The invisible work of a mother

My work as a stay at home mother often feels invisible. As if there's nothing to show for it at the end of the day. Everyone being alive, clothed and fed doesn't seem good enough. What did I do? Where's the finished product? How did two hours go by with seemingly so little getting accomplished?

When I go to my outside of the home job (part-time), there are numbers to show for my productivity. The number of reviews I completed in an eight hour day. The amount of time I spent on each. A clear outcome on each case, whether it was approved or denied. As I complete each one, I can check it off my list.

But on the days I wear my stay at home mom cap, there's a lot of gray area. What was the outcome of that tantrum? Did I handle that well? Have I damaged my kid and his first memory will be of me  yelling after a very long morning? Is it enough that we just barely survived the day alive, clothed and fed? Where's my outcome? Where's my thank you email from my superior saying, "Hey, Terri, thanks for going the extra mile this morning and sticking your guns on getting the toddler to brush her teeth."

Normally I go through my day like a clucking mama hen. Your T-shirt is on backwards. Please hand me the spoon (instead of throwing it across the dining room). Where did I put the grocery list? Please get a pair of socks on.  Familiar? You've read a thousand similar blogs.

But instead of hurdling at velocity speed through the day and collapsing at 9:21 pm on the couch after a very prolonged two hour bedtime routine, I have become an astute observer of my life. Usually all I can manage is zoning out by scrolling mindlessly through Facebook or a TV show, but I've been working on stepping out of my emotions and the drama of the day to really notice what's going on.

One morning I forced myself to really observe myself and my children while I did the dishes after breakfast instead of letting my mind run wild with all the things that had to be done for the day. I became mindful. I counted the interruptions. There were 7 interruption from my tiny people.

Also, at one point my 17 month old was hanging on my leg. At another point she bumped her chin and was crying. I still had not eaten breakfast and it was 10 am. Dishes take an exorbitantly longer amount of time when you are interrupted 7 plus times. I simply noticed this and gave myself some grace. No wonder it feels like I have nothing to show for my day because it took over 2 hours to clean the kitchen, all the while I was attending to my children's needs and then it was time to start lunch and begin the madness all over again. A task that should be simple becomes a mountain.

It would be easy to see the outcome as, "I got the dishes done" if I view it the same way I look at my outside the home job since dishes are the only tangible completed task. However, I soothed my toddler. I redirected my four year old, multiple times. I assisted each with tasks they aren't able to complete independently. I was in constant mental tasking- prioritizing, assessing, processing, evaluating, all so to meet everyone's needs the best I could and keep the home functioning and operating.

No one really sees all this underground work. My little people don't because they're just little, and it's their job to simply be kids.

I don't have anyone to vent to other than the occasional text to another mom, phone barely grasped in my slippery dish soapy hands. However, that's not the same as venting to a colleague for a few minutes in person in the cubicle next door to yours who is in immediate reach and can instantly provide empathy with you since they're in the same boat. A stay at home mom is a lone wolf. There's a lot of talk about tribes. But we're not set up in a culture that's conducive to tribe living. Unless you happen to be lucky enough to live next door to another stay at home mom and can share a mimosa in the backyard morning sun in between temper tantrums.

There's a mental stamina needed in those who stay home with their children. Some days I am baffled as to why it feels so hard. I'm "just" home with my kids. However, when I force myself to step back and observe, I see how mentally, emotionally and physically exhausting it is to stay home as a caregiver to kids. Mentally, the planning, organizing, strategizing, vigilance, and brainstorming solutions. Emotionally being both a nurturer and a sounding board for the wide range of emotions seen in an immature and  still developing brain. Physically there's the lifting, running, protecting, and maintaining safety during temper tantrums.

I see you lone wolf mother. You're not alone. Your work is often invisible but I know all that you do. This blog only touches one percent of it.

Life and Death

I experienced life and death simultaneously. Not my own life or death, but the emotions of it as a witness, intimately connected with one person going through the journey of death and one person's new life and birth. My mother-in-law was dying and I was pregnant with my daughter.

I felt very alone in this unique experience. I tried to explain it and everything fell flat. Few truly understood. Intense joy and equally intense grief at the same time. Excitement and fear. Eager anticipation and dread.

I was frustrated because I could never fully be present with just one experience or the other. The other was always in the back of my mind, making it very confusing. I became very angry. By trying to attend to both, I felt like I was missing everything or failing at it all. While logically I knew I was asking myself to do the impossible- to uphold some perfect ideal of how I wanted to experience both situations, the frustration of it was fierce.

If all I do is allow the grief to flood me and if it consumes my thoughts, I will miss out on my pregnancy. If all I do is focus on the baby and planning and joy, I will miss out on these last moments and the attention and presence I wanted to give my mother-in-law. But to do it both at the same time was a daunting task. I didn't know how.

So I did my best. I switched off and on. Back and forth. When I was focused on one person, my entire focus was on them and I tuned everything out as well as I could. It was the best I could manage. I still have times though when my heart skips a beat and I feel a different loss. That I couldn't be there more for my mother-in-law. That I couldn't be there more for my baby and pregnancy.

One thing it taught me is how common and normal it is to experience two seemingly opposite emotions at the same time. While it might not be that common to experience the extremes that I went through, it's made me aware of how sometime I can feel happy and sad at the same time. Depression and sadness might be in the background. Or vice versa.

Whenever I felt buffeted by the uncontrollable ocean waves of death, I clung to joy and hope of the new life inside of me.

Then just days before my due date my husband's stepmother passed away unexpectedly.
So much death. Three family deaths during the pregnancy.
My grandmother, mother-in-law, and step mother-in-law.

A lack of control.
It was too much to process. Three deaths and an upcoming birth.
I felt a sudden shift. I became hyper-focused on the new life and birth only days away.

I wanted a natural delivery without medications for many reasons but after these deaths, that goal became even more important to me. Despite the physical pain, it was still life. It was pain with a purpose after witnessing pain without purpose-- or seemingly so. It was a way to feel my body healthy and vibrantly working the way it was designed. I viewed the pain as good and purposeful and better understood that pain doesn't have to equal fear.

Despite how painful labor was, it made me feel alive. There was some sort of reassurance in that. I was rooted in my physical self. It was painful but somehow it made me feel more alive.

While I clung to the pregnancy as a light of hope in the midst of what appeared dreary, over a year later I can also see how maybe the deaths prepared me for the "letting go" and trust that is required in labor and delivery of a baby. There was nothing I could do to stop the dying process- one loved one who died slowly and the other in a quick flash. That lack of control was difficult.


No amount of worrying changed it, no amount of research or talking about it, no amount of problem solving, no amount of denial. It was life playing out on its own. It's the same with labor. I did much better with "letting go", trusting my body, riding the wave of physical pain. The less I tightened my body and resisted it, the less pain I perceived. My labor mantras focused on this. My mind had to trust my body for a change.

Birth, life and death formed a perfect circle and had more commonalities than one would think. This might be because death is actually rebirth, a different kind of birth. A beginning instead of solely an end. Maybe birth on earth is an ending that we're unaware of.

*Quote taken from Ram Dass

Mom and toddler hurdles: Let emotions be

My daughter was whining and I was tuning it out, coffee in hand, on the couch. I was irritable. She was irritable. It was the day after vacation and it was an unpleasant post vacation day of unpacking, laundry, and getting back into the routine.

I started saying and doing things that might distract her from whining because I was already cranky and it was grating on my ears, only making me more irritable. I suggested this. Explained that. I was trying to make her happy. I did a lot of talking.

I realized then how absurd it was. I was cranky. Why couldn't she just be cranky? It didn't make sense to me because we had just had a really nice vacation but there it was. So I let it be.

I said, "I'm cranky and you're cranky."
That's it.
Let the emotion be.
Don't judge it or hide it or reprimand it or cover it up with superficiality.

So we were two crankys with a vacation hangover.

I learned two lessons.

1. Experiencing what it's like to ride the wave of an emotion instead of burying it.

2. Allowing my daughter to have a negative emotion and not becoming anxious over it.

Maybe the high of a good vacation is followed by an equivalent low.
Maybe emotions don't need to be controlled, no matter what the age. If given the chance, they make an appearance, pass through, and then dissipate.

The Value in Unmet Goals

You always hear about when people meet their goals, but rarely do you hear them talk about failed goals.

At the beginning of 2018 we decided to make a family goal of hiking 50 miles together as a family. Separate ventures were not included. All four of us had to be on the hike. My daughter decorated 50 popsicle sticks, each one representing a mile that would be placed in a jar after a hike.

We hiked 22 miles together as a family. Last spring was cold and rainy, making it difficult to take a toddler and baby on long walks and the summer was sweltering hot and humid,  many 95 plus degree days, once again, making it difficult with small children in tow. Most of those miles were achieved during the fall.

After making the goal we quickly learned that it would have been easier to achieve if we looked cumulatively at how many miles my husband took the girls in the running stroller and my walks with them while he was at work. However, the aspect of it being family time was important to us, and not just about achieving a high number. We also learned that uncontrollable factors (such as weather, unexpected life events etc) can easily affect goals or make them harder to grasp.

On New Years Day 2019, my four year old counted the popsicle sticks and I felt proud to think we had walked the equivalent distance of a northern suburb of our city to a southern suburb. I felt proud that we had even been mindful enough to set a goal like this when we had a five month old baby and that we stuck to tracking it, even when we realized come October that we wouldn't reach our number in mind.

I'm happy that this is something we do as a family and hope that my four-year-old learned something from it. Not just about setting goals. Not about achieving them. But rather about being intentional with your time, quality time, and being mindful of what you are doing. Counting the miles not only motivated us to hike more, but slowed my awareness that it's something we enjoy as a family and how many miles we went.

Sometimes the process or journey really is more inspiring than the destination.