Outing the Stay At Home Mom:: The Truth From the Front Lines

I’ve been a stay at home mom for 15 years. Fifteen years at this gig and another 15 to go, give or take. That’s what happens when one decides on becoming a baby making machine shooting 5 of them suckers out into the world:: job security {I’m a genius like that}. I’m halfway through my career, but honestly I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that I’m hoping to be a stay-at-home-grandma one day, so maybe that will get extended by a few more years. Can you imagine?!?! I can get all the loves ALL day long and then get ALL the sleep all night long. Blessed be the child who graces me with this privilege. They will officially be deemed my all-time favorite. This fall, I will officially enter the “mom of a high schooler” phase. This has to be a whole other universe all on its own I’m sure! I know, I KNOW…I have much to learn with this mom stuff…still, I do have some things to say about what I’ve figured out for certain about us people that stay back on the home-front, full time. 

We are STRONG.

You do not understand strength and grit until you’ve witnessed first hand a mother with young children who stays home all day. A kid on her hip, one attached to her boob and the other at her feet, simultaneously.  Most people wouldn’t last five minutes, but the stay at home mom can do this all day long, day after day, without breaking a sweat.  The super-human strength to love and nurture overcomes the strife and finds beauty in the chaos and chaos in the beauty.  

This is a glimpse of the every day  for a momma. 

We are INTELLIGENT.

Do you even get how intelligent these women are? Rivaling that of an ER doctor, there is constant decision making of choices that have to be made in a matter of seconds to keep everything and everyone together or all-is-lost:: she can’t find her other shoe, the macaroni is about to boil over, he spilled his chocolate milk and the neighbor kids at the front door.  It really is that kind of pressure. It’s always intense decision making, and it consistently feels like death one way or the other, because toddlers, because infants, because.

It takes brains friends. Lot’s of brains to figure out how to save the planet for child.

We RESCUE.

If you are ever in a bind, ask a stay at home mom for help. It doesn’t matter if she has one child or four hundred ninety-two children at home. It doesn’t matter if she has a sink full of her own dishes or laundry piled as high as the Texas sky. She will find a way to save the day. She will get the job done and it will be done well. She will show up at your door with a meal for you, your family and the dog. She will pick you up on the side of the road when your car gives out at midnight or 2pm. She will help you clean your house when you’re expecting company or drive over to hold your crying baby when you just can’t take one more sleepless helpless night of it. She’s got you.

She doesn’t wear a cape, but maybe she should. 

We LOVE big.

Sometimes we love too big. We give and give and give it all away. We forget to keep some for ourselves. It’s our downfall and that’s when things get choppy. If you see a mama who seems to be struggling, help a girl out. She needs to love herself. Remind her of her strength and her smarts. Take her face and scream talk all the positivity you posses right into her soul. She needs love and she needs to know that it’s okay to take some for herself. 

Remind her, to love HER. 

We are making a DIFFERENCE. 

What you do matters. It’s so very easy to fall into a trap of self-loathing and negativity in this profession…and YES, it’s a profession. You don’t get a pat on the back, thumbs up or an increase in pay from those little humans. Getting stuck truly believing that all the days look the same, meshing together week after week must in fact mean you’re doing it all wrong, is a slippery slope. A slope I’ve slid down many many times. Thoughts that no one sees how hard you work or hears a single word you are saying, can get terribly lonely. 

My very wise {mothering right along-side me, but ahead of me a few years} friend once said…okay a lot of times has said to me “It does get easier, Sunny”. I can now see that it actually does. Those hard parts do end. I mean they change into other parts that might challenge your stability {which she also warned me of}, but it’s so nice to know that it really will all come together. For a stay at home mom, the seasons evolve just as they always have for me and for you. 

It comes together when there are no more diapers to change or red eye feedings that measure the time of your entire existence on planet earth. It comes together when the offspring can grab their own snacks and they know how to work a remote control better than you. It comes together when you send them off to school and the teachers report is that of a “good kid, sweet, smart and kind to classmates” kind of note sent home in the tiny little bags on their backs that they wear to school just like the big kids. It comes when the conversations are between mom and intelligible speaking growing way too fast tweenager, instead of just a confused slobbery babbles with wide eyed no clue what is going on {but oh so dang cute} baby.  It will come and when it does you will be able to bask in the beauty of:: Survival and sanity {for a moment} as you recall and reclaim you strength, intelligence, compassion and love for who YOU are. 

Stay at home moms, we see you. We hear you. What WE are doing, it matters. 

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