Pick Your Hard

I grew up in a large family. We were homeschooled and my mom was a SAHM. It was what she wanted. She has often told me that as much as she felt like homeschooling and stay at home momming were the right thing to do for her, she also wanted to spend all of her time with us. Bless that woman, I literally do not understand, as much as I can appreciate.

An unintentional by-product of growing up homeschooled, and a part of a very conservative sect of it, was that there were messages from the greater homeschool community that I received about womanhood and motherhood that have created in me a really complex and guilt ridden view of what it means to be a mom and a woman.

That community taught — whether it was obvious or subtle, that the correct way to be a woman was to get married, have kids, stay at home with them, and eventually homeschool them. Follow this formula and your kids will grow up to be perfect humans and love Jesus to boot! The good moms were the ones that checked all those boxes. We felt sorry for the moms who “had to work.” We said “Its a shame, that those kids go to daycare/preschool/elementary school/middle school/high school to be raised by someone else.” What kind of mom wouldn’t want to spend all her time with her kids?

Me, as it turns out.

When the Viking and I were considering getting pregnant, these dormant and subconscious ideas about what being a “good mom” meant surfaced, and I truly didn’t have any interest in being a mom if that is what I had to do to be a good one. I feel no judgment towards moms who do want this and find that this is the best way to be a good mom for them, but for me… nope. I love work, theres no way I would have given up my work. The thing I had just spent the last three years earning a degree in. Just give it up to have a kid, and theres no way I’m gonna want to homeschool a kid. Hard pass. Thank you, next.

Then I remembered Christy, who along with her husband opened a coffee shop and still ran the most epic side hustle turned full time business selling vintage clothing and goods while raising and homeschooling 4 kids. I worked for them at the coffee shop one summer, and it was one of my most formative times. They went on to live in an RV for a year traveling around the US with those 4 homeschooled kids.

Then I met Carol in college. A full fledged tenured professor of photography at my school who has a thriving art practice and has had exhibitions all over the country and is raising two kids. As her assistant I spent hours over chemical baths in the darkroom talking with her about if its even possible to be a good mom and still work and still create art. She does it like a champ.

And then my classmate and friend, Kellie had her second child while she was still in school, and still finished on time while commuting an hour each way every day from her home in the mountains. I’ll literally never be as driven as Kellie.

Then I met Katie, who’s baby is four days older than mine and still works full time as the community and discipleship pastor at our church. Yeah, you read that correctly, she works full time at a church and has a kid. The woman was pumping during services, if thats not bad ass I don’t know what is. Katie is the one who wisely said “Being a mom is hard, it doesn’t matter if you stay at home or you work full time.”

Essentially meaning “Pick your hard.”

This is what I’m struggling to believe right now. That there is truly no right way to be a mom, and that its hard no matter what you choose.