First things first. Are you okay, and are you safe? We have a lot to talk about, but first I want to make sure that you are okay and safe. Sometimes, we can let our identity as a “full time mom” put us into situations where we are more concerned with the convenience of others than we are for our own basic needs. Have you ever put off going to the doctor because your baby would have to miss their nap? That’s what I’m talking about. In chapter 2, we will have a conversation about how to equitably prioritize the needs of the family, but that’s a conversation we can only have if you are (say it with me) “okay, and safe.” Asking yourself “Am I okay?” is like an IT person asking “have you turned it off and turned it back on?” When things aren’t working, it’s easy to assume that we aren’t doing enough, trying hard enough, or just aren’t good enough. That’s why we see so many memes and messages about how we’re “enough.” People assure us that we're enough because that's the question we're asking. But often, the question we SHOULD be asking instead isn't "am I enough?" but "Am I okay, and am I safe?" Now, by "okay" I mean, are you physically and mentally able to function. Do you need food? Water? A nap? Do you need to pee? (Zero judgement if this book lives on the back of your toilet, BTW, in my bathroom that's a place of honor for books.) Are you grieving? Are you sick? I would feel terrible if you were giving this page the attention that your body needs instead. And by "safe" I mean, do you have a home where you aren't afraid for the physical safety of yourself or your kids. Domestic abuse is a rampant problem in America, and it hides in plain sight. The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence estimates that over 10 MILLION people experience domestic violence every year. Domestic abuse hotlines receive almost 20,000 calls a day. It is not just possible, it is likely that someone reading this is not safe. Promise me that every time you pick up this book, you will ask yourself “am I safe and okay?” before reading further. And if you ever find that the answer is no - that you are not okay, or not safe - promise me that you will tell someone. I did. I remember kneeling on the floor, screaming, breaking things, my toddler watching, my baby crying. I was a stay at home mom of two, which I had always wanted to be. According to my doctor, I was perfectly healthy. According to my family, I was totally fine. But I was not. I had been pushed to the end of my rope, the extreme limit of what I could physically and mentally handle. At the end of that rope, there was a craft cart. The craft cart was an upgrade from the hand-me-down nightstand that we piled high with every single thing my 3-year-old daughter played with in a week. It was always a toppling mess and a huge source of stress. So, I fixed it. I got a craft cart. A beautiful rolling metal cart with plastic drawers in cascading rainbow colors. I sorted the coloring books and puzzles and crayons and markers and duplos and felt paper dolls and play dough and stickers all into separate tidy bins that she could choose from. From now on, any mess made would be a small one, contained to one category of toys, that I could sweep off the table into its designated bin and insert back into the craft cart. The craft cart lived in the dining room, which happens to be the room that you step into when you walk through my front door. The lack of entryway, or even pretense of an entryway, is one of the shortcuts in tract housing development that grates on my nerves. To walk through my front door is to be startlingly transported into the middle of the house, still holding your purse. So it was important to me that we keep the mess contained. The problem is, I also had an 18 month old son. You know what pleases an 18 month old more than anything in the world? Dumping out bins. One night, though I was running on empty, I dug deep and borrowed some energy from the next day to tackle the mountain of dumped-out-craft-cart as a kindness to my future self. I could have taken a core sample and charted the progress of my child’s development and my mental decline against the layers of debris. We had a good, long talk with sister about the protocol for removing a bin, playing with what’s inside, and then putting everything back. We talked about what will happen if we can’t remember to keep our mess cleaned up. We made her help clean the mess, which I hoped would make her reluctant to make such a huge mess in the future. We talked about how nice it is to have things, but that we have to take care of our things. I turned the cart toward the wall so that brother didn’t have the ability to pull the drawers out. We did all the things you’re supposed to do. It should have worked. “Hang in there,” I told myself, “Even though the rest of the house is trashed, I can function because this one thing is done.” That was a huge mistake. The next morning, I was looking for a gift online while absently listening to the white noise called “having two kids under the age of four” when suddenly it wasn’t white noise anymore. It was the distinct sound of things dumping out onto a wood floor. Directly behind me. I turned around and saw that I was standing at the foot of the mountain that I had spent the previous evening conquering with the energy borrowed from this exact moment, and now I had nothing left. Here’s what happens when a person runs out of rope. I dropped to my knees, grabbed a bin, pushed my son aside, he started crying. I put two things into the bin and then inexplicably wrapped my hands around the sides of it and started slamming it into the floor with so much force that the plastic shattered. And even when it was broken, I kept slamming it over and over, like a possessed wind-up monkey, screaming in my throat the horrible gurgling scream of a grown woman drowning on dry ground. My daughter asked me what was wrong, and I closed my eyes to take deep breaths. She asked me what was wrong, and I held up my hand indicating to her “wait.” She asked me what was wrong, and I said quietly “I’m sorry. Mama lost her temper. I shouldn’t have done that.” She asked me what was wrong, so I said “I lost my temper, please stop asking me that.” She asked me what was wrong. I felt myself losing my grip. “I already answered that question, please, just don’t talk to me right now.” She asked me what was wrong. And the screaming started again. “I lost my temper! STOP ASKING ME THAT!” Followed by an open-mouth shriek, a deranged fog horn blasting into her tiny, beautiful face. I watched trauma take root, horrified that I couldn’t save her. That the reason it was traumatic was because it was me, her mama, doing this to her, and how could she trust another person ever again when the one she bonded to the most is screaming at her for being confused. She asked me what was wrong. This is why “Green Eggs and Ham” is no longer allowed in my house. I get traumatized watching the protagonist answer the same question over and over again. He doesn’t want your stupid eggs, Sam. MOVE ON. I called my husband and he didn’t answer. I called my mom and she didn’t answer. I was hyperventilating, trembling. I was not myself. I had lost control. I was scared. I called my mother in law, and thank God she answered. Somehow, I pulled weak words through my fear and out my mouth, “I think I might not be okay. I can’t stop screaming and I don’t know what to do.” It was incredibly humbling. To be so broken, and have to choose between letting someone see the monster I had become, or continue hiding it. But who was I kidding. My kids knew. God knew. And I didn’t want to be a monster anymore. She told me to hand the phone to my daughter, and she just talked to my kid for a few minutes. She didn’t ask me what I had done, or tell me what I was doing wrong. She just gave me a few minutes of not being everything to everyone around me. It was the first step. Then, when I had gotten my breathing under control, she asked my toddler to hand the phone back to me. She listened. Tell me what’s going on. I’m so sorry. How can I help, do you want me to come over? That was the day I made plans to get away. I asked around for a private place, a hermitage, anything, and a friend offered to let me stay in their family’s old cabin in the woods. I packed a juice cleanse and popcorn and books and didn’t talk to anyone for four days. Once a day, I turned my phone on for ten minutes to call home and check in. And then turned it off again. It was drastic. It was crazy. It was life changing. I didn’t know a single other person who had up and left her family for no reason. My husband took time off work to be home so I could go away and do nothing. It was unheard of. It was selfish, or so I thought. Then I realized, my husband gets 20 minutes in the car by himself when he goes to work, and 20 minutes on the drive home again. And he doesn’t have to worry about whether the toddler can hold it until we get home to the potty, or answer questions about bats, or load two kids into their carseats while they fight against the heat and unload them again while making sure that no one wanders into the street or lets the dog out, or whether the bananas are too ripe and have they had too many bananas today already and do we have pear juice in case that’s all the toddler will negotiate to eat. He can just sit there, driving, listening to music of his own choosing (or no music at all) and not explain what he’s doing or why he chose this station, or talk to anyone and not think about anything, and no one needs him. Every day. For 40 whole minutes. He gets an hour long lunch break, in which he eats food that is prepared for him and doesn’t have to do anything but feed himself. For an hour. Crazy is clocking into work one day, and never clocking back out. Not even to sleep. For 50 consecutive months. So while it’s crazy for me to go away for four days, I had been on the clock for four years straight without so much as a private pee break. And I had done that to myself while the world watched and called it faithful Christian service. Denial to self. Obedience. The highest calling for women. ... The life that stay-at-home moms live these days is crazy. The expectations are super human. Getting your life back to a sustainable, normal pace is going to feel crazy at first. Since that horrible day on craft cart mountain, I still haven’t met another mom who goes away to do nothing. But I have heard about the breakdowns. I have watched my friends, insisting that they were fine, fall like dominoes as one by one they ran out of rope. Not just screaming and breaking things, I’m talking about hospitalizations and psychotropic drugs and outpatient programs. I’m talking months of recovery and mountains of medical bills. We are breaking. We are falling off the rope. And when we do, even having the resulting mental breakdown feels selfish because it means someone else has to heat up the chicken nuggets. Would you expect that level of sacrifice from a doctor? A teacher? A chef? A lawyer? LITERALLY ANYONE, IN ANY PROFESSION, EVER? The level of sacrifice that we expect of ourselves is drastically larger than the sacrifice we are sparing those around us. How many times have you fed your child lunch before you fed yourself breakfast? How many times have you skipped your shower so your husband didn’t have to wake up 15 minutes before he usually does. When it comes to this lifestyle, sacrifice is the name of the game. And that’s okay. But when our sacrifices are vastly greater than the benefit to those we are serving, it’s time to re-evaluate. Imagine you were on the receiving end of such sacrifice. If you were at a coffee shop and the barrista started crying because she was starving, and hadn’t gone home to shower in four days, and hadn’t had a pee break in ten hours. Would you say “well, that’s what you signed up for when you took this job. Get used to it.” But that’s what we tell ourselves in the mirror when we are selfishly stealing twenty seconds to brush our teeth, after skipping breakfast and a shower so that no one else has to suffer feeling mildly hungry or bored. A lot of my friends balk at this kid of talk, thinking that the next stop on this train is sending your three year old to boarding school so you can spend twelve hours a day doing yoga. Let me be clear. Selfish people are going to be selfish, they don’t need me to give them a reason. I’m not talking to those people. I’m talking to the mom who has crossed from selfless to self-destructive. It can go too far, and “too far” has become the norm for way too many women. Let’s walk it back to a point that is sustainable. You need to be clean and fed, just like everyone else. Not because it helps you be a better mom. You require basic care because you are a human being. Created in the image of God, and precious in his sight. You needed these things before you were a mom, and becoming a mom has not changed that. So, now that you have checked to make sure you are safe and okay, please ask yourself if you are fed and clean. And if the answer is no, please go have a snack and wash your hair. ………………………………….. A popular phrase I see on social media is “I see you, mama.” And that’s a heartbreaking thing to read on a screen, or hear on a podcast, or read in a book. It’s the thing content creators say because we desperately want it to be true, but we know that it isn’t. We are unseen. Unheard. Disconnected. Isolated. I won’t insult you by claiming that I see you. No one does. Therein lies the problem. Lifeguards exist because drowning is impossible to spot unless you are trained and actively looking for it and know how to help if you see it. We are drowning, and there’s no lifeguard on duty. There is some small comfort in knowing that God sees us. But even God designed us to be seen by other human beings with actual eyeballs. To be known, and loved, and helped in this important work of raising humans. So if you’re looking around at your life with an aching dread, knowing that every day you are inching closer to the end of your rope and you don’t know how to reverse the trend and you’re afraid of what will happen when there’s no more rope left. If you have asked for help, and no one heard you. If you know you can’t keep this up, and you feel like a failure because everyone else you know seems to be doing it all. If you know, deep down, that this isn’t how things are supposed to be. I don’t see you, but I know you’re out there. I’m writing this book for you. This is me blowing the whistle and jumping in after you. I love you. I want you to be okay. I want you to be safe. I want you to have your basic needs met, and a community that sees you and knows you and supports you. That’s what I have now, four years later. The following pages share the simple changes that drastically changed our family life and allowed me to reach the other end of the rope – the top. ……………………… Let me start our journey by explaining some of the terms I will use in this book. When I refer to the role of the caregiver, I’m going to call that person “a caregiver.” Not a mom. Mom is a relationship, and it’s really important that we separate the relationship of mother from the work of the caregiver. A caregiver takes care of other humans. Feeding, bathing, teaching them to say please and thank you, changing diapers, driving to the library and the pediatrician’s office, and keeping them physically safe are the work of a caregiver. Separate from both mom and caregiver is the person who I call “the domestic.” This is the person who does all the cleaning, cooking, shopping, bill paying, home repair or contracting of home services, all that goes into maintaining a nurturing environment where people take sanctuary. If this sounds like splitting hairs, I promise you it is not. Check any job website, these are separate jobs. You are in a relationship (mom) and doing the work of two careers (caregiver and domestic). We bundle these together and call it “being a full-time mom” and that creates an emotional problem. Because it implies that if you ever need a break from doing all of the things related to caregiving and domestic work, you’re also asking to not participate in the mother-child relationship anymore, and that brings guilt. Shower guilt, for example. The guilt you feel when someone has to hold your screaming child long enough for you to shower. You should practice personal hygiene. Again, not so you can be a better mom, but because you are a human being and all humans deserve to be clean. Another term you will see me use a lot is “apprentice.” For some reason, we women are told All. The. Time. That we are the experts when it comes to our children. Listen to me. Listen closely. NO WE ARE NOT. Motherhood, caregiving, and domestic work are just like every other field. You start out bad at it, and you get better as you go. Did anyone tell you, on your honeymoon, that you are now an expert on your husband? Or an expert wife? Can you imagine showing up on your first day of a new career – lets say, selling cars – and everyone deferred to your opinion instead of showing you what to do. They told you to “trust your gut” and said that “you know best” even though you had never sold cars before in your life. And your status depended on you doing everything right, even though you didn’t know what the right thing was. You would feel defensive, anxious, you would be constantly Googling things instead of admitting to others that you needed their help, you would be stressed and overwhelmed and you would feel like a failure every time you messed up (and you would mess up A LOT.) Sound familiar? If so, it’s probably because you’re an apprentice trying to live up to expert expectations. ........................... My sister once asked me “Are you ever afraid that you’re a bad mom?” “YES” I answered, so fast that it surprised both of us. “But then I remember that only good moms are afraid that they are bad moms.” You’re probably terrified to admit that you are bad at this. Don’t be. We all start out bad at this. The fact that you want to be better at this makes you a good mom. In the next chapter, we’re going to talk about how to embrace your apprentice status. From there, we can chart a reasonable plan for growth that will close the gap between where you’re at and where you want to be as a mom, caregiver and domestic. But it starts with you admitting – without shame or embarrassment – that you aren’t there yet. Welcome to the beginning.