I'm just not cut out to be a housewife.
Anyone who knows me is probably not surprised to hear this. Maybe reading this blog has even led you to believe this. Personally, I thought I was doing a pretty good job housewifing. Until one day a couple months ago, when I realized that I was miserable.
I will spare you the details of my rude awakening now, with the promise that they will find their way into my writing in the future. Looking back, I can see their seeds planted in the writing I did in the past.
In the present, I'm at a very convoluted intersection - they're common here in Massachusetts - trying to figure out which direction to go in. I'm about to KonMari the ever-living crap out of my house in a quest to determine what sparks joy in my life. I'm ready to part with all the baggage I've been dragging around, and even some books, so you know things are serious.
Until I get this sorted out, I remain a
-Real Housewife of the North Shore
Thursday, May 25, 2017
Sunday, May 14, 2017
A Thought for Mother's Day
This isn't an original thought - I'm sure I've read it somewhere in the dozens of parenting blogs that are out there - but being a mother isn't a job.
People always say, "being a mother is a full-time job," but, it's not. It's not a job at all. It's like being a woman or a man, or your race, or where you're from - when you become a mother, it becomes part of your identity. It's not a job, it's who you are.
Maybe for some people, their job is part of their identity. They think of themselves as being Author or Software Engineer or Gardener. That's all well and good. That doesn't mean that every person whose identity involves gardening is employed as a gardener, though.
There are mothers who have careers, mothers who work three jobs to pay the bills, mothers who stay home and wipe snotty noses and read books and cut crusts off sandwiches all day. There are mothers who are PTO presidents. There are mothers who never attend school conferences. There are mothers who are carefree, mothers who worry, mothers who bake, mothers who order take-out. The ways in which we provide for our offspring vary greatly, but being a mother is not defined by those details.
I read a book many years ago, before I became a mother. I can't remember the name, but it's stuck with me forever. The woman in it regrets becoming a mother. She hates that this is now part of her identity - she hates being a mother so much that she kills her daughter and runs away. The book is about her husband trying to find her, and when he finally does, at the end of the book, she tells him that it was all for nothing- even when our children are gone, we are still a mother.
That's not in any definition of a job.
If being a mother isn't a job, then what is it? I don't know that there are words to describe it. It's a little bit like being God, I think. You create life, and you nurture it, and you make sacrifices for it, and it curses you and frustrates you to no end, but you keep loving it, and you hurt when it cries, and you want to smooth the paths for it, but at the end of the day, it makes its own choices, and you know the whole time you're nurturing it that someday it will leave you.
You choose your friends and you choose your life partners, but you don't choose your children. (I'd argue that even with adoption - you don't choose a child based on their various merits in the same way you choose friends and life partners - but I haven't adopted so I am no expert on this). And yet you are so invested in their successes that you always have to be careful to remember that they have their own identities. Which is made more difficult by the fact that they forever change your identity - you are now and will always be a Mother.
-A Real Housewife (and Mother) of the North Shore
People always say, "being a mother is a full-time job," but, it's not. It's not a job at all. It's like being a woman or a man, or your race, or where you're from - when you become a mother, it becomes part of your identity. It's not a job, it's who you are.
Maybe for some people, their job is part of their identity. They think of themselves as being Author or Software Engineer or Gardener. That's all well and good. That doesn't mean that every person whose identity involves gardening is employed as a gardener, though.
There are mothers who have careers, mothers who work three jobs to pay the bills, mothers who stay home and wipe snotty noses and read books and cut crusts off sandwiches all day. There are mothers who are PTO presidents. There are mothers who never attend school conferences. There are mothers who are carefree, mothers who worry, mothers who bake, mothers who order take-out. The ways in which we provide for our offspring vary greatly, but being a mother is not defined by those details.
I read a book many years ago, before I became a mother. I can't remember the name, but it's stuck with me forever. The woman in it regrets becoming a mother. She hates that this is now part of her identity - she hates being a mother so much that she kills her daughter and runs away. The book is about her husband trying to find her, and when he finally does, at the end of the book, she tells him that it was all for nothing- even when our children are gone, we are still a mother.
That's not in any definition of a job.
If being a mother isn't a job, then what is it? I don't know that there are words to describe it. It's a little bit like being God, I think. You create life, and you nurture it, and you make sacrifices for it, and it curses you and frustrates you to no end, but you keep loving it, and you hurt when it cries, and you want to smooth the paths for it, but at the end of the day, it makes its own choices, and you know the whole time you're nurturing it that someday it will leave you.
You choose your friends and you choose your life partners, but you don't choose your children. (I'd argue that even with adoption - you don't choose a child based on their various merits in the same way you choose friends and life partners - but I haven't adopted so I am no expert on this). And yet you are so invested in their successes that you always have to be careful to remember that they have their own identities. Which is made more difficult by the fact that they forever change your identity - you are now and will always be a Mother.
-A Real Housewife (and Mother) of the North Shore
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