motherhood

It’s okay that it’s hard

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I have written very little on this blog about my work in higher eduction and academic advising. I think this is mostly because I fear being honest in such a public forum. In my personal and professional experiences, I have found that really, really honest people such as myself are usually labeled as negative, or nay-sayers, or resistant to change, or blockers. Or, I think people are going to ask, “why do you do what you do if you don’t like it?” Or, they have actually said that to me.

I am reading Glennon Melton’s book, Carry On, Warrior. I cannot put it down. Yesterday, I read this gem:

“I love having written. And I love having parented. My favorite part of each day is when the kids are put to bed and Craig and I sink into the couch to watch some quality TV, like Wife Swap and congratulate each other on a job well done. Or a job done, at least.

Every time I write something like this, readers suggest that I’m being negative. I have received this particular message four or five times: G, if you can’t handle the three you have, why do you want a fourth? That one always stings, and I don’t think it’s quite fair. Parenting is hard. Just like lots of important jobs are hard. Why is that the second a mother admits that it’s hard, people feel the need to suggest that maybe she’s not doing it right? Or that she certainly shouldn’t add more to her load. Maybe the fact that it’s so hard means she IS doing right, in her own way, and she happens to be honest.”

(Melton, 2013, p. 113)

BAM! YES! I totally and completely agree with everything she writes about parenthood in this passage. And, all I have to do is substitute “student affairs” or “higher education” or “academic advising” or “being a working parent” for “parenting” and it describes most of what I have been feeling as a professional.

I don’t particularly get my students right now. They are frustrating to me. I think it is completely inappropriate that they come to appointments with me totally unprepared.”Tell me about your program” they say. So, I smile, launch into my spiel and do my job. But on the inside, I am saying to myself, “That’s not a question. Please come back when you are really ready for this meeting.”

Or, they are so prepared that all they do is recite the website back to me and then ask me if the content of the website is true. Seriously? Like I have the time, energy, or forethought to make stuff up on our website because I want to trick you and make more work for myself. I am not quite sure what all that is about. I am constantly evaluating and thinking about that. Generational differences? I have unrealistic expectations of student behavior? All of the above? None of the above?

I think right now my job is hard because I am not saying everything I think. I am not being honest. I am biting my tongue so hard I am surprised it hasn’t fallen off. Somehow in this profession, honest got translated as mean and being developmental means treating students like Faberge eggs. And, my frustration is that in student affairs I perceive that there is pressure to looooooooove what you do, all the time, all day every day.
Via Twitter and Facebook and professional organizations, I am constantly barraged with messages that professional frustration equates to unprofessionalism or lack of fit. I wonder if I am alone in this? I wonder if my colleagues- especially my fellow working-parent, mid-career, dual-career couple colleagues- feel the same way?

I would love to hear from you. What are your experiences with your job? Are you frustrated? It’s okay if you are. It’s okay if you aren’t. Are you allowing yourself to feel that way? Why or why not? Reading about another mother’s experience gave me space to confess that right now, it’s hard. It’s okay that it’s hard. It wasn’t always this way. It won’t stay this way.

When did we start thinking so little of our children and ourselves?

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A few days ago, I stumbled across Mrs. Hall’s FYI letter to young girls. I don’t even remember where I saw it first. Facebook, maybe. I clicked on it. I read it. I re-read it. At first, truthfully, I thought it was a joke. Then I saw the comments on her blog and all the re-posts and re-tweets and realized she was in fact quite serious.

As the mother to two boys, I was….confused by her post. As a woman and a feminist (gasp!), I was enraged. I could not believe that this woman, who also parents a daughter, had these thoughts about young girls and their sexual identities (on-line or otherwise). That this mother believes that the best way to teach her young sons how to be men is to shame women for being sexual creatures. In the process, she is denying that her own children are also sexual beings and abdicates them from any responsibility for whatever decisions they have/will make. I really thought we were past the whole “women are temptresses out to snag a man” and “men are visual beings who cannot be trusted because they think with their penises” stuff.

I am very very new to the “blogging” world. But as I am writing and tweeting more, I am also finding more and more blogs, especially by other sassy mommas that I really enjoy and find quite hilarious. Several of those bloggers posted responses to Mrs. Hall. (Google it. There are too many to list here.) I read along and thought to myself, “right on!” I even wanted to post a snarky one myself with the same condescendingly self-righteous tone that Mrs. Hall invoked in her original post.

Something stopped me though and I am glad I waited. Because although I think Mrs. Hall is wrong in both her message and her tone, me being snarky back accomplishes very little, other than to make me feel better. And the truth is, I don’t feel better. I am sad. I am deeply disturbed by the message that her post sends to both boys and girls.

For days now I have been wondering why we think so little of our own children? Why do we think so little of ourselves and our abilities to raise them well? When did we stop raising our children to handle the tough stuff that life will teach them? The tough stuff that we are morally, socially, ethically obligated to teach and show them as their parents? Children come out of the womb innocent. They are pure. They are raised to be jerks or bigots or brats or alpha males. Behavior is learned. Maybe that is what is so scary to so many of us parents. We are so afraid of doing it wrong that instead, we do nothing and throw up our hands. Or, as Mrs. Hall did, blame the pretty girls for tempting her innocent, pure-of-heart-and-mind-boys.

What I read in her post is fear and mistrust. (My original comments about that are still posted on my facebook timeline.) She is afraid of the world that her children will enter. She does not trust herself. She does not trust her children to think for themselves, to remember the values that she has taught them. Clearly she thinks that boys cannot be trusted to their own devices and that pretty young girls are only out to corrupt them along the way. Why are we so afraid? And why do we trust our children so little?

In the process of formulating my own response to her post, I came across this post from Kristen Howerton. She blogs at http://www.rageagainstheminivan.com. Check it out. Really, really good stuff.

http://www.rageagainsttheminivan.com/2013/09/on-respect-responsibility-and-mrs-halls.html

Her post really says it all and says it very well. “But when it comes to our sons we need to focus on teaching our boys to manage their own thoughts and to extend respect to every woman, regardless of how she is dressed.”

We need to trust ourselves as parents. We need to teach our children. And then, we need to trust that they have learned well.

The post I didn’t mean to write, but needed to

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I intended to post a picture of the cucumbers and beans that my son & husband harvested from our garden yesterday. Then, I was going to say something cute like, “lesson learned, never give up!” Then, the hypocrisy of that post stopped me and I wrote this one instead. I had nothing to do with the garden. But, I have everything to do with this. So here it is.

“It only takes one person to change your life: You.”

“Tips for a powerful brand”

“Realize your full talent potential!”

“I just posted a ______ mile run with Map My Run!”

“I worked out this morning!”

“I nailed a run. #beastmode”

“You can be anything you want, you just have to choose.”

“Believe you can do anything at least once a day.”

As someone who wrestles with anxiety and depression, these incessant messages feel like I am being pelted with… criticism. It feels like noise. Blah, blah, blah. Talking heads with really long skinny fingers pointing at me. “You are not enough. You should be doing more.” Noise, noise, noise. The messages make me jealous, more anxious, and paralyzed by the fear of doing something wrong, trapped by perfectionism.

I haven’t blogged in too long and I have yet to make significant progress on my journal article.

I feel ashamed that I have fallen off the exercise wagon and yet to get back on. I can’t remember the last time I went for a run. I did a few 5Ks in early spring. I even ran in the mornings for about two weeks. I went running on vacation?! Then, I got sick and I stopped. Although my cold is gone, I have not fully recovered.

I know that people who tweet and post encouraging messages don’t know that I feel this way. I also know that the intent of these messages is not to make anyone feel bad or to shame anyone into exercising, or writing, or updating their LinkedIn profile. If anything, these posts serve to encourage others. And they do. I have witnessed many friends get on the exercise bandwagon, update resumes, add skills to their profiles, etc., etc., etc. And sometimes, they encourage me, too. And other times, these overtly positive messages feel threatening.

The thing with depression too is that it makes me lose sight of what I have accomplished. This weekend, I did six loads of laundry; went shopping for home décor; then came home and fixed an old nightstand with a new knob and picture frames; put my son’s artwork into a new frame and hung it in the living room; and painted an entryway in our house with a spiritual saying, with a stone cross in the middle of it (take THAT Pinterest! I came up with that idea all on my own!). Not bad! And, I did it all by myself. Doing this alone is also a huge feat for me, as my anxiety can sometimes make being alone feel like loneliness.

But, I didn’t go running. I didn’t exercise once all weekend. I didn’t call my grandmother. I texted my sister on her birthday instead of calling her. I didn’t, I didn’t. I didn’t…..Noise. Noise. Noise.

It’s not that I don’t want to work out, or write thank you notes, or clean my house. It’s not that I can’t.

It’s that the cycle of inertia, shame, and more inertia fueled by that shame, is really, really hard to break. Hitting the reset button is necessary. I know that I need to. I know that I want to. It’s just that taking the first step to actually doing it feels momentous.

This is part of me that I never knew before; I have only recently learned that how I feel had a name. Truth is, I have always wrestled with these issues. Looking back on my late 20s and early 30s, I can now see patterns of behavior. Periods of incredible activity and productivity, followed or proceeded by valleys of exhaustion and inactivity. When in the valley of depression it feels as if everything is fuzzy, like someone is shouting at me but I am under water. I can see and hear them and I want to claw my way out and break the surface but, I end up treading water instead.

I even have dreams about my depression. In my dreams, I have been wronged, shamed, or thrown under the bus by someone, almost always in a public setting. I try to speak up for myself and I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I am shouting inside my head but, only I can hear it. The people around me are staring at me. This leads to more and more frustration and more shouting, but no results.

I also dream that I am running but nothing ever happens. My legs get shorter and my abdomen collapses like an accordion and I get physically smaller. Then, my legs start to sink into the pavement and I am no longer running, just staying in one place. Interesting that my dreams are about running. Huh.

I read once that the author J.K. Rowling struggles with depression and that the dementors in Harry Potter are her version of that struggle. This is the best image I can think of to represent depression and it’s after effects. I can feel its presence, its cold breath on my neck. There are times when I can swallow the doubts and fears, choke them back like gravel in my throat. And then, there are other times when I must embrace the darkness. Let its waves crash over me and run their course. Then, I will rise up again. Battered and bruised, but still here.

I am absolutely terrified to post this. I fear what you will think. But, I am choosing #optimism and doing it anyway.

I am learning that none of this makes me weak. This does not make me less-than. Some days are easier than others.By being vulnerable about my imperfections, my crosses, I can name them, address them, and even embrace them without shame because they make me who I am.