Free shipping on all orders over $75🎄

I’m angry. I feel like things never stop piling up. The laundry. The housework. The forms, homework and fundraisers. The bellies that need fed. My ever growing team needs (and deserves!) a solid and powerful leader.

Pressure! Everywhere!

The dog needs walked. The van needs cleaned. The friendships need watered. My inbox blows up. Texts that don’t get a text back. The rules on life can be so burdensome.

Don’t give them red dye or too much screen time. Keep them away from this app and that site. Make sure they never forget their folder or lunchbox. Get them to this place on time. Remember what color jersey for the game.

Oh and tend to your marriage because that ish will completely fall apart the moment you do not.

Oh, and make sure you’re getting time for self-care and rest in there or you’ll fall apart!

Don’t feed them fast food. Don’t scream at them because that will become their inner voice.

Oh, and make sure you are sleeping eight hours.

Then the early years. Don’t get an epidural. Cloth diapers + homemade baby food + don’t bottle feed because “breast is best” + don’t ever let them cry it out or they will feel emotionally abandoned as adults.

Yes, all of this angers me today.

Because everyone I talk to is barely making it and so incredibly stressed out.

Literally. Every. Single. Person. And they feel like they are alone.

Alone. Is. A. Lie.

I suck at laundry and you will not get much from us on fundraisers because I just. don’t. have. time (and I forget!). All three of my kids cried it out because my sleep was essential for them to have a stable and happy mama.

My kids sometimes forget their stuff and I bring it to them if I’m able to (and they say you shouldn’t so a lesson can be learned!). I think that’s ridiculous. I believe in grace. I choose different areas to teach my children responsibility like daily chores and saving half their money and so much more.

My kids never once wore cloth diapers and I tried to make baby food and realized quickly I’m not that mom. We did (and still do) really cool crafts and messy activities (that’s more my speed!).

And marriage. Ha! That’s been a constant ebb and flow of good, bad, greater than ever, worse-as it gets and steady willingness to choose each other over all the noise. We always course correct and come out better.

And while I believe in healthy sleep habits, I am over the idea that if you don’t get eight hours then your health is in jeopardy.

Damn you, rules.

Some of us have anxiety that plagues us in the middle of the night. Insomnia steals our rest. The last thing that person needs is to feel “unhealthy” in that moment.

And to the moms of babies . . . let’s get real. What is sleep?

And kudos to the one mom on the whole planet who never screams. I’d love to meet you! You’re probably bionic!

Everyone!!!
Just stop.

And pull into McDonald’s and take the night off from cooking.

Get yourself some fries!

This post originally appeared on Christy Quinn Marshall

 

You may also like:

The Ugly Truth of an Overwhelmed Mom and Resentful Wife

A Mother’s Mind Never Rests, Because We Carry The Mental Load

So God Made a Mother book by Leslie Means

If you liked this, you'll love our new book, SO GOD MADE A MOTHER available now!

Order Now

Christy Marshall

I am a Mama to three darlings and married to my best friend. I am a self-proclaimed anxiety hacker and a certified nutrition mentor. I live minimally and am 100% consumer debt free. I love Jesus, fitness and I have a major camping problem. I live with ADHD and most days I don't hate it. It keeps my life interesting and keeps me naturally hyperactive. I live brave and share my truth even if my voice shakes. I help women gain back their health and my passion comes from a place that I have earned through my own fight. Paying it forward feels like grace upon grace. I'm here for it. All of it.

Sometimes in Life, You Just Really Need a Win

In: Living, Motherhood
Youth basketball game, color photo

These past few weeks have hit my family hard in a variety of ways. My marriage is going through a difficult season. My oldest son has encountered some trouble at school and at home. I fell off a bike and broke my elbow (true disclosure, it was a double fracture, but it hurt like a break)! It has literally been one thing after another for several weeks on end. I am weary, I am worn, I feel like life is beating me up a bit. However, tonight at my son’s seventh-grade basketball game, the two teams were playing neck in...

Keep Reading

I No Longer Wear a Mask to Hide the Hard Parts of Being a Special Needs Parent

In: Motherhood
Family selfie, color photo

So many of us moms who have a child or children with special needs feel the need to put on a brave face, a happy face, a hopeful face, and maybe even a helpful face for them. We often mask the hopeless face, the heartbroken face, the desperate face, and even the angry face in order to protect them and maybe even ourselves. Until we are nearly drowning and gasping for air. I encourage service and support providers to give the parents an opportunity to reach out, to assure them that it’s okay to let the mask down because masking...

Keep Reading

Winter Gloves and Other Trauma

In: Living, Motherhood
Snowflakes flying from mitten covered hands

As I stood in the middle of a bustling English high street, trying to help my screaming 7-year-old daughter fit her fingers into her new winter gloves, I realized that this scene perfectly captured the sense of trauma that each one of us was carrying. England was my country. The land where I grew up. Winter gloves were a normal part of my childhood, along with snow, frost, and rainy days. The fact that my daughter had reached the age of seven without ever needing gloves just highlighted the point that she was not at home here. As I looked...

Keep Reading

There’s Still Magic in These Tween Years

In: Motherhood, Tween
Tween girl walking into ocean waves

The water shimmers atop the electric-blue pool. The clock blinks 94 degrees. It is July 10th weather showing off. A friend asked me to watch her son. He is nine, like my son, and the two of them get along—swimmingly. They throw towels askew and fast-step-crash into the water, goggles on, challenging each other to do this and that. Nine-year-old boys, so alive. My 11-year-old daughter and I stand and squint, placing towels neatly on our beach chairs.  She looks from face to face, like assembly line quality control. A friend—her eyes ask . . . now plead—any friend.  I...

Keep Reading

Sharing Our Grief Frees Our Hearts

In: Grief, Loss, Motherhood
Two women holding hands over a hospital bed, color photo

Almost 18 years ago, we lost our first child. It was unexpected. It was public. It was traumatic. It was a moment in time that even to this day, burns with a scorching flame, running like a reel in my memory and igniting a pain deeper than anything I’ve ever known into the empty corners of my heart. And while time has marched on in beautiful ways—healthy children who I get to watch grow up, an incredible marriage with the love of my life, a gratitude for all the milestones each year brings—I still can’t help but hold space for the...

Keep Reading

God Had Different Plans

In: Faith, Motherhood
Silhouette of family swinging child between two parents

As I sip my twice-reheated coffee holding one baby and watching another run laps around the messy living room, I catch bits and pieces of the Good Morning America news broadcast. My mind drifts off for a second to the dreams I once had of being the one on the screen. Live from New York City with hair and makeup fixed before 6 a.m. I really believed that would be me. I just knew I’d be the one telling the mama with unwashed hair and tired eyes about the world events that happened overnight while she rocked babies and pumped milk....

Keep Reading

My Baby Had Laryngomalacia

In: Baby, Motherhood
Mother holding baby on her shoulder

Life’s funny, isn’t it? Just when you think you’ve got the whole motherhood thing figured out, the universe throws a curveball. And, oh boy, did it throw me one with my second baby. There I was, feeling like a seasoned mom with my firstborn—a healthy, vivacious toddler who was 16 months old. Our breastfeeding journey had its hiccups, an early tongue-tie diagnosis that did little to deter our bond. Fourteen months of nurturing, nighttime cuddles, and feeling powerful, like my body was doing exactly what it was meant to do. Enter my second baby. A fresh chapter, a new story....

Keep Reading

Please Stop Comparing Kids

In: Motherhood
Mom and kids in sunlight

Let me begin with this important message: Please refrain from comparing children, especially when it pertains to their growth and development. If you happen to notice differences in a child’s height, weight, or appetite compared to another, that’s perfectly fine. Your observations are appreciated. However, I kindly request that you avoid openly discussing these comparisons as such conversations can inadvertently distress a parent who may already be grappling with concerns about their child’s growth trajectory. Trust me, I say this from personal experience. Recently, at a dinner gathering, a couple casually remarked that someone’s 1-year-old child appeared larger both in...

Keep Reading

This Will Not Last Forever

In: Faith, Motherhood
Woman looking at sunset

“This will not last forever,” I wrote those words on the unfinished walls above my daughter’s changing table. For some reason, it got very tiring to change her diapers. Nearly three years later, the words are still there though the changing table no longer is under them. While my house is still unfinished so I occasionally see those words, that stage of changing diapers for her has moved on. She did grow up, and I got a break. Now I do it for her baby brother. I have been reminding myself of the seasons of life again. Everything comes and...

Keep Reading

She is an Anonymom

In: Living, Motherhood
Mother standing at sink holding a baby on her hip

She stands alone in the church kitchen, frantically scrubbing pots and pans while the grieving huddle around the fellowship hall, and she slips out the back door before anyone comes in. She is an anonymom. She gets out of her car and picks up the trash thrown into the ditch alongside the country road. She is an anonymom. She sits on the park bench, watching her children play. In the meantime, she continually scans the whole playground, keeping track of everyone’s littles, because that is what moms do. She is an anonymom. RELATED: Can We Restore “the Village” Our Parents...

Keep Reading