Before September ramps everything back up, here’s your chance to design things differently. Yes, Mama, you have the power to design your own life and choose what you want to say “No” to for the rest of the year.
After six weeks of chaos, I’m craving structure again. But there’s something I don’t want back: the stress.
Chronic mum stress has become wallpaper.
I wrote about this back in May after going to a yoga class with a sound bath. I checked my Garmin afterwards and my stress levels had dropped by 70% in an hour.
The shocking bit wasn’t the drop. It was that I hadn’t felt particularly stressed beforehand. Nothing dramatic had happened. It was just a normal day looking after three small boys. Yet I must have been experiencing a high level of stress to begin with for that kind of drop to even be possible.
It freaked me out a bit and so I looked into motherhood and chronic stress. I’ll be honest with you, the reading ain’t pretty.
So many of us are functioning, getting everything done, meeting everyone’s expectations (making sure the school uniform/lunchbox/schoolbag with matching pencil case etc. is bought) whilst in a state of dangerously high stress. We never get a break from it. We don’t have in-built circuit-breakers, we’re expected to deal with stress upon stress upon stress. Until that fateful day when we just can’t take it any more, our capacity is well and truly breached and we reach burnout.
The Motherhood Index found that 93% of mums report experiencing burnout.
Summer has revealed that wallpaper
Over summer, we’ve slowed down. We’ve taken a break (of sorts). We’ve had more time as a family. It’s a step change.
We’ve taken our foot off the gas, which gives us a rare opportunity to actually see that wallpaper, to take a step back, like we’re a judge on Interior Design Masters (confession: Michelle Ogundehin is my style icon) and look critically at it and ask: is this working? Is this too much? Could this be designed better?
So how do we stop the stress becoming wallpaper again?
Well, I’ll be honest with you, we are starting close to home because not all the mum stress is external. Some of it we create ourselves through expectations.
We set the bar impossibly high for what we think we should be able to achieve in all areas from the state of our home/relationship/finances/bodies etc. and then go like the clappers trying to make our actual lives match the expectations we’ve set for them.
Of course we’re stressed.
One of the steps of breaking up with mum guilt is: acceptance, not expectation.
So this September, instead of just asking:
“What’s stressing me out?”
Go one step further and ask:
“What’s the expectation behind that stress?”
I’m writing this in the lounge surrounded by Magna Tile shrapnel, bits of train track and, for good measure, a face-planted Scooby Doo. It’s not the mess that causes the stress, it’s the pressure I put on myself to keep the lounge tidy at all times.
So rather than pushing myself harder to meet the expectation, wouldn’t it be kinder to shift the expectation?
There will be plenty of stress this September I can’t control. I don’t need to add another layer by demanding the impossible of myself.
Please, Mama, be kind to yourself x
About me: I’m Leila, triplet mum, TEDx speaker and founder of the F*** Mum Guilt Movement. This is a space for questioning the bullshit, rebelling against impossible expectations and making motherhood a happier place to be. Subscribe for a weekly dose of mama empowerment.
Michelle Ogundehin is such a style icon. Somehow in my mid 40s I still think ‘When I grow up I want to dress like her’ 😂 The summer holidays have been intense in some ways but relaxed in others. I accepted that work expectations would pause but am craving getting back into it. We’ve still got 10 days to go!