From The Middle-Aged Mom Diaries: Can we please do less?

When my youngest was a baby, about 20 years ago, I got food poisoning.  I remember what I ate, where I ate it, and the moment, a few hours after dinner, when it took hold of me.  It was absolutely horrible.  I was married to my late husband at the time.  He went to work the next day.  I stayed home so sick I couldn’t move from the bathroom, alone with a one year old.  Thank God for my dad.  He was older and relied on an oxygen tank, but still was there to help tame a new walker who was into everything.  I was sick for five days.  My husband went to work every single one of those days.  Am I trying to throw my late husband under the bus when he can’t defend himself?  No.  To be quite honest, we come from a society where this behavior for decades has been deemed “normal”.  He was raised this way.  Should he have un-learned this behavior?  Well, that would have been great, of course.  So maybe, I guess, in a way, I am calling him out.  If he was sick, he took a day off and stayed in bed.  If I was sick, I took care of kids and had to ask my aging father for help when I really got in a bind.  This is all true.  However, if I am calling him out, I am not calling him out alone.  This is the society that we grew up in, a society that is slowly changing, thank God.  I see that in many ways.  However, after years of being conditioned to do it all, how and when do we, as moms, finally learn to do less? 

Subscribe to get access

Read more of this content when you subscribe today.

Subscribe to continue reading

Become a paid subscriber to get access to the rest of this post and other exclusive content.

From the Middle-Aged Mom Diaries

I’m a hot mess.  Totally overwhelmed.  Burnt out.  Either running around trying to figure out which direction to go in or immobilized, needing to do absolutely nothing.  I also feel grateful for everything I have, for my kids and everything they do, for the person I have grown into, and for the lessons I continue to learn.  I imagine my brain with 168 tabs open all at once ALL THE TIME.  The schedules for 5 different baseball teams and a lacrosse team.  Which classes am I teaching each week and at which locations?  What days and times can I schedule my clients around needing to pick my kid up from his practice that always runs late?  How do I fit in accomplishing everything I wrote on my 2026 Bingo Board and promised myself I would do this year?  I need to clean my office and mail out gifts I forgot I still had from Christmas.  I need to buy paint for the bathroom renovation.  Is it a pain in the ass to pull up linoleum?  There were 32 mini Rice Krispy treats in that box I bought last night.  How are half of them missing?  Which child ate way too much sugar today?  Those flowers my boyfriend got me are absolutely gorgeous.  I really need to stop to smell the flowers more.  I think I’m almost out of moisturizer.  I should get myself the good kind at Ulta this week.  I need an oil change.  Where should I go that I won’t feel like they will try to screw me just cause I’m a woman?  Did I put the clothes that were in the washer into the dryer?  What can I make that’s healthy for dinner tomorrow?  Omg Easter is next weekend and I still need to put together Easter Baskets.  Wtf Kelly!  I wish I could stop my random foot pain.  What will my theme be in my yoga class?  Can I fit in a lunch break with a friend this week?  I have a few people that I really want to catch up with.  I need to remember to order the dog’s heartworm chews.  I need to write out some checks to pay the water bill and my excise tax I keep forgetting about.  Will my skin ever stop being so itchy?  I thought the hormone replacement therapy was supposed to help.  Thank God it helps me sleep.  When could I try to go line dancing this week?  I know I need to make time for me.  That mom guilt really sucks.  What else could I be working on to bring in more income?  I wish the island sink would just drain already.  What the heck is stuck in there anyways?  I haven’t worked on that puzzle I started right after Christmas.  I really should finish it so I can get it off the kitchen table.  I should really slow down.  I need to take things one at a time.  I probably should do some yoga.  I will feel more centered.  Do I have time for that?

Sound familiar?  If you have ever felt alone in your thoughts and responsibilities, fear not for research tells us this is all way too common…

Subscribe to get access

Read more of this content when you subscribe today.

Subscribe to continue reading

Become a paid subscriber to get access to the rest of this post and other exclusive content.

Waking Up

It isn’t actually freezing out. This makes two days in a row! Could spring really be here?  We did just “spring ahead” this past weekend.  High school sports begin tryouts next week.  I can see most of the ground now, even if it is quite muddy.  We have had so much snow this winter!  I have a feeling there will still be snow from some of those big, plowed piles until April.  Do I dare put the winter jackets away yet?  I have been able to leave the house in a sweatshirt for two days.  I don’t want to put it all away and jinx us, but it certainly would be nice!  As the weather improves and spring shows signs of arriving, how are you feeling?  It dawns on me as an adult that I hibernate, as it now feels as if I am coming out of my cave to see the light.   And the light feels so great!  Do you also feel like you are waking up?

As I was taking a walk this morning, I began to think about waking up and all the ways we truly do wake up in our lives.  We wake up to each new day (thank God).  We wake up coming out of toxic relationships.  We wake up leaving a job.  We wake up when we meet new people, when we learn we are having a child, or when we lose a loved one.  There are endless ways we wake up throughout our lives.  Waking up is generally not something we control.  The same way our bodies awake at sometimes ungodly hours, life can also come our way with events, people, and experiences that force us to also wake up.  Sometimes what causes us to wake up can be wonderful and, other times, it can downright suck.  Either way, change, like the seasons, is inevitable.

As I wake up from this long, cold, snowy winter, I reflect on the other areas of my life that need a little waking up as well.  It’s time for a new year revival.  What were your goals?  What was on the vision board?  What were the resolutions, the promises you made to yourself?  Spring brings a sense of renewal.  Maybe it is time to renew our promises to ourselves.  I decided this year to write and to speak more.  Here I am, at the computer throwing my own thoughts out to the world once again.  I decided to take back my health from the perils of peri-menopause.  Anyone else?  That is a whole different post for another day!  I decided to take each day one at a time and to live intentionally with joy.  Let’s explore this last goal.

Subscribe to get access

Read more of this content when you subscribe today.

Subscribe to continue reading

Become a paid subscriber to get access to the rest of this post and other exclusive content.