If you’re reading this blog to become inspired to be a better mom, you have come to the wrong place. The waaay wrong place. You may be asking yourself what makes me qualified to write a self-help blog for moms, and answer is, like, nothing. Truly…nothing. Because I mean it when I say this blog will not inspire you to become a better mom. So just delete the phrase “self-help” from this whole endeavor, and we’ll be off to a good start.
The truth is, I’m a pretty average mom, and I don’t want to seem complacent, but that’s…you know…good enough for me. Okay, in hindsight, I guess that is pretty complacent, but if we just reframe the term complacent into something more positive, like…I don’t know…ambition-moderate, then suddenly doing just enough to get by seems pretty adequate. So, someone might say, “What do you think of Nik?” and you could respond, “She’s very down to earth, very ambition-moderate,” and the two of you would clink your glasses together and think how I’m just like you two, like a fun girlfriend in your group of girlfriends (only not really because I’m a Scorpio, so you’ll keep me at a distance, thanks though).
The point is, this is a blog for moms, but it’s not a blog intended to make you a better mom because I am totally unqualified to attempt that. The purpose of this blog is actually to make you feel better about being really average at momming too. I’ve been a mom for fifteen years now, which is enough time to discover all kinds of things I’m really bad at but not quite enough time to discover all the other things I’m really bad at. (The nice thing about kids becoming verbal is that instead of having to intuit from your baby’s body language what you’re bad at, you can now just ask them, and they’ll tell you all the things you’re doing wrong.)
I know there are moms at both ends of the spectrum out there: moms who are really terrific (tender yet firm authority figures who grow their own kale, run their own start-up, keep their kids off social media, alternate cardio and weight-lifting, volunteer on the weekends, and have never experienced a chocolate-craving) and moms who are absolute garbage (check the headlines for these winners because they’ll get no more attention from me here). But the majority of moms I’ve come in contact with over the years fall mostly in the middle of these two, and that includes me. You won’t find kale in my garden, and you will find chocolate in my cupboards (also in my kitchen drawers, under some old meat in my freezer, behind the stack of books on my nightstand, wedged between the cushion and the arm of my favorite snacking chair…what was I talking about?), but sometimes I do really well at keeping the kitchen counters clean, grading my students’ papers (in my other job as a teacher), and attending to the emotional needs of the fragile little people who live in my house. Also, sometimes I’m bad at all three of these simultaneously.
And that’s what this blog is about: all the ways in which I manage not to do small, simple tasks well (or at all), and all the other ways in which I manage not to do big, important stuff well (or at all). But the redeeming quality of this blog is pretty much the same quality that redeems me as a mom: sometimes everything works out just fine in spite of my best efforts, and sometimes the act of being a mom is so sublime and extraordinary that I think “what could I ever have done in my life to deserve these kids and this life right now?”
Then a child will drop an open, seven-pound bag of gumballs on the hardwood floor in the middle of my conference call, and I’ll have the exact same thought but the emphasis will be on very different words.
So, I hope you enjoy reading about life in my house, if only so that you feel a little better about life in yours. And if your attempt at mommery resembles mine in any way, I hope you’ll share in the comments.
One final note: you’re probably going to say things to yourself as you read this blog, things like huh, I never thought of it that way before and that’s definitely something I hadn’t realized and I’m pretty sure that statement is objectively and demonstrably untrue and okay, now this woman is just making stuff up. Well, you’re right. I’m not an expert on parenting, personal improvement, memoir-writing, astrology, home repair, mental health, labor and delivery, financial planning, education in America, social constructs, LGBTQ+ rights, or being married. As my parents used to comment (about people who weren’t me, I think) some people have just enough knowledge to be dangerous.
And that’s me! I know something about a lot of things, but not a lot about practically anything at all. So when you find factual inaccuracies in these posts, just roll your eyes and know that I’m a pretty harmless idiot with generally good intentions.
And that’s one more reason you should enjoy this blog! Chances are very good you know way more than I do about some—if not all—of what I’ll write about here. That should definitely make you feel good about yourself.
Happy reading!