With Mother’s Day soon approaching, I’ve been thinking about all of the roles a mother plays in the course of her life. I only had to think about it for five minutes before I was totally exhausted with what all that can entail! I know because I am a mother, I have watched my mom and I know many mothers of all ages and seasons of their life. Motherhood is not a job for the weary or faint of heart! Being a mom is a full and beautiful experience in life. During this time of celebrating moms on Mother’s Day, I encourage all moms to be kind to yourself. Give yourself time, space to breath, room to expand. Each of us is a special, unique woman; therefore, we are unique one of a kind mothers. Make time for what inspires your soul, refreshes your body and do what I call…keep your tank full!
Something that is universally understood by moms is that we wear many hats during the course of a day much less how many hats we wear during the course of our lifetime. Motherhood is glorious in all its beauty, special moments, imperfections, demands and what I call “mom crisis moments”. We get used to being called upon in a moments notice for solving, planning, juggling, and loving our children through whatever is needed at the time. To take good care of our children and love and support them, we have to love and support ourself so that we can be our best. Running on empty which can feel like being depleted mentally, spiritually, emotionally can happen to even the best of moms.
Have you ever had the experience of running out of gas in your car? Hopefully someone else reading this has had that experience and won’t leave me hanging out on the island of embarrassment and say, “yeah I did that once too.” Well, it did happen to me and it wasn’t much fun! It was a long time ago, and I thought I had about ¼ tank of gas in my car, but I was clearly wrong in estimating my distance to the next gas station…also known as not paying attention to the gas gauge. My car came to a sputtering slow speed as I veered off to the side of the road. Eventually, the car just stopped. No matter how many times I turned the key in the ignition, the engine would sputter and try to get going but it was D-O-N-E- done. That car wasn’t moving forward until I found a way to put some gas in the tank. Similarly, we have to gas up our tank to keep our engine going per say. As mothers, we have to keep ourselves full on many levels in order to be the best we can be to serve our family to our best ability. Every mother knows that the list of what we do in a day is long. Each day is unique and some days we will feel like we had a major fail as a mom but other days we feel like total rock stars in the mom department. Pat yourself on the back for the days gone well and on the days that hold what I call mom fail moments not to worry because tomorrow is another day and there is no such thing as being a perfect mom.
I encourage moms to take time for yourself so you can take better care of others. It isn’t selfish or you won’t get a mark in the “bad mom file” because you take time to go for a run, hit the spinning class you always wanted to try, steal away some time to read a chapter of a new book, call a friend to check in, curl up in a chair and listen to music, take a long bath, have a sexy date night out with your man, sit at a bookstore and enjoy a latte and aimlessly flip through magazines, or take on a special project at work you have interest in. Whatever brings you joy, fills up your tank, go do it and do it knowing that you will be better for it. Create some breathing room in your life even it is just 15 minutes a day. You will serve your children better with a lighter heart, a skip in your step and a refreshed spirit. Don’t lose “you” in the process of being a mom. Don’t run on empty…go fill your tank up ladies and enjoy the fullness of being a mom and woman.