I've said it before and I'll say it again: Taking a shower, eating, and going to the bathroom by ourselves is not the self-care that soothes a mom's soul. Those, my friend, are basic human needs that need tending to. And yet everyone out there seems to advise me to take a longer sip of my coffee in the morning in order to "refill my cup" when I express extreme burnout.
Thanks a lot. I wasn't talking about my literal damn mug, Karen.
But the truth is, for quite a while I've been running on fumes that were solely stolen from those finite moments. Recently, I decided enough was enough.
My 3-year-old son is in day care for my work day, so when he was home, I felt like I needed to make it the toddler show. I've always been a "play on the floor" kind of parent, one who felt like taking a minute for herself was neglectful to her child. I felt extreme guilt doing anything that didn't center or involve him during his waking hours.
This meant I put anything that I couldn't involve him in on the back burner.
If I was cooking dinner, he was right there making a mess alongside me. If I wanted to take a shower, guess who was watching my phone on the floor? I'd save the deep cleans for naps and bedtimes, the laundry, the bill paying, and just go from there.
When the pandemic happened, this got 100 times worse. My husband is a very hands-on man, and has never denied me respite when I needed it; it was my own mom-guilt fueled self-inflicted burden. My husband, however, did not struggle this way in the slightest. If he needed to leave the room, he just … did it. Without checking if everything was settled before he did, or if anyone else was in anyway really impacted by his absence. If my son was watching a cartoon on the couch, he'd whip out his Nintendo Switch and start playing. I was in awe at his audacity.
I hated him and was impressed by him at the same time.
The problem with going 100 miles per hour? You eventually lose control of the car.
I couldn't fit it all in. Laundry piled to the literal ceiling. I even stopped washing my face at night, simply because I was too tired to lift the soap to my face. I burned all the way out.
When I tearfully unloaded on my husband, he was a little baffled.
"But, why do you feel like it's all on you? I am happy to sit with him [our son] while you get some stuff done so you can relax at night," he said.
So, I took him up on his offer.
I started by sneaking away to fold laundry, and evolved into cooking dinner without my tiny sous chef.
In those moments, just like I had done for my husband, my son was happily curled into his dad's lap playing with Lego. Things were … fine. My kid didn't feel hopelessly abandoned or ignored and I got to knock off things on my evolving to-do list. And when I could quickly finish a task up, I got to focus my free time more on self-care the way I love to, like with art projects or YA novels.
"Inconveniencing" my family for moments at a time ended up being the lesser of evils.
It made me realize quantity time without quality isn't the way to go. Being with him and infinitely stressed out was doing no one any favors. The minute I started making room for myself in my own life, I became a better mother, wife, and friend. My husband and I are a team, and I shouldn't feel like I am putting him out to get things done for our family. He certainly never saw it that way, and never thought bad of me for it either.
Mom-guilt is so debilitating. But keeping in mind I have the right to do basic human-need things and leisure time is the change I needed in 2022, and I hope every other mom out there is able to make an effort to prioritize her needs, too.
