Book therapy

For my birthday, D bought me 2 books I had requested: You're a Good Mom (and your kids aren't so bad either) by Jen Singer and I Was A Really Good Mom before I Had Kids by Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile.

I have completed the Singer book and am working through the other. I really should have read these books while delivering N because, perhaps, they would have helped me slightly in my futile quest to be the world's most perfect mom (maybe I could have saved a copayment or two on therapy if I had). Or maybe not.

Like all moms, I am susceptible to the jealousy, judgment and guilt. Today, in fact, I went to a meeting at N's school to help plan the Halloween party and have had to do emotional gymnastics ever since I left to help myself remember that I really am ok with the person and mom I am.

I felt awkwardness when guiding another mom's child to be a little more gentle with G (because I don't know this mom and didn't want her to feel like I was harping on her kid), and I felt envy/judgment because another mom seemed just so on top of things....like how I used to be before I had kids. And while I accept these feelings, I also know that they waste alot of my valuable brain time.

It took me a loooooong time to feel happy doing what I'm doing, and I have a couple things that have helped my outlook:

1. I try to remember that this mom stuff is temporary. Qualification: this mom of little, needy kids is temporary. As my 70-year-old mother tells me, she still frets over me and my brother, but she doesn't have the daily backaches and headache associated with tending to little kids. N is to the point where a lot of mornings she gets up, gets dressed and heads downstairs to play while my ass is still in bed trying to get 3 more minutes before my alarm rings again.
   
2. Parenting is frickin' hard.
3. I like a challenge. For me, if it is easy, it really isn't worth doing. So parenting with all its frustrations and difficulties, satisfies a need I have....to fight, to work hard, to struggle.
4. Nobody else knows what they are doing either.

And that is what these books are good for, mostly. To remind me that no one, in all the thousands of years of parenting, has ever done it perfectly. So I am a fool to think I am going to do it, or to even try.