During the school year, I’m out the door by 6:30 AM. If I forego teaching summer school, I have summers off and long breaks for most holidays. I am allotted a certain amount of sick days each year that I typically always blow through with none left to carry over to the following school year. After I am done caring for the sick kids, I almost always get sick myself. Sometimes I forget that there are only 24 hours in a day, and raising little human beings can take every second. Like most working moms, I’m a master multitasker with a serious case of “mom brain” and a sense that I’m never doing enough.
For about 3 years, it was just me and my daughter Remi. Just the two of us, we went everywhere together and I found a new appreciation for single moms everywhere. I worked part time and did the best I could to rebuild our life that unexpectedly crumbled. Fast forward to 2023 my life is so much different.
I’m re-married with four kids and a full-time job. I often ask myself, “Why can’t I think straight?” “Why did I come to this store?” “Why am I capable of remembering all the lyrics to Back That Thang Up but I can’t remember what I had for breakfast?”
“Mom brain” is typically reserved for the post-partum haze with a newborn, but starting a fuller, slightly more overwhelming life, has brought its own challenges on top of juggling a career. When I’m at work, I’m anxious about my kids and what needs to be done at home. When I’m at home, I worry about what needs to be done at work. The two sometimes even collide when I get a call from daycare or one of the elementary schools. Every working mom knows that a call from daycare never brings good news.
I don’t think most women enter parenthood or new family dynamics thinking that it will completely change who they are. But I’ve realized that being a busy mom is less about losing your mind, and more that we’ve overwhelmed our brains. We lose our ability to start something with single-minded focus and feel foggy, fuzzy and forgetful as a result.
Work-life balance isn’t magic, and it won’t look the same for everyone. Trying to compare and mimic the lives of other moms rarely leaves me feeling like I have it all together. But here are some ways that I manage to TRY to stay focused and avoid the guilt of not being everywhere all at once:
Ask for Help
If I remember correctly, Wonder Woman isn’t real and she wasn’t a mom, as far as we know. Finding amazing caregivers makes all the difference whether it’s a nanny, family member or trusted daycare. Sharing duties with my husband also keeps our home in-sync and he has become an amazing ponytail artist and hair braider! We can’t do it alone and we lean on each other to find balance.
Automate Your Life
Delivery apps! Amazon Prime, Uber Eats, DoorDash, Walmart Pick Up, Thrive Market. I save hours each week that can be given to my family by delegating simple tasks to other people. Do I feel lazy sometimes? Yes, but it also saves me a just a little bit of sanity.
Disconnect
I set a boundary to focus separately on work and family. My inbox may never be empty, but showing my kids that I prioritize them over the my laptop or iPhone is a great way to model a healthy relationship to work and tech. I refuse to check my e-mail outside of work hours and I do not have it linked to my phone. Of course, there is the random occurance where I have to fire up the laptop if I’m extremely behind at work but I generally try to not open it while at home.
Get a Working Mom Tribe
There’s room for all kinds of parenting situations (i.e. staying at home, working from home, working part time), but the only ones who will understand my life are the ones living it. I’ve found a group of positive thriving women who mirror my working life and are also devoted to their families.
Prep Ahead
When your planning your week, your meals need to fit into your days. Busy days and evenings call for simpler meals. Use Sundays to grocery shop and pre-make breakfasts and freezer meals. If that’s too much (and it often is!), routine meals and routine cleaning chores take the stress out of the tasks by keeping them predictable.
I used to feel so guilty that I couldn’t sign up for the Halloween Party at Open House. I used to feel bad that my kids rode the bus to and from school. I even felt guilty about spending an evening out with my husband on a Friday night until I realized that our vision of “balanced” is often based on influencers, friends, and television. It isn’t real until you’re living it and no one should judge you based on how you run your life.
Between kids getting sick, all their athletics/activities, coaching cheerleading and gymnastics, demands at my job as a special education teacher, and social demands, I sometimes feel like I’m the one needing the timeout. I’m learning to be kind to myself, and listening more to what my family actually needs, and it’s a lot simpler than what I thought.
