As a mom of five young children, the whole “Wow, you must be busy!” seems a little anticlimactic. I am not busy! I am a supersonic jet who ran out of fuel long ago. I’m running on fumes people! I am the little lady (who looks far too young to have this many kids, gasp!) at the mom and tot groups with all my little ducklings in a row who looks a little frazzled and dazed. It takes me a few minutes to dig up my adult words so I can engage in mature conversation. Just bear with me!
PIN ME!
I have had so many moms, flailing alongside me in the trenches of motherhood, ask me how I can find contentment in, well… this! How can you be content when you feel like you are barely surviving? How can you be content when the same mundane tasks are repeated day after day after day? How can you be content when no matter how hard you try, your kids continually fight and bicker and whine and cry and you feel like a firefighter, just putting out the fires? How can you be content when you MISS your job, quietly sitting at a desk sipping your coffee and tip tapping away at a computer? How can you be content when you used to be recognized, people used to know your NAME?!?!?! You used to be appreciated. You used to have a sense of individuality. Now you live for all these little people, your husband, your home… is there anything left?
How do you find contentment in the mundane?
THIS is the crux of motherhood.
[tweetthis remove_hidden_hashtags=”true”]I found contentment in my chaos by letting go of who I used to be and accepting who I was![/tweetthis]
I let go of my dreams.
I found contentment as a mother by letting go of my dreams (women everywhere are gasping in reproach). Notice that I didn’t say “give up on,” I still dream my friends. In fact, these dreams and hopes and aspirations are part of what gets me through the daily grind! However I let go of the expectation that they would be now! I let go of the injustice I was feeling towards my life. I stopped viewing my children, my house, my husband as something that was holding me back and instead viewed them as the NOW. My dreams will have their time–> but it is easy to forget that I just so happen to be living one of them!
I found contentment by letting go of the injustice I was feeling towards my life.
[tweetthis remove_hidden_hashtags=”true”]I don’t want to be so focused on what I DON’T have that I miss the fulness of what I have today[/tweetthis]
I let go of my need to perform.
I found contentment as a mother by letting go of obligation. Sometimes you don’t realize how compelled you are by something until you give it up. I felt a need to perform, that what I was doing was not enough. In my heart I knew the answer, in my head even I KNEW the answer. But somehow I still mumbled when I told people that I was “just” a stay at home mom. I felt judged, I felt like there was this cosmic expectation on me to “not settle.” I finally found contentment as a mother when I came to realize that it was my legacy, my greatest achievement. I let go of what other people thought of me and how that was impacting my happiness, and I found joy in the mundane.
I found beauty in the chaos.
I found contentment in acceptance.
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