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Debauchery = De-Bitchery
I am spending a long weekend on a friend’s houseboat with 15 other adults. We all have children at home and this is our weekend to cut loose and act like college kids again. Needless to say, it is our annual weekend of debauchery. We drink too much, act silly and laugh hard. We come home exhausted, hung over and rejuvenated.
I am just going to say it – if you have kids, you need a vice: alcohol, chocolate, Prozac – something! We love our children more than anything in the world but they test our patience, steal our sleep, and limit our freedom. While they are worth every sacrifice, we have to have time to let loose. For me, my weekend of drunken antics will scale back the bitchiness that builds up from juggling a busy life.
I have written about my irritation with stay at home moms who judge working moms. But stay at home mom’s might even need a break more than me – at least I have 8-10 hours per day of different stress. Whether you’re a working mom or your whole focus is raising kids (very admirable job), you go crazy from time to time (my time hits daily!). As my wise friend Sarah says, “parenting is only tough if you care”. Every mom I know cares a lot and that makes it the hardest job in the world, one which requires de-bitchery.
So this weekend I will drink to all moms in need of de-bitchery!
Being Self-Critical
I was chatting with a friend today and she was telling me her fear that someday someone will discover she is all smoke and mirrors. She was doubting her abilities in her profession. The irony is that this woman is amazing! She is top of her game in her career and is one of my personal role models. She is incredibly smart, without being a know-it-all.
How could a woman like that doubt herself?
One answer is that part of her success can be attributed to being self-critical. Most self-critical people I know, including myself, strive for improvement and never over-state our results. This becomes a bigger pitfall if you compare yourself to someone who oversells their accomplishments – it becomes easy to doubt our level of success.
We also hold ourselves to a higher standard that we hold others. I look at some of my friends and am in awe of all that they do and am surprised when they say the same thing about me. We lovingly give our friends slack, why not do it for ourselves?
My lesson here is that if you’re going to be self-critical, you need to balance that with a healthy dose of self-appreciation!
New Support Group
I am starting a new support group called, “I am a good mother with a full time job and doing the best I can”.
There will be no support group meetings because we have no time, we will not meet in person, because we never get to leave our houses/offices. Instead we will sit in our offices drinking a glass of wine (or stronger) reminding ourselves that we can only do what we can do and it’s ok that we don’t live and breathe our children 24 hours a day.
We will understand that full time moms who make stupid comments like, “Do you think your son is having a hard time because you travel so much?” are simply jealous because they know we have fulfilling careers or that they are too dumb to realize how simplistic their lives are. We will be able to share our work accomplishments with women who get it and don’t think we’re bragging or suggesting we’re more important.
We will celebrate our friends, who are stay at home moms, who help with our kids. We cherish these women who provide balance to our crazy lives.
Finally, we will try to keep ourselves from working until midnight to make up for the fact that we are going to try and watch the occasional t-ball practice or sneak in a quick run, to compete with the co-worker who is single, childless and doesn’t have wonderful friends to give them balance!
Wanna Join?
Pay It Forward
Slightly Off-Balance 