Mommy-hood Guilt

*** This week Jakes is with his dad and it gives me lots of down time and time to think about things in my life.  And to hopefully figure somethings about my life out. ***

My Mother was a wonderful woman.  She was great at everything she did.  She was a loving wife and mother, she kept the house, sewed beautifully as well as grew fabulous vegetables in her garden.  Mom was a stay at home mom and was there for everything my brother and I needed.  She was the healer, the disciplinarian, the inspiration, the cheerleader, the taxi driver.

My brother was the slug, the one who would prefer to sit and watch TV all day long.  I was the adventurer, the one to climb trees and jump off chicken coop roofs.  I was the cheerleader, the one active in 4-H and other clubs.  I was the headstrong one that challenged my mothers authority. Many, many times my mother said "I hope you have one just like you!" to me when she was exasperated.   My mom lived to be a wife and mother.

Through it all, the love shared with Dad, the raising of the children, the lean years, the teen years, and finally her illness, she was never mean, negative or seemed to struggle with anything.  I can only remember her crying once and that was because Dad lost his job.  They worked through that and they were stronger than ever.

I am constantly comparing myself to Mom.  How she was as a wife and mother and wishing I had half her skills at both.  When my marriage was failing, I held on and fought to make it work for many reasons but one was because I was afraid of what Mom's opinion would be if I failed.  (mom had passed several years before my marriage failed.)  Mom and Dad (and most of my friends) didn't want me to marry him, they saw him for the crap that he was, but I was blinded.

I know that I am not as good a mother as she was.  I don't have the patience for being a mom.  When I am struggling with Jakes and his behaviors, I try to think how Mom would have handled it.  And I fear I don't measure up to her expectations.  In my head I know that I am not my mother, that I am a completely different person than she is, that I have been raised in a different time.  Mom was raised with the expectation that she would marry, stay home and take care of the husband, babies and the house.

I was raised knowing that I would have a career outside of the home and I would have to work with my significant other to care for any children we would have together.

It doesn't always stop the guilt and expectations I place on myself.  I don't think I will ever stop comparing myself to my mother and her skills as a wife and mother.  I just have to find a way to not allow the guilt to paralyze me when I am living my own life.

I am ME and I have to do things differently from Mom.  I have to hope and pray that she would be proud of how I am living my life and raising my son.