How to Find Your Way as a Stay at Home Mom (A Series)
Mom life did not turn out to be the blissful picture of reality that I imagined. In all honesty, I have fought and struggled to be at peace with my stay at home mom life. There are times I think I need to just get a job already. But there's another part of me that really wants to make this work. Slowly, I'm beginning to learning to find my way as a stay at home mom. Here's how.
Letting Go of a Pinterest Perfect Mom Life
I have an image of what I believe a good mom should look like. And Pinterest certainly hasn't helped. This mom naturally enjoys the stay at home lifestyle. She loves the slower pace. This perfect mom cuddles and touches her baby for hours. She is patient and crafty. Science experiments and paintings line the walls of her home from countless hours of these activities with her children. Somehow she knows just how to keep those activities from becoming too messy.As much as I want to, I cannot live up to this ideal. Honestly, I don't want to. I enjoy a faster, task-oriented pace of life. Being the highly sensitive person that I am, I don't like to be touched too much. I like a neat and clean environment and feel rather anxious about paint getting on my hands, let alone all over the floor. And while I have given crafts and science projects a try, I usually end up yelling, frustrated, and then exhausted.
Obviously, my reality is not lining up with my ideal image of a mother. So I have begun experimenting and playing to find out who I am as a stay at home mom. Let me tell you, this process is slow, sometimes boring and often frustrating. But gradually my way is emerging.
How to Find Your Way
Since my way probably won't be your way, this series is not intended to be prescriptive. In the following posts, I describe some principles I am learning that have helped me find my way in embracing my stay at home mom life. I hope they will help you embrace your mom life too. I’ll share processes and principles I've discovered and expose some of the roadblocks I stumbled over as well.The next few posts explore how I:
- owned my story and learned to accept my mom life
- learned to listen to my own voice
- got over unhealthy, false "mom" guilt
- found meaningful and life-giving activities
- found grace-giving mom groups
- created my own unique daily rhythms
I hope that by sharing what I have learned along my journey, you may find inspiration and courage to discover your way as a stay at home mom. What ideals and expectations of motherhood do you need to let go of? Please share in the comments!If you would like to receive weekly-ish updates with more resources and ideas to help you find your soul in the mess of motherhood, sign up below![mc4wp_form id="296"]
Unstuck: How I learned to accept my life as a mom →