I'm Celebrating All Moms This Mother's Day

Motherhood.  Beautiful.  Challenging.  Rewarding.  Filled with incredible highs and deep lows.

Before I became a mother I had an idea about how I was going to raise my family.  I expected to work full-time while my children were cared for by a daycare or nanny depending on what life allowed.  My husband and I do not have any siblings in the Los Angeles area.  His parents retired to the Philippines and my mom lives too far away to provide us with any kind of consistent childcare support.  I would spend time with my kids in the evenings and weekends and that's just how it was going to be.

Then I had Chase.

And suddenly, nothing was more important to me than being present to raise him.  I wanted to be present for all the firsts - steps, word, milestones.  I wanted to be there for every scrape and bruise.  I didn't want to come home and be informed what my child had done that day, I wanted to be able to experience it with him.  I think a lot of this stems from my own childhood and being unknown to my parents.  I longed to be known and to be loved.  For many reasons, my parents were gone for most of my childhood.  So, lavishing the love and attention on my son that I didn't receive has been healing to my own soul.

But oh the struggle!  Because living on a single income in Los Angeles is tough.  Walking away from building a career is a hard decision on many fronts.  First, I've been working in some capacity since I was 8-years-old and I love working.  Second, society looks down on stay-at-home-moms.  Sure, on Mother's Day everybody will gush about moms but on most days, SAHM are considered lazy and anti-feminist.

Here's an article about a columnist in Australia suggesting it be illegal to be a stay-at-home-mom

Here's an article about Stay-At-Home-Mom Shaming 

Any mom out there knows how hard motherhood is.  You have this human being whose survival depends completely on you.  To make it even harder, you are responsible for making decisions about his/her life that will continue to impact him/her for years to come.  Every mom wants to get it right but what's right for one family could be fatal for another.

My friend Angela and I have two kids.  She has twins and I have a toddler/infant combo.  I work part-time from home and my kids are with me all day.  She works full-time and her kids are with her in-laws during the day.  Guess what?  Neither of us has made the "right" or "wrong" decision.  We're both still moms, trying to juggle all the responsibilities of life and make the best decisions for us and our families.  So let's stop shaming each other simply because we're making different life decisions.  I don't know what its like to be away from my kids all day and to miss out on the little things.  I can only guess that there's a lot of heartache involved.  I don't expect Angela to understand how much it weighs on me to not have a career or to not be able to have the lifestyle that I want to have.  Or to be looked down upon by my friends, my family, and the general society I live in.  I mean, I am in Los Angeles, where dogs are valued more than children.

So on this Mother's Day, I'm making a vow to be supportive of moms.  All moms: the working moms, the stay-at-home-moms, the single moms, the adopted moms, the foster moms, the aunts who are like moms, the grandmothers, the nannies who fill in while mom is away.  I will not shame a mom who has made a different life choice than me.  We all have to make the best decisions we can with the life situations that we have.  All our decisions have far-reaching consequences and we have to live with it and see it through.  That burden is hard enough without constantly being told by others that they are the wrong decisions.

Its funny - nobody had the perfect mom yet every mom I know tries to be the perfect mom.  We want it so bad don't we?

To all the moms out there, Happy Mother's Day, may God be with you and bless you...because for reals we need divine help don't we? I know I do.  =)

Isaiah 49:15-16 New International Version (NIV)

15 “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
    and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
    I will not forget you!
16 See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
    your walls are ever before me.