Who’s feeling a little overwhelmed right now?
I’m over here raising two hands and jumping up and down. If you’ve been surviving on Amazon Prime, grocery pickups, White Claws, and TikTok videos, then you know that being a mom lately has been tough. I’ve found myself hiding in my bathroom trying not to cry on more occasions than I care to admit, and I’ve had to have way too many heavy conversations with my kids than I ever expected. Anyone else out there feeling the squeeze right now?
Being a mom is tough right now.
We’ve had schools closed, catastrophic health fears, government lockdowns, and a zillion pieces of conflicting information thrown at us for the past four months. We have had to figure out how to do our jobs from home, do our children’s school from home, do all of our shopping from home, and then try not to lose our minds while we were forced to stay at home. We’ve been forced to explain masks, germs, and why grandma can’t come to visit us for a while, why sports are canceled, summer vacation canceled, and maybe even football in the fall canceled.
Many families have been impacted financially. Some families have been impacted medically. Most, if not all families, have been impacted mentally by the stress and strain of it all. And I’m sure none of us will forget the great toilet paper shortage of 2020, right?
And that’s just talking about coronavirus.
Just when most of us started to think we were maybe coming out of the shadows of 2020, we are hit again. This time with division among races. Friendships tested and political lines drawn in the sand.
Friends and family battling one another on social media over things that are complicated and difficult to discuss in person, let alone from behind a keyboard. Things like racism that some of us moms know firsthand and some of us moms have seen only on tv.
And again, we have heavy conversations with our children. The fears and the tears of trying to make sense of the senseless. Ugliness and disappointment. Worry about our futures.
And so it’s been tough to be a mom these past few months. We’ve been tested in new ways and dealt with things that we never imagined dealing with when that ball dropped on December 31, 2019. But here we are, mommas, and we are doing this thing.
So for that, I’d like to give you a big dose of encouragement:
Keep on keepin’ on!
Reach out to your community of moms when you need a little pick-me-up, and look for the beauty in each day. Remind yourself that you are a part of living history, and no one has it all together right now.
Look for the teachable moments with your children. Teach them about patience when your grocery order is missing the marshmallows, kindness when you say hello to a neighbor outside, respect when you listen to others with care and concern, and dignity when you treat people who are different from you how you’d like to be treated. Talk about social class and racism. Speak to them about the science of germs and how to keep our bodies healthy. Use these challenging times to teach your children to be informed, kind humans.
Raising kind humans is what being a mom is really all about.
And even when being a mom is tough and our circumstances are less than ideal, it’s still, without a doubt, the best job in the world.
