The day I dropped off my baby at daycare for the first time, I was overcome with feelings I’ve never experienced before. My throat tightened, and I felt a heavy pit in my stomach that threatened to linger. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I exited the building alongside my husband. So, this was the infamous mom’s guilt I’ve heard about. I pictured daycare calling me at any instance to summon me. Why was I doing this? At that moment of intense emotions, I couldn’t fathom the reasons that lead me to make that decision, and I wished I didn’t have to.
The reality of the working mom isn’t glamorous. Our everyday lives are governed by tough decisions. What further adds to this difficulty is an internal, and sometimes societal pressure to “have it all”, and fulfill the perceived image of the modern mom as Wonder Woman. This Wonder Mom effortlessly balances different responsibilities like a juggler, aces her job and then comes back home to her kids, a wide smile on her face, ready to put on her mom hat and spend quality time with her kids.
This desire to “have it all” has its justification and roots. No mother wants to feel like she sacrificed her motherhood for her job, regardless of whether she chose to work or because she had to. Nor does she want to feel like she lost parts of herself while raising her little bundles of joy, so that by the time they left the house, she forgot who she was anymore. And so we do our best to not let our careers affect our motherhood and vise versa. Because if we come home tired, and we can’t play with our kids or entertain them, then that means our jobs have affected our abilities to care for our kids, and that brings up worries about the implications of this situation, and what it means about our past decisions and how they would influence the future. And in the process of worrying and giving our all to our jobs and kids, we get mentally and physically drained, and we lose our energy to enjoy the present and the blessings that we have.
I, like many moms, found myself in that situation on the day I decided to put my child in daycare so I could go back to school. Needless to say, that wasn’t the last time I felt that way. However, a while back, I learned a concept that made me relate to those situations differently, and I’ve been applying it to various aspects of my life ever since.
It’s the idea of doing what’s “good enough” and letting go of “perfect”, and instead focusing on doing what we can with the amount of energy that we have. It’s the idea of accepting the situation as it is, and embracing the imperfections that come along with it.
The first time I heard about this concept, I didn’t think it would work. It felt like an excuse to not try my best, to give up too easily. But as I read more about it, it started to make more sense, and at that point I had nothing to lose, so I decided to give it a try. I hesitantly let go of the idea of Wonder Mom, and tried to focus my attention on being “good enough”.
It has been several months now, and I have to say, being good enough feels so liberating. Some days, my “good enough” is putting on a tired smile on my face when I pick up my son at the end of a long day, and being patient enough to embrace his energy at a time when I felt drained. On better days, “good enough” is doing well at work, and coming back home with lots of energy to play with my son, talk to him, and read plenty of books before bedtime.
Paradoxically, being good enough made me happier. It helped me appreciate and be grateful for the good days, and find some self-compassion when my days were more difficult. It made me realize that imperfection is part of the human experience, and instead of forcing ourselves to feel happy at the end of a long stressful day because we think our kids deserve better, we can instead show them what it means to be human. And a part of being human is experiencing the full-range of emotions, from happiness and pleasure, to sadness and melancholy.
It’s not always easy to embrace being good enough. For the past six weeks, I’ve been taking a class that has proved to be more difficult and time-consuming than I imagined (hence the delay in me posting on my blog). I found myself having to stay late to work on homework on the days leading up to the deadline, and even when I decided to stop working, my brain continued to think about the homework problems when I came home. During such times, “good enough” doesn’t feel like it’s good enough, and my impulse is to try to do everything. But I’ve gotten better at reminding myself to accept the situation as it is, and do what I can while also taking care of myself and my family. Like everything else in life, it’s a process, and the more we consciously remind ourselves of it, the more it will naturally come to us.
I’ve been working on this post intermittently for the past two months. A part of me wanted to perfect it before publishing it on the blog. However, I realized that writing is a never-ending process, and that I’ll always find a different way to re-write a sentence. While it does feel good to have a polished piece of writing, I don’t want that to stand in the way of getting my message out there.
So, in the spirit of embracing “Good Enough”, I decided to publish this post, and I am content with that.