The No BS Happy Mother’s Day!

Another Mother’s day, more cute gifts from the kids, more brunch, more soft cuddly “I love you Mom” all over the media and internet. This is my eighth, time flies. I want to use this time to reflect on being a mother and to celebrate mother’s day.

First off, Mother’s Day brunches suck! Seriously. My husband is notoriously late for making Mother’s day brunch reservations. In recent years, we have ended up at a Japanese ramen place and an Asian fusion place and the food was terrible at both. It was so bad and so hectic with the kids that last year, I walked out on my own brunch. Oh yes, I did, in front of my mother in law, that’s the magnitude of the badness and my being pissed off-ness. I would seriously abandon this brunch, cast off for good, if it weren’t for my mother in law this year, who likes brunch, and I am doing this only for her. My ideal brunch would be a one with my fellow Mommy girlfriends, no kids, and lots of minosa, or maybe even some mojito, wine or heck whiskey! Dragging kids along to celebrate Mother’s day is like bringing work on a Hawaiian vacation, normal these days sadly, but oh so torture-some and so not a vacation.

Being a mother’s is hard. No one told me so. Everyone makes motherhood seem like it’s the best thing that can ever happen to a woman, almost a requirement. When you become a mother, magically unicorns and butterflies are going to appear, and it’s all going to make you a better person. Yes, it’s nice and sweet to have little spawns that love me no matter how bad I look or how much I swear. And I firmly believe I am a better person for being a mother, but it’s not because of the unicorns and butterflies. Being a mother is hard work. I didn’t realize it until about five years into it. I thought everything was just going to come naturally, fall into place, because you know, it’s natural to be a mother, mother nature they call it! That’s what I am supposed to be and do, biology. In a society where care-taking is not valued nearly as much as moneymaking, it’s the easy job. So I thought if I could be a successful analyst on Wall Street, being a full time mother should be a piece of cake! What really happened was I was perpetually tired, forever messy, falling behind on everything and very unhappy. My kids were fighting, crying and not listening. I tried my hardest at parenting, signing them up for all kinds of fun classes, making organic food from scratch, reading books on parenting, taking them on fun excursions and vacations, and reading to them, lots! Nothing really made a difference. I felt they still hated me, and worse, I hated myself. I am home all day, but my house looks nothing like Martha Stewart Living, my food is decent, but no paleo, vegan or gluten-free, and I am looking worse and worse and feeling like I am doing a terrible job with everything. My kids, those little rascals, act like they don’t have parents at all!

Until, I took my coaching course last year and started to re-evaluate everything. If I wasn’t happy with all this I have, then who is? And what am I doing wrong? It took a lot of reflection, and a lot of coaching session for me to finally change. You know what I discovered? I had too much BS in my life! the BS media feeds you on what motherhood should look like, all the Hallmark cards, all the celebrities and their cute baby photos, all the Lifetime movies, everything. I am going to give it to you straight up here. Motherhood is maybe 10% unicorns and butterflies and 90% messy, yelling, being late, no sleep, fighting shit show. Yup I said it.

You know what else changed? Once I realized that, everything changed. I no longer fuss over my house. I no longer judge my kids by how quiet they are, especially in company. I no longer get mad at myself, again, for being 10 min late to something. I no longer cringe when kids fight or when I feed them chicken nuggets. I am so much happier! Maybe the kids did grow a year, maybe they are behaving better, but I know, mostly the change came from me. I changed my expectations on what good looks like. I embrace the mess, I embrace my tardiness, I embrace my swearing. I embrace my kids for who they are and not the perfect picture in my head of how they should be. Once that happened, my kids all of a sudden are happier too and behaving better.

So for this Mother’s Day, I invite you to toss out all the BS that media feeds you, you parents or husband tells you, your colleague and friends discuss with you. I invite you to toss it all out and just be who you are. Because if we are friends, if you are reading this, I am 99% sure you already are a good mother. You know what will make you an even better one? someone who accepts you for who you are, someone who’s not striving to meet the astronomical BS standards that are set and someone who cares about their kids and respects them for who they are, and most importantly someone who’s happy. Happy Mommies happy kids, that’s the best gift you can give them. Happy Mother’s Day and go drink some Mimosa!