Do you
On living authentically
I was reading something just today[i] about one of the pitfalls of modern parenting. It said that in this age of Pinterest, Instagram, and TikTok, there is an increasing pressure to fill our lives with all these things that we “have” to do.
On your checklist of good mothering based on the influencers popping up uninvited in my social media feeds:
Photo or video compilation of your belly to track every month of your pregnancy
Organise a gender reveal – with balloon arch, elaborate cake, confetti cannon, maybe even a trio of planes doing a fly over.
Book in a newborn photography session – fortunately the cute props and swaddles come with the photographer. Just make sure you are in an impeccably coordinated outfit (with no spit up stains!) for the family photo
Make a keepsake to track the way your baby grew over the first year!
Set out sensory activities – bubble foam, homemade kinetic sand, edible slime, and rainbow rice are good places to start
Read every day to your kid… in your reading nook complete with a tiny beanbag, soft blankets, and bunting!
Set up a special milestone board to commemorate every magical moment – like every single month of their first year, the first day at kinder, the first 100 days of school, and every single birthday.
Sorry kids, no party favours for you! Photo by Marijke Cambré on Unsplash
Or maybe your checklist looks a little less extra and a little more like my (still impossible) checklist of everything I had hoped to get to today
Clean the bathroom
Sweep the floor and wipe the tables
Spend one-on-one time with each kid
Prepare a healthy lunch and dinner, including a variety of vegetables so each kid has at least one veggie they will eat
Try to get in a bit of work that someone will pay me for
Check emails
Read my book
Read to the kids
Pack away the block creation that has been cluttering the play area floor for the last few days
Brush everyone’s hair and teeth
Pack the lunchboxes
Do my workout, but only if I have time to also shower
And while I did manage to get to most of my personal checklist, I didn’t feel satisfied. See, the thing is, no matter how much we do get done, with the ease of digital comparison we are constantly being reminded of all the things we didn’t do. While it’s easy to brush aside things that are totally out of our reach – like the plane flyover gender reveal – it’s a lot harder to ignore the things that seem do-able.
Take what you see your friends doing. Their lives are like ours, the kids are the same age, they’re in similar financial positions, and they live in areas with the same resources. And they managed to bake fresh cinnamon rolls, plan a birthday party with actual decorations and beautifully iced cupcakes, sew a new dress fancy enough to wear to a wedding, and read 50 books a year.
If they can do it, then surely, we can too!!??
“Obviously, when faced with the choice between two things we want, the preferred answer is yes to both. But as much as we’d like to, we simply cannot have it all.” Greg McKeon
We want to have it all. We want to be the mum who finishes a book a week, and the mum and sews matching outfits for the family, and the mum who has a career, and the mum who runs marathons, and the mum whose house always smells of freshly baked bread, and the mum who never forgets Book Week, and the mum who has impeccable nails.
But we can’t be all the mums. We have to choose.
I’m the mum who homeschools the kids. The mum who plans frequent camping trips and family adventures. The mum who does obstacle course racing and runs half marathons. The mum who occasionally adds another paragraph to the book she is working on.
I am not the mum who plans great birthday parties. My kids celebrate their birthdays at the park. There are no balloon arches, and if they requested a piñata you can bet we hastily finished it the night before. I forget to factor in important things, like plates to put the food on.
I am not the mum who bakes bread every day. As much as I would like to eat copious amounts of fresh bread lathered in melting butter every day[ii], I just can’t seem to bake bread more often than a couple of times a year.
I am not the mum who finishes a book a week. While I love reading, I find that it relaxes me a little too much sometimes. I’m lucky to make it through a chapter before I fall asleep, no matter how gripping the story line.
I am not the mum who sews matching family outfits. I have tried. Every time I try to make something I end up spending more time unstitching things than doing anything else. It makes me irritable, and by the time I’m done my kids have already outgrown the outfit I was trying to make them.
And while I sometimes look with envy at my friend’s sourdough, feel guilty that my kids are missing out with their under-planned birthday parties and lack of coordinated outfits, or beat myself up at the size of my growing To-be-read list, I’m ok with not doing those things.
Everything is a trade-off. If I tried to be the mum with the high-profile career[iii], I wouldn’t have enough time to homeschool my kids. If I tried to be the mum with all the indoor plants, it would be a lot harder to go away for week-long camping trips. If I tried to be the mum with perfect nails, I wouldn’t have the spending money for another race entry. If I tried to be the mum who watches all her footy team’s games, I wouldn’t have any time left to write a book[iv].
We need to let go of the guilt over the person we are not.
But to do that, we need to get intentional about the person we are.
Want to know how?
Me too! I haven’t figured it all out yet!
But there are 3 things that have helped me feel happy with the person I am, even if there is a distinct lack of sourdough bread in my home.
1. Do a joy audit. Jon Acuff gave me this idea[v], and it was so much fun to do. The idea is simple, make a list of your happiest moments across your whole life. Then examine the list for patterns. My list revealed that the things that most frequently bring me joy are being with my family, being immersed in nature, and completing hard physical challenges. Knowing that these things bring me joy gives me permission to invest more in these things, even at the expense of other things I think might make me happy.
2. Have a family mission statement. Together with my husband, we talked about the things that mean the most to our family. We talked about the things that make us happy, but more importantly, we talked about the things that fill our lives with meaning and purpose. Whenever there is a tough decision to make, we can refer back to our family mission statement to help us choose the decision that most aligns with what we want our family to look like. For example, knowing that part of our family mission statement says that we value learning and having fun together and nothing says that we value money[vi], it’s easier to choose to continue to homeschool rather than feeling like I need a career to earn more money.
3. Rely on others. My mum has learnt that I will always forget things when it comes to party planning. She doesn’t even ask what I would like her to bring anymore. She just tells me that she is bringing the party basket. I could feel guilty about this, or I could feel grateful. I choose gratitude. Likewise, there are things that I can offer people because of my unique skills. Lean into that. Our communities and our families function better when everybody focuses on doing a few things well rather than individually trying and failing to do all the things.
It's much more fun and fulfilling to lean into the person you are, rather than trying to spread yourself thin in an effort to be all the people and do all the things. Your life probably won’t look like an Instagram feed (unless that’s your thing), but it will be authentically you. And that’s more validating than a social media likes.
[i] Which I would link, but of course I can’t find it again. Ahh, social media and the difficulty of searching for a specific post when you can’t remember where you saw it or the precise wording
[ii] In Peru, where I lived for 18 months as a young adult, there would be boys delivering bread fresh from the bakery daily. Every single time I heard the bread boy call out “PAN”, I would buy a half dozen rolls. This continued for about 2 months, until I had access to a set of scales and realised that my bread habit was leading me to gain a kilo a week. After that I decided that I should probably cut back on the bread, especially given that most of my diet at the time was a traditional Peruvian diet of lots of potatoes and rice.
[iii] Hello old me, who wanted to be a university professor and neuropsychiatry researcher)
[iv] Although given that some weeks I manage to work on said book for only a solid 15 minutes, giving that up wouldn’t let me get through much of a footy game anyway.
[v] From his book All It Takes Is a Goal
[vi] We do value money a little bit, but only as much as it contributes to helping us reach goals in the areas we truly value.
I'd love to hear your thoughts! What type of parent are you? What things bring you joy and purpose?
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Beck xx