Parenting is hard. I don’t care if you’re a super hero with as many working appendages as an octopus or cthulu, you never have enough time or physical resources to complete all the necessary tasks much less have those Instagram moments that are perpetrated in magazines and on Facebook.
So how can I, she with less working appendages than the average humanoid, actually do this gig called motherhood? Easily, that’s how.
Wait, just a minute… One more second. OK, I had to stop laughing. *giggle*
My primary weapon against chaos is a schedule. With my health being a coin toss on an hourly basis that schedule has to be somewhat flexible and extremely forgiving for those days I just can’t even. I have to be forgiving and flexible. Not something that comes naturally to my personality. Won’t even try to pretend otherwise because I don’t want to have some person believe that and then experience the epic adult tantrum and meltdown when things aren’t The Way It Is Supposed To Be.
That’s really where the struggle lies, being forgiving with myself. It’s so easy to sit inside my head and disparage my “feeble” attempts and lay the blame on my disability. It’s so terrifyingly easy to not count all the things I do, all my successes, all those moments of happiness that I’m too busy participating in to worry about taking a picture of.
For a while I felt a bit isolated because of my physical challenges. Then I started really paying attention to the other mothers that I know. Holy smokes, a lot of them felt similarly. Talk about the great equalizer, being a parent really means everyone is on the same field with the same penalties and referees (children).
Because kids don’t care.
There’s the secret. They don’t. They don’t care if you cleaned the toilet this week, they don’t care if you throw some cheese cubes and apple slices together and call it lunch.
They. Don’t. Care.
You, yes you, the parent cares about the toilet and the food and the state of your hair and when the last time you remembered to sanitize whatever it is that you personally care is clean.
Next time you’re feeling less than acceptable, look your child in the eyes and tell them that you love them. I’ll guarantee your child will light up, provided they aren’t in the awful teen years and feel embarrassed by the knowledge of how they came into existence.
