The Tireds…or how do celebrity moms do it all?
One of our great partners and supporters is www.mommytrackd.com…a great site for moms who are working or staying at home and just want to be connected for a laugh or a “me too!” moment. Today, in their weekly email they had some “Celebrity Mom Sound Bites” and I was reading them and thinking here and there how apropos some are—even though I have a healthy dose of cynicism because mommy-hood must certainly be easier if you’re a celebrity with the appropriate help, no?
They had a great quote from Tina Fey…kind of sums up what we’re hoping to get to, what we’d love people at our conference address:
“The ideal situation for a parent is one that no one has - having a fulfilling job that requires you to work three days a week. It’s better for the parents, because they get to spend time with the children and also have a source of pride and achievement - and income - outside the home.”
Then I got to Teri Hatcher’s and as I read it I instantly started to cry.
“… I’ll work a 14-hour day, four days in a row and feel like I’ve been run over. But I don’t call it tired, I call it, ‘Nothing is right, and I’m no good at my job and I’m horrible and no one will ever love me.’ This is a serial problem for mothers. We’re trying to be everything all the time. The best mom, the best worker, the best wife or the best dater. And it’s too much.”
That sort of sums up how it’s been lately! I guess it’s that I’m so TIRED and that’s why when I hear all the news stories about birth order and how we spend all our time with our oldest, so they’re smarter—I think “I KNEW I broke my twins, it’s all my fault they aren’t geniuses”. Is it because I’m TIRED that I cried on the way to work because I feel like “Why do I go and why does this matter”? And cried on the way home at the thought of having to face the grocery store—and cried again when I thought “Why are you crying about going home!!” It’s certainly the “Tired” that makes me look around my house and threw up my hands because it’s a pig sty inhabited by people who live to smear messy ice-cream hands up and down the steps—and I know THAT’S my fault too because I let them eat ice cream everywhere!
Anyway I guess all of us go through the “Nothing is Right” phases. I guess we all come out of them too. But this blog’s about how working moms do it and I think sometimes, it’s just hard to do it…
I’m going to let Tina Fey some it up.
“I think every working mom probably feels the same thing which is you go through big chunks of time where you’re just going ‘this is impossible — oh this is impossible.’ And then you just keep going and keep going and you sort of do the impossible.”