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Moanful mothering!? Say what!?
I just stumbled across a blog that introduced me to the term "moanful mothering." Have you heard of this before?
In this blog, the author begins describing all of the memes that she is seeing circulating on the internet from moms who are complaining about motherhood.
You know the ones such as, "They whine, I wine," "I'm just a girl standing in front of the clock waiting for it to be bedtime," "My kid just threatened to not talk to me for the rest of the day. I'm 3% offended and 97% hoping he follows through," "Parents of toddlers know exactly why some animals eat their young."
I could go on and on, but you get the point.
It is clear in the author's message discussing moanful parenting, as she goes on to tell us, that she believes motherhood is something where we should only express gratitude.
But we have the right to feel two different emotions at one time, that of gratitude as well as the more difficult emotions such as overwhelm, anxiety, frustration, irritability, EXHAUSTION! without it meaning that we are "moaning about motherhood" or implying that we only ever feel unhappy about motherhood. We can be very thankful to be mothers and love our children very dearly while also posting memes online about how difficult motherhood can be. Because guess what, motherhood is very, very hard sometimes!
I personally would rather see someone post a real, raw, and vulnerable post about their life rather than some staged, perfect looking photo that obviously isn't REAL! These are the kinds of posts that let moms know that we are not in this alone and that other moms also have difficulties with their children.
So mom, go on and take a minute to "moan about motherhood." You have earned it!
* Jan Motherhood myth: All moms have the innate ability to love and nurture their children. Reality: some women experience having a mom who is unloving.
For some reason becoming a mom brings up feelings and thoughts about our own moms. And more often than not, women are coming into sessions with deep emotional wounds that have been inflicted by their own mothers.