Mom Guilt
There are days that I struggle, sometimes even weeks. I try so hard to be a loving wife, a great mom, an exemplary employee, creative in my blog posts, succinct, meaningful, and persuasive in my vlog, diligent about posting multiple times per week, successful in book sales, and effective in helping working women. It's exhausting. I have been beating myself up for days because I wasn't consistent in posting last week. It's weeks like this that I feel as if I am failing on all fronts. I am 26 weeks pregnant, have a 1.5 year old boy, a husband, a fulltime job, and everything seemed so overwhelming last week because I had an overflowing work schedule. I knew going into last week that I would need to prioritize my life, so I listened to my intuition and took some things off my plate.
No matter what, my husband and son come first. Every day I do my best to end work by 4:00 p.m. so that I have 2.5 uninterrupted hours with my family before Gus goes to bed. After bath time and evening snuggles are over, I open my computer back up. While Gus naps on Saturdays, I prep my videos and blog posts so that my weekdays can run like normal and nothing interferes with Mommy/Wifey time. Everything is carefully planned. Last weekend I was so exhausted from the workweek that I decided to take a break. Even if I plan for interruptions in my perfectly crafted schedule, I still feel like a failure.
I thrive off of challenge, responsibility, and short deadlines. I love the thought of being able to handle it all and despise every second I realize I can't. I can't tell you how many times I have sat in a goals setting meeting with one of my employees and said to them, "Ok so what will you actually accomplish this year?". Bright eyed, they curiously look at me and ask, "What do you mean?". I am happy to see ambition and that my employees are reaching for the moon, but I often have to respond, "It looks like you are promising the world, but might be forgetting that you still have a full time job on top of this. How much of this do you think is realistic?" I watch them laugh to themselves and come back to reality and we work together to set realistic, challenging goals together. As a wife and a mom I often forget to do that for myself as well. I'm a dreamer, so the term realistic is often hard for me to grasp when I am setting personal goals for myself. I typically forget to ask for help.
So often we, as women, try and handle everything ourselves. We take ourselves to the point where we can't handle anymore at work and eventually explode. We have the ability to come to a point in the workplace where we can communicate that we can't handle anymore on our plate, so why can we not do the same in the home life? Why is it too much for us to ask our husbands for help or realize that it's ok for the dishes to sit in the sink for three days or push off laundry so long that you get down to your final pair of underwear? I always like to make lists to help me realize everything it is that I am trying to tackle. When I do this it helps me prioritize with my husband and agree on what will and will not get done in the home life for the week, as well as identify where I need his support. Whether you are at work or home, you have a team. Don't forget that delegating will not only free up your time, but will allow others to gain new skillsets - even if they aren't done exactly as you would it.
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