The Struggle of a Lifetime
- Kylee Ellis
- Oct 12, 2016
- 2 min read
No one is perfect. I think that’s a sentiment that everyone agrees with. It would be an abominable lie if I said I was anywhere close.
However, I will tell you what I am. I’m a mother. I’m a wife. I am the pillar, the backbone of a small, but wonderful family. Even though those things are very true, I feel like I am only lackluster in both of those arenas.
When I was pregnant, I wanted to be a “crunchy mom” more than anything (except the whole anti-vaccination thing, that’s a crazy concept to me.). I’m talking cloth-diapering, glass bottle-using, homemade food-making hippie mama. When my son was born, I realized that it’s slightly unrealistic when you actually have to function as an adult. I had to go back to work three weeks after my son joined us. I quite literally didn’t have time to do all of the things I had so desperately wanted. (Jarrett had also been strangely afraid of cloth diapering…)
Not being able to be as “crunchy” as I had hoped did not make me a bad mother by any means. I just… Never got over the fact that I haven’t been able to be the mother that I wanted to be. Maybe it’s that feeling that causes me to overcompensate.
Sometimes I feel like I put a damper on my own marriage. In my quest to become “mama bear supreme”, I tend to hover over my son a little more than what is necessary. One of the things I need to work on as a mother and as a wife is letting him be, so that I can focus on other tasks. My household chores suffer. I forget to be affectionate towards my husband. I am very lucky in having a significant other who takes the time to understand and have patience with me.
It is my goal to put more conscious thought into my daily schedule. That way I can be sure to finish all of the things that need to be done. If I set things up in this manner, I would surely be able to do as much as I want with my son and get all of my chores done as well. If my husband comes home to a taken-care-of house, it would sincerely help his attitude and comfortability in our home. That would make it a lot easier to get our “old relationship” back. The less stressed we are, the happier we’ll be, of course.
I guess you could say that the struggle of a lifetime, my lifetime really isn’t a struggle at all. It’s just the strength required to be who you need to be as a woman, a mother, and a wife.
My advice to women who suffer from the same negative view of themselves in this manner, like I have for so long, is to pause and take a breath. Take a bit to sit down and write out the things that need to be done, make a schedule. Getting rid of some of the chaos of the day-to-day can really help gain back positive feelings of self-worth. This may not work for everyone, but has always helped me. Accomplishing even the smallest of goals can be a giant boost.
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