This article has been brewing in me for weeks now and I am still baffled at the levels we seem to compete at as mums let alone working mums. I feel like I am back in high school the dawky young dancer girl with the wrong clothes and weird body with all the competition that seems to be out there in the world of being a mum.
How are we meant to keep up with it all? Are we meant to be so prefect that we don’t need to eat and sleep just so we can be super mum – NO! After a few calls this week where people are amazed at what I do, my team or my ability to juggle and people who think I am a super mum. It is time to share the wheels fall of here too.
I have bad days, things don’t go to plan and I end up crying when I just can’t handle it anymore. After all I am mum, not super mum! I had a call this week where I ended up in tears after being on the phone to another mum in business where I had tried to explain I was a mum and human like the mums I support in business, where I got off the to be made feel like I had no idea what busy is.
Why do we do this to each other? I began to wonder why I try, why we bother to offer support to families in business and create a community where we can reach out to each other if we are going to tear each other down...then I got out networking! I met some amazing mums in business as well as dads, I saw mums talking, helping and supporting each other; I got a hug from a stranger that made my week when she said our site had saved her business.
That is when I felt proud about what we do! Emotionally being a mum in business can be hard especially if you work from home you juggle the kids and are isolated from the people contact you are used too. We need to take care of us as mums and support each other through this journey. The appearance of a calm duck on the surface most often means scrambling hectic feet underneath.
Being a mum is the most amazing and most judged job in the world I remember when a girlfriend told me that I was giving my daughter too much food I felt terrible, and then I thought a bit more it was her way of coping that her little boy was not eating like mine.
Super mum is an ugly concept and ideal that keeps us all striving to be something no one can ever be, so I say stop trying. Why not try being mum – not super mum; I think we would all be happier in the end.
Do you agree? What is your experience?