I'm Here But You Want Me There

It feels as though you don't see that I'm growing and moving forward.  There always seems to be this expectation that I'm going to be Super Woman and do it all.  I know that I'm capable of much more than I'm doing now, but what is wrong with just being?  The process of doing all the time and meeting the high levels of expectations feels so forced and is incredibly exhausting.

Just so we're clear, let me go over the difference between doing and being.  It's not that doing is productive and being is lazy.  That's a big misconception!

I was a Doing Mom.  I was the only parent to my triplets for many years and my doing consisted of; getting my kids into the best school possible, cooking almost every meal, cleaning all the time, making sure weekends were productive and fun for the kids, doing a few things so I could rejuvenate during stressful times, wash dry and fold laundry on a regular basis, have the perfect bag of snacks and things in the car at all times, etc.  What I began to ask myself, when it got to be too much for one person, was am I doing all of this because it's expected or because its necessary.  My answer was shocking.  It was a resounding, because it's expected.  I had the image of what a Mom's role is and there was no questioning that I had the Beaver Cleaver family expectation.  Clean house, well behaved kids, smiles on the outside, blahda, blahda, blahda.  I wondered what I could cut back on and still provide a happy and loving home for my kids.

I'm now a Being Mom...or working on the concept anyway.  I find joy in food shopping for my family, so I do all the food shopping.  I have terrible pain when I try to wash dishes, so my family (husband and three kids) rotate evening dish washing.  Oh, and as a family, we realized that having a crystal clean sink all the time was not a necessity.  Washing dishes once a day worked for everyone at home, and it's more enjoyable to do it once than multiple times a day.  I'm not sure where the concept of 'clean enough to eat off the floor' came from, but we really don't need to eat off the floor.  We have a perfectly good table.  Once we figured that out, the floor gets cleaned once a week instead of every day.  Also, I realized that hugging my kids every day and telling them that I love them, even when they're annoyed with me, actually has a longer sustainable life than a gazillion presents under the Christmas Tree.

Maybe the deeper difference between doing and being is that doing is mindless and being is mindful.  I don't need to do more, make more money, acquire more things, be the most popular in the PTA (I'm not actually in the PTA, but you know what I mean) and keep moving just to keep moving.  I like to stay still and sit.  I even like it when its quiet.  I enjoy smelling the roses and watching my children be curious about the world around them.  I love sitting in my room and hearing my family, in the next room, laughing and playing (many times my husband starts it).

So, I hope you understand.  I'm going to ask you not to 'should' all over me anymore.  I know what my priorities are and they may be very different than yours.  That's what makes us unique.  If I look like I'm not doing anything.  It's probably because I'm being.


Thanks for reading, forwarding and following my posts!!!
Terri