What are you carrying? Our unrealistic expectations about ourselves as mothers.
And how they weigh us down! No one sets a personal best when they’re carrying an extra 50 lbs on their back. Neither will you.
Imagine you have trained for a marathon, or even a 10km race or a 5 miler. Perhaps you actually have. You started out slow and steady, maybe alternately running one minute and walking one minute.
You built up your endurance and your speed. You know ho to pace yourself so you finish strong. You are clear on your target time and ready for race day.
The anticipation is palpable as you join other competitors at the start line.
But, then the oddest thing happens. You feel a tap on your shoulder. Curious, you turn to see a race official holding out a very full, heavy-looking backpack. She is passing that backpack to you. “You’ll be carrying this during the race today,” she says, without further explanation.
You trained without a backpack and now you’re asked to race carrying an extra 50-lb (22-kg). Would you expect to run as fast? Would you expect to maintain the same pace?
Of course not. No one would expect you to.
The more your carry, the slower your pace.
What are you carrying?
As moms, we carry a lot of emotional load—this child needs comforting, this one is giving me attitude, I’m exhausted and short-tempered and feeling guilty about it.
We also carry a heavy mental load—making sure all our people at at the right place at the right time, fed and (hopefully) wearing clean socks! There may be aging parents, church, school and community demands besides.
Our packs are heavy.
And yet, we still expect ourselves to keep up our old pace, the way we did before we had kids. No wonder motherhood feels so hard sometimes!
Was that training?
We did train for this, sort of. Of course, parenting is FAR less predictable than a road race, where you know the route and distance, and (mostly) what to expect. I’m sure none of us went off to university thinking, “I’m here to learn parenting skills.” (I sure didn’t!!)
Even so, through our life experience, professional experience and education, we’ve developed skills that serve us in our roles as moms. They help us organize, persuade, listen, cook, plan, pay the bills.
And there is a lot of organizing, persuading, cooking, planning, listening, and paying the bills involved in parenting!
We are life long learners, so we’re still developing skills, but our most intense period of “training” was when we were younger. For most of us, that meant
We had far fewer demands on our time.
Fewer people needed us.
No one depended on us exclusively to wipe their noses, tears, and bottoms.
No wonder our pace feels slower these days!! We are carrying a whole lot more than we used to.
Clearing out the clutter—Clothes aren’t the only things we grow out of
“...if it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t deserve to take up our valuable closet real estate”
They say cleaning while your kids are growing is like shovelling while it's still snowing. I feel that way every time I purge a closet or drawer.
Purge isn’t the right word. The drawer never ends up empty. But I do declutter. I remove all the clothes that no longer fit or are stained or ripped beyond repair. I move off season gear to a bin, out of daily circulation.
The first question when sorting my kids clothes—or my own—is always Does it fit?
If it does fit, I add more questions: Do they ever wear it? Do they like it? Is it in season? If no, will it fit come the appropriate season? If yes, it can go into a storage bin. Or Marie Kondo's famous criterion Does it bring me (or them) joy?
If it brings me joy but doesn't fit, it still needs to leave the closet. The really special items might qualify for a memory box, but even those need to be out of day-to-day circulation. It doesn’t matter how joyful that cute little baby shirt may be, I can’t look at it everyday and think, “Nope, doesn’t fit.”
Decisions, decisions
“Just as seeing piles of physical clutter causes us stress, carrying unseen mental/emotional clutter is stressful, too.”
Research suggests we make upward of 35,000 decisions each day. No wonder we stop caring what we eat or wear—we’re too tired to make another decision! Don’t waste that precious decision making capacity deciding not to wear something that doesn’t even fit anymore. Your brain has more important things to do!
Barbara Hemphill of the Productive Environment Institute says clutter is “postponed decisions”. And those unmade decisions can really pile up. Just as seeing piles of physical clutter causes us stress, carrying unseen mental/ emotional clutter is stressful, too.
A 2009 UCLA study found that “mothers who described their homes as “cluttered” had a stress hormone profile indicative of chronic stress.” - cited in How clutter affects your health
Reclaiming our physical space by decluttering is literally good for our health. Clearing out some mental space can have similar effects. We feel less overwhelmed, less stressed, and more relaxed.
So, where do we start? We’re not even sure exactly what we’re carrying, just this big tangled ball of so-many-things-I-should-be-doing-but-I’m-not. That’s why we need to do some unpacking.
Let’s cell it mental decluttering.
The critic in your head
“If you gave your inner genius as much creedence as your inner critic, you would be light years ahead of where you now stand.”
We all have an internal dialogue in our heads. For some of us, that voice can be very critical. What ONE thing does your internal voice criticize on the regular? “You should be doing X better.”
Rhoda realized she had felt she needed to clean to her mother’s standard. But Rhoda’s life—solo-parenting young children on her own in a foreign country—was very different than her mother’s had been. And she didn’t, personally, need her home to be quite so immaculate.
I felt I was still supposed to be adept at home decor and cooking, despite never really having an interest in either one. Somehow, the label of “Mom” meant I should suddenly be good at these things. It has been a good investment to learn better food management—ways to make the cooking part less time consuming and less hands-on at the dinner hour, but home decor? I should really just ask friends or pay for a consult. Really. (Note-I highly recommend Allison Hollinger’s free meal planning challenge if you need to get out of cooking rut, learn to meal plan, or just find the back of your fridge. You can get on a wait list here.)
What one thing comes to mind for you? Write it down or say it out loud. Articulate it so it’s not some vague notion but a specific real issue that bothers you. (Let’s just tackle one for now. Go ahead and write in a journal if you have a whole lot to untangle!)
Do you still expect to be productive in the same way you did before you had kids?
Is there an identity or role that you’re holding onto but doesn’t really fit this life season?
Do you expect to feel or act a certain way just because that’s what your mother did?
Is there an area where you feel you need to prove yourself?
Declutter that mental closet
“We hold onto things, don’t we? Not just clothes, but roles, identities, expectations, labels. They may not fit anymore but they’re familiar and they’re ours. So, we keep carrying them.”
Just like our children’s closets, if it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t deserve to take up our valuable closet real estate. The real estate in our brains is even more precious!
So, regarding that one thing that you just named, answer these questions:
Does it fit? In this season of life, does this role still fit me or do I need to retire this label? Or at least, put it in storage until a new life season?
Do I like it? Use it? Need it?
Is it life-giving or life-draining? No, we can’t all our life-draining responsibilities. Emily P. Freeman suggest making a list of life-giving and life-draining activities and relationships. This practice can help us be more aware when and how we can refresh in midst of a draining week, for example.
Unpacking what’s in your pack- expectations, identity, roles
“We carried things with us when we became parents. And some… have been hanging out in the back of our mental closet ever since… we never got rid of them either. They’re just there. Taking up space. ”
Research says we value items more highly when they are ours. (Maybe even more than their actual value warrants.)
Whether it’s sentimental or practical, we hang onto things. Just because their ours. They’re familiar. And who would we be without them? But they don't define us. And they don't fit any better than that cute little sundress we wore back in high school.
We hang onto things sometimes, don’t we? And I don't mean clothes. Things that no longer fit our lives. Roles. Labels. To-do lists. Should-do lists. Even relationships, or more often, ways of relating.
We carried things with us when we became parents. And some of those things have been hanging out in the back of our mental closet ever since.
We never pull them out, but we never got rid of them either. They’re just there. Taking up space. Like an old pair of skinny jeans that you haven’t worn since your first year of university.
And we’ve added so much more since becoming parents. We have many more responsibilities, tasks, and actual human beings that are ours to keep track of.
We’re carrying a much heavier pack than we may even realize.
It’s time to offload a few outdated, ill-fitting items. That expectation that doesn’t fit our real lives. That identity—the way we saw ourselves years ago, but doesn’t actually fit anymore. That standard that belonged to someone else, so we assumed it was probably a good idea.
Do you often feel you should be doing more than you are? Do you expect yourself to keep up a pace that doesn’t work with all the load you are carrying these days?
What ONE thing did you identify as something you are carrying but don’t need to? What would it mean for you to let that one thing go? To put it away and the next time your inner critic whispers ”You really should…”, you will know without a doubt, “Nope, I shouldn’t. That is not mine to carry anymore.”