Finding Joy In The "Business" of Motherhood

There are days where it’s easy to get caught up in the “business” of taking care of little kids and the joy escapes you.

Don’t get me wrong I love my kids; in a take a bullet for them, lift a car off their bodies, give them a kidney kind of way. I would give my life for them, but there are days I find myself stuck in the monotony of the many daily responsibilities.

My mental checklist replays each task that needs to be done. Is it enough to check an item off my list, busily moving to the next item or rushing through their childhood to get to some imaginary finish line like bedtime. Every mom knows that bedtime doesn’t mean we go off the clock, but instead switch to on-call hours.

When you stay at home with your kids, the job of taking care of them becomes a very real measure of your time, worth and value. There are no raises or promotions to vie for, unless you count having another child in which case you increase your workload without a change of title or salary. You have to create a measurable value for yourself. You find yourself caring more about the things you accomplished in the course of the day instead of the small moments that flit by while we work through the list.

Laundry- CHECK

Dishes – CHECK

Picked Up Toys Off The Living Room Floor For The Millionth Time – CHECK

Helped Kids With Homework – CHECK

Cooked Dinner – CHECK

Read Stories – CHECK

Baths and Showers for all the kids – CHECK

Bedtime prayers, songs and kisses – CHECK

When I first started staying home with my kids I thought it was going to be nonstop joy. Instead it ebbs and flows. It trickles in a moment when my son thanks me for sharing my secret cookie stash with him. It rushes in for toddler snuggles and out again when I’m refereeing fights between my older children. Mommying is exhausting physically and emotionally and there are days I definitely feel more like I’m surviving instead of thriving as a mother.

So what can you do when you find yourself stuck in the business of motherhood?

1. Let The House Go To Hell – Let the dishes pile up, laundry overflow the hampers, and ignore the crumbs on the counters and floors. It’s hard especially if you’re a neat freak. I am not, but I find that everyone has standards of cleanliness they try to uphold. The truth is that the work never gets “finished,” not when you have small kids.

There’s a temporary lapse in time between “clean” and “disaster” and we’re always chasing it, but never catch it. You can always clean up later. Will it be more overwhelming? Heck yeah! Hopefully you’ll have filled your heart up with enough joy to endure the drudgery once again. I know there are tons of joyful moments I’m missing out on with my kids while I’m busy just trying to keep myself from being buried underneath piles.

2. Remind Yourself Each Day Is A Gift – Holly cow does it go fast! My mother once remarked to me, “Isn’t it amazing that just two years ago you had no children and now you have two!” “That was a lifetime ago,” I replied. And it was. The time in my life before I had kids is a distant memory and thinking about those days is like watching a Lifetime movie of your life starring someone else with slightly better scripting. When I pour over the pictures of my babies that aren’t babies anymore I snap out of the daily concept of time. There is SO much more to life than what this one day holds, and yet every day is an enormous opportunity to be really present in their lives and it might be the only one we get.

3. Go To Your Scary Place – We all have the memories we don’t want to think of. Parenthood is a battlefield and though it’s scary I think it’s important we take a moment out to revisit our scars. Sometimes they’re so frightening you can’t even say them out loud.

For me, those battlefields are having to swallow the pit in my stomach and call friends and family and tell them I was no longer pregnant, hearing my two year old might have leukemia and losing my son at a large county fair. These are the memories I bat away like flies. These are the battles you survived, but not without a healthy dose of PTSD. So why go there? How do you find joy in the deepest recesses of heartbreak?

You find joy in the reminder of all you could have lost. Suddenly the drudgery is a blessing. It makes me ingrain the smallest details to memory like brushing my daughter’s wet hair after her shower or the ache in my bones when my son hugs me tight or the squeal my toddler makes when I call her Munchkadoodle and she runs into my open arms.

I know somewhere in the world at this moment there is a mother longing for the everyday moments, the ones we barely notice and take for granted. Our drudgery is her wish. So while I know I have other things to do right now, I have to make space for joy to flow. I have to let go of how I measure my success in the business of motherhood. It isn’t about what I do for my kids. I want to be in the business of enjoying them, even on the days they drive me nuts.


Erin Johnson a.k.a. The No Drama Mama can be found blogging at her Blog The No Drama Mama and Hudson Valley Parent Magazine when she’s not wiping poop or snot off her otherwise three adorable kiddos. This frugal, “tell it like it is” mama has NO time for drama, so forget your perfect parenting techniques and follow her on Facebook or Twitter for her delightfully imperfect parenting wins and fails.