Have I mentioned guilt recently? I hope not. Gosh, I'd feel so guilty if I had. I ask you this mainly because I often feel I am repeating myself over and over, as if there are certain subjects which keep emerging to the center of my thoughts - and blog - every couple of months. As I was saying, have I mentioned guilt?
Seriously now, for ages, people have been writing and discussing the guilt which woman in particular seem to carry like a saddle bag. What becomes clearer to me the more I talk to other mommy friends is the sense of not doing enough. Because, motherhood just isn't enough by itself.
OK, it isn't enough by itself, exactly. However, if you've never had kids, being a stay-at-home mom is what I imagine an on-call ER doctor's life might be like. Essentially, breaks are few and far between. And, while "on duty," you never know how long those quiet moments will last. Like right now. At any moment, I could be called into action due to some immediate, urgent need in the next room.
Even though this is the reality for every stay-at-home mom whom I know, we all keep discussing how we could or should or would be doing more. We could be reading that great author's new novel; we could be sewing new clothes for ourselves; we could be gardening; we could be building Noah's ark....
To bring it down to earth even further - and much further than that last example - we could simply be getting clothes put away when they come out of the dryer. Or dishes put in the dishwasher by dinnertime.
We all ask each other questions like "are you doing this?" "Do you have time to...?" For me, I ask these questions because my sense of "not doing enough" can feel as heavy as the women's suffrage movement - all those protesters on my back. We've come so far, ladies, but the weight of guilt is still keeping us down. Keeping us back from a freedom which no politician can grant us.
For me, I think the real freedom begins when the guilt ends. When I stop trying to keep up with some other time period's Joneses.
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