Parenting is a wonderful but also very difficult enterprise. Make sure to take time out for yourself to rest and recuperate from the constant demands. Also, don’t be afraid to seek professional support. Ask for help when you need it — this will help you and your family flourish.

Being a mum is the best job in the world! Nurturing and growing our precious offspring, watching with pride and humility as they reach each milestone.

It can also be the most exhausting, scary and frustrating time of life too! As you sit amongst the fallout of cyclone ‘children,’ wondering “Have I brushed my hair today?” and noticing the track pants you pulled on this morning are inside-out!

Yep, this can be a mum’s life for what seems like forever.

You may have left behind a career with high responsibilities that you breezed through each day, to find yourself drowning in dirty nappies, piled up washing, a messy kitchen and a baby and or little ones totally overwhelming you!

To stop and ask for “help” is like a chicken bone getting caught in your throat! But, as you take that last gasp before disappearing into the murky waters, I urge you to hoist the flag and cry for HELP!

TAKE SOME TIME OUT FOR YOURSELF!

• Talk to your partner, family and friends.
  The fact you are reading this blog and connecting with this community is a fabulous place to start!
• Join a playgroup; this is a great way to meet other mums while your little ones have a fun time doing their thing.
• Start or get back into a hobby – create some art, dust off the sewing machine, get out in the garden or go for a run!
• Journal — at the end of a long day, take a few moments to write something positive or funny that happened that day! (Sometimes it may only be one word!)
• Go outside for five minutes. Switch off all the thoughts in your head and simply ‘be.’ Enjoy the beauty of nature and allow the silence to swallow you up…

Remember, there is no perfect parent. We all do the best we can with what we know and hold in our hearts at the time.

Also, be careful not to COMPARE! Women are experts at this — on the TV, in a magazine, the people next door. It’s so easy to feel like these people are doing, being and processing more or coping better than you! Don’t do it! It will only lead you down a narrow and destructive path.

Professional Help

If, after doing some self-nurturing activities, you find yourself still in a place of negativity, please take that chicken bone out of your throat and get some help. This does not mean you are failing your role as a mum — on the contrary, it means you are human, and you want to be a strong and healthy and happy mum.

If you don’t know where to start, talk to your GP and ask him or her to recommend a counsellor. That first phone call is the hardest part, so once that is done, you are well on your way!

I like to view the counselling room as a ‘sacred place’ — your space to tell your story and be heard with honour, grace and dignity. As you tell your story, often the solutions and ideas you need come to you. We each hold our own answers, we are our own best ‘expert’, just needing the listening ear and the gentle questions (or sometimes the tough questions), to open up our treasure chest of freedom from within!

Rest Us
by Michael Leunig

God rest us.
Rest that part of us which is asleep.
God awaken us and awake within us.
Amen.

___

Originally published at Mum Daily. Photo by Keira Burton from Pexels.