The latest work life balance tips for working moms from Rebecca Olson Coaching.
I made a decision. I had to. I was getting sucked into the vortex of the world wide web and its never ending news, social media and entertainment.
It was getting in the way of my sleep.
Of my relationship with my husband.
Of my enjoyment with my family.
Of goals I had set for myself.
I wasn’t present. I wasn’t productive. And it just wasn’t fulfilling.
For many women, birthdays can add a layer of stress to life. It’s one more year gone. It’s one more year that your kids have grown up. It’s one more year and you still don’t know what the heck your doing in life. It’s one more year of feeling insignificant.
Birthdays can make women feel anxious, depressed, insignificant and just generally sad….particularly if you feel stuck right now. Instead of feeling excited and special you feel guilty and lost. Instead of feeling ready to tackle the world, you feel exhausted and confused. So, let’s just be honest…for some women birthdays just stink. Are you one of them?
But what if it didn’t have to be that way.
I experience a constant push and pull between being a working mom and the desire to be a stay at home mom. I want to work. But I hate being away from kids. I need the money but don’t want to pay for childcare.
When I was working full-time with an hour commute, all I wanted was to have more time with my daughter, and I envied stay at home moms. When I quit my job to try and work from home as a contractor, I envied moms that didn’t have the distractions of their kids while trying to work. I loved my kids AND I loved working.
My heart felt torn in many different directions.
If Superwoman were a working mom, she’d probably look a bit like this: Rock star mom. Dependable worker. Loving spouse. Fun friend. Reliable sister. Concerned citizen. Watchful neighbor. Financial planner. Travel-agent. Committed yogi… (the list of roles she’d fill could go on and on.)
She would be expected to be present with her kids. She’d be expected to be at work on time. To prioritize family meals. To visit her aging grandparents. To go on dates with her spouse. To set up play dates for her children. To taxi them to swim, gymnastics, music and soccer…
Do you see where I am going here? Can you relate to this picture of “Superwoman”?
As a working mom, my guess is you live by the clock.
You are booked from the moment you get up to the moment your head hits the pillow at the end of the day. Your day is a list of appointments for work, school and the house. Sometimes you even have to book an appointment to spend time with your kids, so you ensure they get the quality time they deserve.
Additionally, life is feeling sorta meaningless as you move from one appointment to the next. You lack purpose, fulfillment and clarity as you watch the minutes tick by.
It is a rinse and repeat sort of life and you never imagined it would happen to you.
This is a really important message. So important that I don’t want you to miss out on it.
So important I am going to be posting all week in my Facebook group, Aligning Motherhood, about it (if you haven’t joined, you can do so here).
The message:
As working moms, we are never fully present.
When we’re at work, we’re thinking about the kids. When we’re at home, we’re thinking about work. When we’re at the park with the kids, we’re thinking about making dinner at home. Our bodies are present but our minds are somewhere else entirely.
Consequently we never feel like we’re good at anything…
