My secret identity
About a week ago, a friend sent me an email. “Dear Annette …” I stared at my name and realized how foreign it sounded. Nowadays, I answer mostly to Mommy, occasionally to Honey, Mrs. Price or Rachel’s Mom.
This morning, Matthew handed me a book, “I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids.” It struck the same chord. While Rachel was at preschool, I let Audrey sleep in. I held a bottle for Miranda with one hand and with the other, sought to regain my identity in the pages of a coping-with-mommyhood book.
The authors found that when they asked women across the country if they were happy with motherhood, these moms would profess, then confess. They would declare how wonderful their lives were for the first 22 minutes, then suddenly crack. Once the floodgates had opened, they’d admit that they were so overwhelmed with choices, responsibilities, judgement from others, and their own unachieveable expectations, that they were ready to shoot themselves. One mom said she considers going to the dentist her special “alone time.”
I was delighted to see a chapter on mommy guilt, a very real psychological disorder I identified about three months after Rachel was born. Authors Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile write:
“Amazing but true: We have a knack of feeling guilty over almost anything related to motherhood. Really, you name it, and we’ve felt guilty about it. Leaving a diaper on too long, changing diapers too often. Being late to pick up a kid from a playdate, being early to pick up a kid from a playdate. Buying our children sweets, not buying our children sweets. Enforcing bedtimes, not enforcing bedtimes. Taking time to put ourselves back together, not taking time to put ourselves back together. It’s quite miraculous and very destructive, this ability of ours to feel guilty. And we are not alone. Nearly every mom we talked to was feeling guilty about something. One mom summed it up: ‘I even feel guilty about feeling guilty!’”
The book is not just a sister gripe session. It empathizes, then challenges the modern mom to get more out of doing less and to cherish the now moments. To read excerpts or take a fun mom quiz, check out the authors’ website,
I never claimed to be a supermom, but it’s tough to escape the occasional identity crisis that comes with the job.
