Being a MUM means being the support-team for your whole family. Everyday. In every way. If I don't do that 'job' of being the support person.. then everything pretty much falls apart!
I get it that the 'pit-crew' for a successful car-racing team are just as important, if not more important than the actually driver.
When I became a mum - I essentially became the pit-crew... and I guess my husband is the driver... but I have never really been able to accept it. (I'm an AWFUL passenger-seat driver!!)
I was talking to my friend the other day, having a heart-to-heart about how I feel - and we were both very much on the same page as we are both creative people struggling with our creative businesses and juggling that with the demands of motherhood.
I realized that in my head there is "ME" and there is "me as a MUM" and that the two roles didn't really sit well together... I saw them separately somewhat - or at least with some sort of major struggle between the two.
Perhaps it is just today.. perhaps I will forget it all tomorrow.. But I do feel as though I am finally seeing things differently for the first time - the way I 'should' see them perhaps.
My parents have always told me: "Being a mum is a full-time job" - and I have brushed the comment off... I have wanted to deny it... I have wanted to be "Independent Me" who could still work, and have my own unique identity that is separate from me being a mum.
Yes I have my business that I have struggled and worked so hard for... But I feel that I can now "let go" of wanting to control that so much, of wanting that to define me.. I feel like I can let it exist in the position that it needs to exist - and that is BELOW my role as a mum, and not linked so much to my own identity... just more as what I choose to do, what I am doing, and what I am slowly growing - at the pace that I can manage it around my family commitments.
I don't want to struggle so much anymore.
I want to look after myself. I want to be happy. I want to be a loving and fun mum, and even (GROAN) someone who keeps the household in order and cleans up, prepares meals, runs around doing chores and errands and doing all the things that a mum does to keep everything together and functioning for my family.
Yes, there are a zillion and one different definitions of what it is to be a mother.. And a working mum is no less a mum than one who stays at home full-time. But just for me - I think I have been fighting with it all for too long. I haven't been being the mum I am supposed to be... I've been trying to do too much - and at the end of the day I have been suffering hugely.
I am lucky that my husband earns enough money to support the family... I am unlucky that he has MS and thus the future of his health is hugely questionable... But right now, I am going to stop trying to burn the candle at both ends... I am going to ease up on myself - and be a fun and happy mum who does what she can - and gives herself time to enjoy life too!
I was working too hard - working myself into the ground, and it was just horrible! Time to ease up on myself. Be kinder to me, and to let the too high-expectations just completely go: Goodbye!
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