Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Carpe Diem!

My friend Janelle did a great post titled, "Yes, Please DO Carpe Diem!!!" I clicked on it when she first posted it but saw that it was a long post and I didn't have time to read it then, but I read it today after she had posted a follow up post apologizing for her previous post. Ironically, I have not read the apology yet, I read the other post and loved it, no apology needed Janelle. It was a great post and something I think can far better help mothers than the article it was written in response to. I want to include a excerpt from her post, but if you are or were a mother of young children, or are going to be one, take the time to read it, please.

From Janelle's blog...

Also, I think that as women we compare ourselves to others and set ridiculously high and unrealistic expectations for ourselves that cause us to get frustrated and discouraged. We feel like we need to hand make our children's hair bows and church ties and dresses and pillow cases and quilts and volunteer in each of our children's classes at school and be involved in the PTA and in our communities and provide 3 homemade fabulously healthy meals a day and study the scriptures with our family for an hour every day and run an etsy shop and blog and scrapbook and dress in the latest trends and have time to train for a marathon and exercise daily and of course have a spotlessly clean home and no dirty laundry or dishes! Well no wonder we get stressed out and frustrated!! The problem is that we ALSO want to be able to play barbies and dinosaurs and cars and build legos and play dress up and have dance parties in our jammies and play candy land and chutes and ladders and blow bubbles and go to the park and go to story time at the library and roll on the ground and laugh and be silly with our kids all day every day! And then what about the bills and the grocery shopping and the dishes and laundry and other household things that need to be done? We can't do it all ladies! And when we try to we will get burned out and frustrated and stressed and feel like our children are getting in the way and holding us back!

I loved it all, but this was such a pearl of wisdom that I thought everyone could use. Janelle, I hope you don't mind me sharing. To read her entire post please go here

1 comment:

Janelle Ehat said...

You are so sweet Kelly! I'm glad something that I said made sense to you! It was kind of just an emotionally charged rant in response to several people telling me that after reading the "Don't Carpe Diem" article they felt SO much better and like they didn't have to try so hard to enjoy motherhood anymore. Anyway, I guess I should have made it more clear in my post that I don't think that people who DO try and still struggle enjoying motherhood are bad mothers. I could have been more sensitive to those who read the other article and felt so much better about their own struggles as a mother. I am one of those mothers. I TOTALLY identified with her and everything she was saying, except when she said that trying to "carpe a whole diem" was unrealistic and "just didn't work" for her. I just felt that was a cop out. An excuse to fell ok about giving up on trying and feeling 100% satisfied with just loving a few moments of every day instead of at least trying to find joy and pleasure in all of it, struggles and all. Anyway! Here I go on a rant again! Lol! But I'm glad you enjoyed my post. :)