We hear a lot lately about women encouraging other women to take time for self-care. Do you, boo! It’s not a new concept. It’s just not one that many of us moms have ever felt comfortable talking about out in the open. It was our little dirty mom secret.
Sure, we all deserve to be taken care of and loved but moms are mostly expected to be martyrs and sacrifice everything for their children and spouses … by our moms and their moms before them, or maybe just that criticizing mom version of ourselves that lives in our head. Just another one of those impossible misogynistic standards society has imposed upon women.
It’s been ingrained into our DNA that if we’re not sacrificing everything for our families, are we even moms at all? Can we even call ourselves women? And if we are, we’re probably not very good at it. The audacity to think that we are more important than those we love. Who do we think we are … men?
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Life’s too short for this way of thinking.
We need to live our lives in a way that takes us into consideration, at the very least, if not puts us first in our own minds. No woman should be afraid to do what makes her happy. More importantly, we need to stop raising our little girls to believe that their happiness revolves on other people and remove the stigma of caring about themselves.
Being self-aware and treating ourselves as well as we treat the people we love should not be taboo. Instead, it should be encouraged and celebrated. Treating ourselves well shouldn’t be an exception; it should be the rule. "Happy" is not a dirty word, and life is too short for special occasions. Every day you are alive is a special occasion.
I love strawberry ice cream, always have and always will.
But I got married and had my daughters, and no one else likes strawberry ice cream (there’s a lot of things they don't like that I like) and so, I never buy strawberry ice cream. I haven't in more than 15 years.
Then one day it hit me: I like strawberry ice cream, and I make sure my family all have their needs and wants met — why am I not buying myself strawberry ice cream? It costs $5. What's the reason for denying myself this little luxury? Now I buy the strawberry ice cream. That simple act opened a floodgate, and now I ask myself, what do YOU (me) want?
It's not that I don't consider my family. It's that I consider me, too.
They never asked me to deprive myself of strawberry ice cream. They never would. They love me, and they want me to be happy. Why can’t I do the same for myself? Little by little over the past year, I've started to pay more attention to what I want and what I need.
I’ve started to listen to my own body, mind, and spirit.
I’ve made myself a priority in my own life. I’ve started taking time to have at-home spa days, listen to the music I want to listen to in the car, watch movies and shows that I want to watch, and go where I want to go on vacation.
It’s not that I don’t consider my family and their wants and needs, but I’ve made my thoughts, feelings, and opinions carry just as much weight in my heart as theirs do.
I've decided that giving myself permission to choose myself was permission to be less stressed, happier, and better for everyone else involved.
"Doing you" is not being selfish; it's the best thing you can do for your entire family. No one wants you to be an unhappy mom or wife, and you deserve to be treated as well as you treat everyone else in the house. Being a mom should not require us to be martyrs, and that starts with us changing the narrative on being women.
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It was hard to shift my way of thinking after being selfless and ignoring my own desires for so long (it was like second nature), but it wasn’t impossible.
You can do it too if you try. Next time you want to do something that you want to do, go somewhere you want to go, or eat something you want to eat, do it! It’s not called being selfis — it’s called being human. Life’s too short to not eat the strawberry ice cream.
