Share a Knowing Smile and Keep Living

“Mother is not a title. Mother is a verb. It is not who you are. It’s what you do.” – Shonda Rhimes

I've been meaning to write this for months and months.  The seed was planted in my mind after having a conversation with a friend about how hard it was for her as a stay at home mom and the fact that her husband didn't totally respect what it took for her to do it all.  It was pretty obvious from my outside looking in perspective, that she would have been able to do his job, as a well educated experience woman, but he might not be able to do her job so easily.  I spent an evening giving her a pep talk.  Me, the working mom, was giving a pep talk to the stay at home mom.   According to the media working moms and stay at home moms shouldn't be supporting each other.  The fact is however that we're both moms and being a mom is hard whether you are "working" or "staying at home".  Both terms, by the way, are totally absurd.  As if someone who works outside the home works more or harder than a "stay at home" mom and the fact is I don't really know any "stay at home" moms who actually stay at home.

Like I said, I've been meaning to write this post for months but it finally took listening to Shonda Rhimes' book "The Year of Yes" to get me to sit down and write it.  That and reading a few other blog posts have inspired me to write my own commentary on the Mommy Wars.  So here it goes...

I think the mommy war is made up by someone.  I'm not going to blame the "mainstream media" because I don't know that its their fault.  I don't know who made up this idea of the mommy wars but I just don't believe it.  The fact is that I don't know any mothers that have enough time or energy to resent other mothers.  Maybe themselves.  Maybe they get frustrated, angry and resentful toward themselves but other mothers, not so much.  I suppose that's not entirely true.  I've heard of people being stressed by the pressure of Pinterest which I guess in its own way is a mommy war but that's really the crafty v. the non crafty right?  Not really "working" moms v. "stay at home" moms.

I don't know where this mommy war thing came from but I have my theories.  I think its about a generation old.  I think it started with our moms where there were women who fought the good fight for feminism and went out and got jobs.  There were women that didn't.  Of course that didn't make them any less feminists.  It didn't make the women who got jobs any less moms.  It did set them both up for a nice amount of resentment.

The fact of the matter is that it is hard being a working mom.  Or a work outside the home mom.  It is hard being a work at home mom.  It is just hard being a mom.  Those tiny humans are pretty much crazy.  It is hard being a mom and it is hard being a woman.  Whether you have children or not it is hard to be a woman.  Either way you're "punished" for just being a woman by making less money and being questioned constantly as to whether you will have kids or not or whether or not you will have more kids.  It is hard being a person.  Life is hard and we don't have time to worry about who has it harder.  Being a person is hard.  Being a mom is hard.

I listened to Shonda Rhimes and she called for an end to the mommy wars.  That we all should stop judging each other.  That we shouldn't assume that just because we are on "different sides"  doesn't mean we are on opposite sides.  We're really all in the trenches together.  I'd like to take it a step farther though.  Let's just not stop the judgment of others, lets stop the judgment of ourselves and lets support each other!

When my kids have a party at school I like to sign up to bring cookies.  Not store bought cookies but homemade cookies.  This is not because I think I am better than other moms.  This is simply because I like to bake cookies.  It was a fun thing my Dad and I did growing up and now its a fun thing to do with my kids.  Its an activity to pass the time.  I don't get fancy.  I do drop cookies because that's what I can make.  They like it, I like it, we're all happy.  If I don't sign up for the cookies I don't care if the person who does brings store bought cookies.  It really doesn't matter.  No judgment.  What I of course need to work on is not judging myself if I buy the store bought cookies.  I'm not competing against anyone but myself and perhaps I need to realize its not a competition.  And I think there in lies the problem.  The mommy guilt.  The mommy guilt we put on ourselves so much so that we assume other people care as much as we do about what we do.  I'll let you in on a little secret.  They don't.  We care if we bake homemade cookies or store bought (or maybe you don't but I guess you care about something else).  If you think that someone else is judging you in all likelihood are judging yourself.  Just let it go.  Let go of the judgment of yourself and assume that others are supporting you.  The fact is that they probably are. 

So I don't know where the mommy wars came from but I do have a feeling that mostly its a war against ourselves that we cast onto others.  Women need to support women.  Whether the women are mothers or not and whether the mothers work at home or out of the house.  Let's just celebrate, each other.  And if you're too tired to celebrate perhaps we just share some knowing smiles and keep living.