The surprising truth about how to like being a SAHM (or not hate it)

(excepted from the full article here)

If you’ve been at stay-at-home parent for a while and you still feel like a stranger in a strange land let me make it easier for you.

It's like you want to love your new life but you can't; you just love your child.This is a simple fact, not a judgment.

Does this mean the happy-at-homes are superior parenting material? Nah.

Mothering has historically been a fertile breeding ground for women to pretend they feel one way when they feel another, and I'm not talking about loving our children, of course that's real.

Despite our buzzing community of online confessions over the past twenty years, face to face most mothers still grin and bear through anxiety and depression and boredom and anger and frustration just as their foremothers did because it we admit our squirrely feelings we might be judged as unworthy to parent life's most precious gift.

But the big beautiful truth is the more vulnerable and courageous you are, odds are you’ll meet another mother (or two or ten) who feel exactly as you do. Like dating, meeting like-minded parents is a numbers game. Put yourself out there and eventually you'll find a kindred spirit.

You might also meet mothers who after you confess the real deal that is you, think you’re a selfish maternal flop because you bottle feed, leave your children with sitters, soothe your baby with pacifiers, work or admit you're bored at home.

Still, honesty is worth the self-exposure.

The truth is love for your child isn’t measured by how much you love or loathe (or sorta like) being at home. My formula for being happy at home didn’t look remotely like another mother’s formula for being happy at home but the truth is -- it didn't have to.

Ambivalence, having simultaneous conflicted feelings, is intensely unsettling unless you reconcile with the natural yin and yang that defines motherhood.

If you have mixed emotions, congratulations, it means you're paying attention to yourself and to your child. You're not numb; you're alive and kicking and wonderfully human.

Do whatever is affordable and feasible to re-calibrate your life until in time you feel yourself coming back to yourself. If this means hiring a babysitter, budgeting for a housekeeper, taking night classes, working with your spouse to (better) share the care or domestic load or going back to work in some capacity, do it.

No one knows what you need to create a fully functioning balanced family more than you, not your mother, your best friend, your spouse, the parenting expert or glossy magazine article -- only you.

Over the years I’ve read commentaries from various journalists who wrote that working mothers of little means hardly have time for this “Oh poor bored me at home” chatter. To parents scraping by, trying to pay the rent and feed their kids, mother ambivalence sounds like a bunch of over-privileged women with too much time on their hands complaining at the playground.

And sure, you can’t argue that hand to mouth survival trumps angst from mothers who have the financial freedom to stay home. But this article isn’t about what should matter to all parents, it’s a conversation about what does matter to some parents.

And ambivalence no matter where it comes from is a natural by-product of motherhood so frankly, all the dialogue is valid.

It’s impossible to raise a child without wondering if you’re doing something wrong. It’s impossible to raise a child without wondering how to balance your child’s needs, your needs and your spouse’s. If you weren’t craving some kind of equilibrium I’d guess you’re living in silent seething resentment.

Read on for how I saved my sanity....