Mommy Blog

My cousin, Jen, is working in a PhD program in English. One of her current projects is to follow a number of "mommy bloggers." I started thinking about this blog. I'm a mommy. I have this blog. Many, if not most of my entries are about my children. But I wouldn't consider myself a mommy blogger, I don't follow other mommy bloggers, I'm not aware of the culture or the philosophy of those mommy's who blog... like on a regular basis.

But my point, should there need to be one, is that I don't know how to be a great mom. I know how to be the mom I am and I feel like I'm failing miserably. I am many titles - and while mom is just one of them, I do feel like it is one of the more important ones. I'm also a wife, and a PTA Treasurer and a Den Leader and a friend and a daughter and an employee... I'm not sure how women today juggle it all successfully.

Tonight at our Lenten Small Group we talked about the decisions we make. Struggling between "yes" and "no". Our group discussed the difficulties of saying "No". It's a skill that is learned and I've done some of it over the past few... months, I guess. But when I'm overwhelmed with everything I don't know where to cut back. I don't know how to say "no" when I've already committed a "yes".

And then there's the guilt. The guilt that comes of not doing something well that I think might have an impact on my children's lives, or their upbringing, or their education.

There is really only one area in my life where I feel like I truly succeed and that's at my job. While being good and enjoying one's job is not a luxury everyone can afford, I'm grateful that I am and I do.

Why can't I translate that success to the rest of my life? Why can't I be great at making new friends, or keeping the house clean, or having patience with my children? Why does success seem to narrow it's focus to one area. And why, as a 21st century mom, is success in one area just... not enough?

I don't know how to get healthy. To get to a place in life where I can accept the things I need to do, and accept the things I can't get to. I feel like I swing between extremes, either completely productive to the exclusion of all else, or completely lazy to the exclusion of all else. That's not healthy, right? That's not balance. Isn't balance what we strive for?