Doing It All

Yesterday a fellow single-working-mom colleague asked me to please explain to her how I "do it all".  I was caught off guard, but I took the compliment, and my answer to her was that I'm relieved I'm putting up a good front. And that one questions has been festering in my head for the last 24 hours.

Because I'm treading water.  I'm just barely getting by one day at a time.  I can't stop obsessing about all the things I'm NOT doing (including writing).  I can't turn off the irrational guilt.  And I'm so tired, I can't stop crying when I think about it.  I am soooooooooo unbearably far from "doing it all". 

Every single day is full of reminders of the things I can no longer do with or for my children now that I'm not a stay-at-home mom anymore- not to mention all the things I can't do for myself.  All of the things that used to define me (dancing, writing, teaching, filling my kids' days with adventures...) are foreign.  I should just delete that Pinterest app from my phone because seeing it reminds me of the boards that I created 3 years ago with the greatest intentions full of toddler crafts, recipes, party ideas, and homemade gifts that are never going to happen.

My boyfriend is a saint- but maybe because he never knew me when I really had it all together.  My kids still think I'm awesome- because they don't know all the plans I had in my head about how it was supposed to be.  How long before I let everybody down? Because I'm doing a pretty damn good job of letting myself down.

There are plenty of things on the interwebs about irrational mom guilt- about the impossibility of doing ALL THE THINGS.  I know I shouldn't care that my sink is full.  I know my kids will be just as brilliant after going to daycare than they would have been if I stayed home- probably even more so now that I've seen the work they're doing.  I know at the end of the day our health and happiness is most important and we are incredibly lucky.  But that doesn't help me sleep at night or feel good about the half-assed job I'm doing at everything when I know I'm not working up to my potential.  

First Post

Once upon a time, my good friend Kim and I found ourselves at sea, furiously treading water as we headed towards divorce.  My slowly sinking rowboat of a marriage had finally gone down, and Kim had been hit by a speedboat she never saw coming and was thrown overboard.  It doesn’t matter how we got there, in the end, even though at the time it seems to matter very, very much.  As we struggled to understand that our marriages were most likely over, we couldn’t find a single resource to help us gauge what came next.  Should we leave? Could it be fixed? What would hurt the children more – staying or going? Stay, fix it, preserve the home for our children, who we never intended to raise with any one but their fathers? Stay, teach those children what bad relationships look like, and kill any hope that they would one day have healthy relationships? Or go, save ourselves, and possibly create a black hole of sadness in the hearts of our small children? Go, and teach the kids to be healthy and happy even if it means a difficult decision? It was like The Clash was playing 24 hours a day in our heads.  Stay or go? Stay or go? Stay or go?

We cried, we drank, we talked, we sat quietly with our legs drawn up and our heads down, we went to marriage counseling and therapy. 

A therapist finally helped me decide.  She said, “Heather, you know when you get on a plane and they run through the emergency instructions? What do they always say about the oxygen masks? They say put your own mask on first.  If you cannot breathe, you cannot save the child you are traveling with.”  If you cannot breathe, you cannot save your child.  And so, in the end, we both left.  We had to.  We couldn’t breathe anymore. 

We wanted to write a blog that would help others breathe when the oxygen masks where dropping around their heads.  So here we are.  It’s not always perfect, and we’ll be honest about that.  Sometimes it’s amazing, and we will share our gratitude for how our lives have gotten better.  It’s not easy, and we hope you’ll laugh at the absurdities of single parenting with us.  We wanted to be the stewardesses, if you’ll let us.