Inner Power Mom Rising
My inner power mom left the building this week and that old voice, Evie, my evil inner critic, returned. The voice said, “You are a COVID mom failure.” And she said it, all day and all night, in the background, as I tried to fill the social/emotional/physical exercise gaps in my eight-year-old’s life seemingly single-handedly. “Failure. Failure. Failure. Failure,” she sang to me while I did my best.
If Ax and I were playing catch, it was not vigorous enough. If he was watching educational videos, it was not interactive enough. If I was scheduling zoom play dates, they were not stimulating enough. If I was admiring his drawings, it was not authentically enthusiastic enough.
By the end of the week I was exhausted, angry, and sad. I wailed inside, “Everyone is doing this COVID mom thing better than I am!!! I can’t be a substitute for live 8 year old pack play and I don’t want to be!!!”
And the feeling, the thought, that I need to be, or should try harder to be, better or different from what I am is breaking my spirit. This new normal will continue, for us, for a long time, and I refuse to feel like a failure for one more day.
So. It’s not okay. It’s not okay for me to continue to feel this not okay.
So when it gets like this I have a cheat sheet to feel better which some people call the serenity prayer:
“Universe, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.”
serenity/acceptance things I can’t change
courage to change things I can
wisdom to know which is which
So, I’ve been not accepting my own limitations, which don’t make me terrible, but make me human. I’ve been wishing I were more like an 8-year-old boy, less like the 40-something woman that I am, and it’s toxic.
Wishing I were different or better than I am is toxic. Wishing we could provide our son Ax the kind of play experiences he used to have is also toxic. And trying to actually provide them is riskier than we are comfortable with. And seriously: me trying to mimic those play experiences has proven not sustainable, and not very effective either.
So I get to accept myself. I get to accept that our social life continues to be a video world with a live pod of 1 kid, 3 adults — me, Mike, my mother. It is what it is.
Ax is growing up in this time, with this family, in this way, having this experience. And we are fortunate, he is fortunate, that we are all still getting along, that we have video, comfortable homes, all our basic needs met. It’s the other needs, the social aspect, that troubles me. And I need to accept that part too. He will make and maintain the connections he can within the new constraints. And so will I.
2 Courage to change what I can. I need to readjust/change my expectations on a lot of levels if I want to feel better. And I need to have the courage to choose my own feeling better as a primary goal — even now, or especially now.
My inner power mom knows that when I feel better it helps my family members feel better too, and makes me more able to offer what I do have to offer to others, so my contentment is a worthy mission all the way around. I forget sometimes and think Mike really would prefer if the socks were all paired or the kitchen floor weren’t so sticky. But 10 times out of 10 if he had to choose between a clean floor and a happy wife he’d pick the happy wife.
It’s taken me a really long time to learn that sometimes it is a choice that simple and it’s okay that I can’t do both. I wish I could be both happy and clean the floor but it turns out that’s not always the case. I have to — I get to — pick one, let go of the other. Grinding myself down in the pursuit of “being good” usually winds up making me feel worse, and eventually acting out and behaving worse. Embarrassing but true.
So yeah, more courage to say I’m only this good and no better and there’s a point of diminishing returns on my awesome wife/mom-ing that I don’t want to go past and wind up a testy bitchy sad mess. Messy floors preferred until such time as I can clean them and still be okay, or perhaps Mike decides to clean them and receive all the wifely appreciation and cooing for taking on something that isn’t technically his job but that he doesn’t mind doing as much as I do.
Part three of the serenity cheat sheet, I mean prayer, is wisdom to know the difference between what I can change and what I can’t. The rule of thumb I use is that what I can change is only related to me — my thoughts, actions, and emotions, emotions being something I can change over time by changing my thoughts, a whole other convo. So the low-hanging fruit for what I can change to feel better is my own thoughts and actions.
So here’s a thought I’m gonna change: “I am a total failure as a substitute for all the stimulation my son usually gets in his life.”
Instead I’m gonna try this one: “I am doing a great job making sure my child feels safe, loved, and appreciated by his mother. He is a lucky guy to have me as a mom.”
The action I’m going to change is to stop constantly looking for COVID compliant “activities” for him and help him access his own inner peace, his own inner power to get okay with the new normal.
He can do this. He likes to play on his own. He likes to use his imagination. He likes company, but he doesn’t need me to be a playmate, just a mom. We have the technology to connect him to other kids, and he is comfortable doing that, even if it’s not “as good” as the “olden days” three months ago. It is what it is. It’s okay.
And look at that, I feel better. Practice, practice, practice. I’m gonna keep going.
www.combatcovidstress.com
www.livingeveryminuteofit.com
