9 Steps to Being the Best Person Ever with a Grossly Perfect Family

We've all seen the articles - and I read them ALL the time. "7 Steps to Simplify Your Life," "5 Days to an Organized Home," "12 Ways to Live Better Today," and  "2 Easy Steps to Get Your Colicky Baby Who Nurses All Night and Sleeps In Your Bed to Sleep Independently Without Ever Waking Up At Night Again, Ever." Oh, they are so appealing and all sound so easy - then I feel like an expert. I read those and think "Yes! I can do this! It's so easy! My life will be better in 9 EASY STEPS!!" 

For me, one reason these articles are so appealing is the need for instant gratification. I do not have TIME to follow more than a few steps. I'm too busy/stressed/TIRED to handle more than that. So please, Mommy Gurus, give it to me in a few digestible chunks and I can feel like Super Mommy. I can tell all my friends my magical secrets I read online. Until it all falls apart. Because none of it is that simple or that fixable, at least not for me. I even had difficulty with "How To De-Seed a Pomegranate in Under 2 Minutes." Twenty minutes later, pomegranate was everywhere and my kitchen looked like a murder scene. 

The other reason the "simple steps to being a better mom/wife/person" articles are appealing to me is that I have NEVER been more challenged as a person since having a baby. PLEASE tell me how I can make this easier in a few steps! In one moment, I feel like an Amazing Woman. I have the ability and endurance to spend all night soothing a crying baby who wants no one but me, and then I can get up and go to work in the morning. In the next moment, I feel like a Controlling Bitch Queen as my husband and I have yet another fight about Baby Led Weaning as my 7 month old hacks up a chunk of banana and I refuse to do it any differently. By 10pm the baby is finally in bed and I collapse on the couch and bury myself in Facebook (to read more helpful articles and look at all my friends happy little families) because I simply cannot handle another person needing me. Then, the baby wakes up and we start again.

After (another) particularly challenging week this week, I finally picked up the book Hands Free Mama: A Guide to Putting Down the Phone, Burning the To-Do List, and Letting Go of Perfection to Grasp What Really Matters by Rachel Macy Stafford. It's been sitting on the end table for a couple of months now, so I figure it's time to give it a shot. It seems like a challenge, but it's just one simple book to give me some useful tools and POOF!, I can be and do better...WRONG... Much to my dismay, this book is intended to take ONE YEAR to work through with WEEKLY INTENTIONS. What?? I cannot be the Master of "Letting go and burning to-do lists and blah blah blah" in just the amount of time it takes me to read this book? I have things about myself and my life to work on DAILY? 

In the big picture, this makes sense. Of course this is the case. If I really want to change things about myself and my life, I have to do the work, every day. I have to be intentional, notice my behaviors, and make an effort to change my outlook. This is not my "quick fix" that I love, and that always fails me in the long run. This is not a little check list of things I can mark off and say "look what I did!" Nope, changing is a daily effort and I am going to mess up A LOT and start over even more. By no means am I saying that I am an awful person and I need to do an overhaul of my entire life. I am a generally happy person. But, being a mom has brought out the best and the worst in me. And I want to be a kind, present, attentive and supportive mom, wife, and person. I am already those things, but not as much or as often as I want to be. Too often I am distracted, stressed, tired, controlling, and obsessive. I refuse to accept that this is simply "being a mom." For me, I want it to be and "adjustment period" and "learning process." I want the experiences of motherhood, marriage, and work to smooth out my rough edges and make me in to a softer, kinder, more whole person. I'm happy to report that I am already struggling with this week's "Weekly Intention" and I am trying again today.