roller-coaster of an emotion that is caused by said Mama actually wanting to live ’Her’ life. (I’m certainly not pigeonholing women here, Men can absolutely feel this pressure but I feel Men have a better
For me the biggest issue and my biggest guilt is relying on others to help you – whether it be with anything from washing to childcare…and even though by ”others” I mean the Parents (Grandparents), who willingly and enjoyingly**, may I add, support and help out, I still struggle with needing their help, as if it’s still the 1950s and I need to be a housewife, looking after my children and husband, lovingly preparing made-from scratch home-cooked meals and living in a
**I may have made this word up.
Newsflash and ’Note to self’, it’s not! And I don’t think it will ever be again. And this modern day is expensive. So even though the logic is all there, black and white, that it’s beneficial for both parentals to work, why the frigg is it still uncomfortable and what the actual (!) is all this self resentment about it all?
I suppose it’s a bit of a double edged sword and if you’ve ever felt like this, you’ll completely understand what I’m
*You work to provide for your family. *You work to improve your mental health. *You work to better yourself. *You work for your future.
But; You feel Anxious because of the guilt of not being there for every tea time, every school pick up, every party, every school drop off…the list goes on.
*The Anxiety causes distraction. *The Anxiety causes pain. *The Anxiety causes doubt. *The Anxiety causes you to hate yourself for the decisions you’ve made for your future. *The Anxiety makes it feels like a shitty game that cannot be
So what the actual fuck do we do about this???
My short answer is, not much, unfortunately. But does that mean that you should beat yourself up about it?
Abso-Fucking-lutely NOT.🤦🏻♀️🖤
I want to think that I am setting a sterling example for my daughter. A hard-working Mama who would fly to the moon and back for her. I KNOW that when they are older, they won’t remember the sacrifices you made for them BUT I do believe that life is all about moments. Moments of love, moments of happiness,
Thinking back to my childhood, do I remember my Dad working all the hours under the Sun? Not really. I know he did it, but it’s not what I ”remember”. What I ”remember” are the holidays, the funny stories, the caravan, the times he used to get drunk on Strongbow, wrestling with the Caravan Awning in blistering heat as we all looked on and peed-our-pants in hysterics.
So take the guilt. accept it. Understand it (if you can.)
A friend messaged me with the following;
”We all feel guilt for different reasons when we are a mother, but whatever we do, we do it in the best interest of our children. Always.”
And she is bloody right.
Don’t beat yourself up Mama . . . I need to keep reminding myself of this.
Until next time.
x
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XOX
