Thriving In Unbalanced Motherhood
I get SO tired of seeing and hearing women tell other women that “balance in motherhood is a myth”.
That is false. Balance is not a myth. It’s possible. You just have to do it right…
I mean…okay? But I’m already doing a million other things wrong so adding one more thing that I somehow have to do right just doesn’t help me. But — I know Amber, so I thought there was something I was missing. And it turns out there was. Amber has redefined balance for herself and her motherhood journey.
And while I love that for her and for every mom that it helps, it doesn’t work for me.
I am a word person. I love words. Writing is how I process and how I discover what I think. This is wonderful, but one of the downsides is that once my brain decides a word means something — that is all it’s ever going to mean. And this can make growth and healing hard — probably much harder than they need to be.
But if you, like me, find the concept of balance impossible please know that you aren’t alone and you aren’t doing anything wrong.
Seesaws balance. Scales balance. Equations balance. People? Relationships? Lives? Not so much.
I’m never going to give my kids a balanced amount of attention. Adam and I are never going to get to a balance in who does what around the house, with the kids, in our relationship. I’m not even striving for a balance between my work and my personal life.
Someone will always need more, some projects will always need more, something will always be a priority. Right now my daughter is super clingy physically and my son needs a lot of verbal redirection and praise. If I worried about how much I’m cuddling her vs him and tried to balance that they wouldn’t get what they need.
I’ve talked before about how Adam and I both take days “off” from parenting. Before the pandemic, we’d do this by finding a hotel deal we could afford in our town and one of us would leave the house for a weekend. And for a long time, we tried to keep these days off even. I’d take a weekend one month and he’d go the next. But the truth is that I need more time alone than he does. It isn’t balanced, it just IS. And when I started taking more time away things got better at home and he was able to more fully enjoy his time away when he did take it instead of using it simply to recover.
I don’t want a balanced marriage — I want one where we are both dedicated 100% to fulfilling the needs of our family. I don’t want a balanced life. I want a full and thriving life. Sometimes that means late nights working on a project that will help support my family, sometimes it means concentrated time with my kids, sometimes it means doing deep work in therapy, sometimes it means seducing my husband. It very, very rarely ever comes close to anything that looks like evenness or balance.
When I let go of the ideas of “having it all” and “work/life balance” and “50/50 partnerships” it opened me up to new ideas of flow, alignment, and cycles. For me, cycles of focus are what works best. My primary responsibility is to care for my physical, mental, and emotional health because no one else can do that. Then my focus cycles through whoever or whatever needs my time, care, and attention then.
This has been especially helpful during the last eight months where we haven’t left the house. As our circumstances and needs have changed we’ve been able to change with them. Sometimes I’ve needed more support, sometimes it’s one of the kids, sometimes it’s Adam. We talk about how we’re doing, where we’re hurting, what would bring us joy.
There is a running balance sheet in the back of my mind, always. I can tell you who has done more work in the house (Adam) and who has done more emotional labor with the kids (me) and who has slept in more mornings (me) and on and on and on. That’s a remnant from my own mother, who constantly bemoaned how much she gave and how unfair it was that no one was giving to her. She read all those articles in the 90’s about work/life balance and “how to have it all”. It didn’t work for so many reasons. And because of her experience I’ve worked hard to let balance go. To center myself in my life so that I can give freely and happily to those around me.
Whatever words you use, however you find meaning and purpose and healing and joy in your life I am here for that. Whatever I can do to help you along your motherhood journey — I have your back 100%.
But, for me, balance is still bullshit.
Originally published at https://www.graemeseabrook.com on December 11, 2020.
