WE HAVE MOVED
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Well do you? I don’t. Not always anyway. Sometimes I feel like I am failing and feel like I am the worst mum/fiancĂ©/sister/daughter/employee/person. You know the days I am talking about – where from the moment your feet hit the ground you’re running late, you pour sour milk into your coffee and wonder just how many days have you been drinking off milk, you realise you forgot to feed the dog yesterday and he is looking at you with those begging eyes, you get into your car to do the daycare or school run and the empty tank light is flashing at you… and the day has barely begun. So why is it that some women look like everything just works for them?
I was driving to see my cousin a few days ago, I don’t get
to see her very often as we live a few hours apart and we don’t really talk too
much because sometimes life just gets in the way, but on the drive over I was
thinking to myself ‘she really has her shit together.’ My cousin is a gorgeous
woman, she is a stay at home mum who
just had her third child, a gorgeous little girl who is all smiles, she
posted on Instagram a few days ago that at just 11 weeks old she started
sleeping through the night (my 16 month old son still wakes at least once), her
kids are always happy, they are always doing things, building things, being
creative and she seems to be that mum that just makes me feel like the one who
is doing something wrong. On top of all of this she also drives 25 minutes to
drop her eldest at school and collect him each weekday and her husband works
away at random times. She does all of this with no family close by and has her
friends to help out on the occasion that she needs it. I was envious. I am
envious.
When I arrived at my cousins house she greeted me at the
door, looking amazing of course and invited me in. We had our chats and caught
up on what had been happening in our lives. She had lunch made in next to no
time for her two year old and Alexander and they both sat and ate their
lunches. She was telling me about how her husband was away for most of the
week. I couldn’t imagine how she was coping with it all so I had to ask. I
blurted out ‘How on earth do you do all of this? Three kids and a husband away
– you are amazing.’ Her response was so simple – I’m organised. She explained
to me what her days look like and how she makes sure things are set out for her
oldest son to then help out his little brother with their night time routine,
that she starts cooking dinner at lunch and you know what? When she laid it all
out like that it seemed so simple, so methodical. I still think she is amazing,
I just now see the real kind of amazing she is.
Sometimes I take the opportunity of a drive to reflect on where I am in life...
So on my drive home my train of thought wrapped around my
day to day life with Alexander and Steve, thinking about how we organise
ourselves and our work. It made me realise I was being way too harsh on myself
earlier. Some days I really do have my shit together. Some days our routine
just falls into place, everything clicks, we get to daycare and work on time,
Alexander is happy when I pick him up and our afternoons are fun, dinner (a
healthy one too) is served at a reasonable hour and bedtime goes smoothly. Some
days everything just works. I realised that sometimes I need to just give myself
a break, cut myself a little slack and know that things are going to be okay.
In a nutshell I realised:
- Sometimes it’s okay to give your kids nothing but crackers
for lunch because that is all they will eat and you’re just not up for the
argument.
- It’s okay to hate your job some days and dream of bigger
things.
- Sometimes it’s okay to feel like you are not moving forward
and all you’re doing is paddling like mad.
The key is to recognise these things, give yourself some
grace and have ideas and ways to move forward, to get around them and to keep
going. Not all days are happy but most of them should be.
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