Losing Your Identity: A Working Mom’s Dilemma
Losing Your Identity A Working Mom’s Dilemma
The struggles you are experiencing as a young mom trying to ‘do it all’ and ‘have it all’ is taking a toll on you emotionally, spiritually and physically.
I am concerned for your well-being. I see the extra make up you apply every day to cover the dark circles of exhaustion that hug the bottom of your eyes. From the minute your feet hit the floor in the morning until late at night you are running full tilt and non-stop. After all, you only do the simple things in life:
- Get your children up, washed, dressed, fed and ready for either day-care or school
- Make lunches, possibly start your dinner, if there is time
- Clear away the breakfast dishes
- Find backpacks, shoes, purse, car keys
- Organize your children’s after school activities as well as who will pick them up and when
- Go to work, deal with traffic, deadlines, co-workers, supervisors, bosses.
Once that is all done for the day, you are now faced with dinner and after work activities:
- Who will be home to eat and when and what can I make that is quick and easy
- What time is the first child’s practise is scheduled for
- How many different directions are we running in?
- How much time do you have to eat,
- Are we going to be late for the child’s game?
- Do you stay at the game, or do you dash home to get in that extra load of laundry, do dishes, or clean the house?
When the family activities are done for the day, you drag your bone-tired body home, bathe your children, get them ready for bed, read them a story and pray they go to sleep right away without crying for something extra.
You drag yourself to the living room with a glass of wine, put your feet up and get ready to watch the newest episode of your favourite series. But before you know it, you have been asleep for the past thirty minutes. Your spouse nudges you and urges you to go to bed.
Now running on energy fumes, you stagger your way to bed and close your eyes, dreading the fact you must rise again in six hours only to repeat the same process for the next four days as you silently pray for the weekend.
Friday night arrives and you let go a sigh of relief that the week is over. You think you will have time to rest, relax and have some fun. In reality, you find your list of chores is larger than it was during the week.
When do you recover your energy; have time for yourself to do things that truly rejuvenate your soul? You tell me, “I’m fine,” “I don’t need much sleep,” “I’m too busy to rest,” “I don’t have time to rest.”
I ask you:
- How is your health?
- Are you able to stop running when you actually do find some down-time?
- What happens in your body when you do stop running?
- Who are you really doing this for?
- What are your children gaining from being away from home all the time?
- Do you children get enough rest?
- Do they need all these activities? Or are you doing this for you?
I’ve been in this situation. For years I ran for and with my children to karate, baseball, basketball, volleyball. I worked everyday, I cleaned my home, did the laundry and yard work by myself. Then I burned out and had chronic migraines for seven years and had to stop working in order to recover my health. In time I forgot who I was and what my purpose was. I lived for my children, my job and my spouse. Years later, when my children were grown, I had no idea what my purpose was.
Don’t let this happen to you. You are living a delicate balance with your health at risk, when it should be lived in happiness, with time for you and your family.