Grace — A Message for Moms with Little Ones
(This is a blog post I wrote in a social media group of primarily moms starting a new business or side hustle.)
Over 300 people in this group, and maybe around five dudes. I am one of them, so I don’t know what being a mom is like. But I do know what it’s like to be a dad, husband, and business owner in an office where every single employee is female, many of whom are moms. I want to share a little non-mom perspective. Forgive me if I get something wrong, and please focus on my intention. (Using a little drama hook here! Lol)
I had a great corporate career but left in 2005 and started a new dental practice with my wife after moving to Florida a few years earlier. We had been married and had separate careers for ten years, so this was new.
In 2006, the economy was hot. In 2008, it crashed and burned. A couple of months before the crash, my wife went on bed rest, pregnant with our twins. In the hospital, they found a spot on her skin that turned out to be melanoma, which led to her missing a lot more work than just the extended maternity leave from a complicated pregnancy.
The stress of starting a business that required her to do the work during a financial meltdown (where we live, it was felt even more than in most places), along with the financial stress of leaving a corporate paycheck to start a business while starting a family, along with the stress of owning a company that needed to make payroll each week to support our employees, along with the stress of a new melanoma diagnosis, along with the craziness of the new life with twin babies, along with the stress of a marriage bending under the weight of all of this, all without the life experience and wisdom we now have in our 50s, just about broke us—financially, mentally, emotionally, and marriage-ally!
As go-getters, we tend to challenge ourselves to do it all. We can do it. We can be a mom or dad, have a great career, and start a side hustle. We can do it.
But there is no way we can do all of that 100%.
It is not possible.
If I asked you to pick up a car and lift it over your head, but you couldn’t, I wouldn’t be upset with you. That is not possible.
I also wouldn’t get upset if you couldn’t give 100% to being a mom, 100% to being a wife, 100% to pursuing your career, and 100% to completing your course. It’s not possible.
But as go-getters in a world of narratives telling us we SHOULD do it all, we overlook that it’s impossible.
The world is a whole of these narratives, but it SHOULD BE telling us to HAVE GRACE with ourselves. Grace is one of the most life-changing values that you can embrace. Making grace a critical tenet that you live by, a core value, a part of your DNA, is like taking a “joy vitamin.” It won’t make rainy days go away, but it positively changes your life.
Grace is about giving people, including yourself, a pass for being human. Ultimately, we are all human and need grace to be shown to us.
I encourage you to consider adding grace as one of your core values.
The second thing I would share with moms of littles is to stop momentarily and realize where you are. “It goes by quickly” is a cliché that holds more truth and wisdom than any other. It goes by faster than that. They are babies, then toddlers, then preschoolers, then little kids, then kids, and that’s it. It’s done. Once they hit middle school, they are no longer kids . . . they are preteens/teens, and while you still have them at home, the “kid” is gone. Preteens and teens are fun, too, but they're different. I encourage you not to make the mistake of lumping all these stages together. They are not the same. MILK EVERYTHING YOU CAN FROM EACH STAGE because they come and go so fast, you won’t believe it.
If you use your imagination to think about yourself on your deathbed with your family gathered around. You can honestly see yourself telling them, with labored breathing and labored speech, “I’m sorry I didn’t get my course out sooner . . . forgive me,” then you need to get to work and make this course happen right now!
But suppose you see yourself holding their hand, cherishing every moment you had with them, especially during those magical formative years when mommy/child bonding is so critical. In that case, I encourage you to give yourself grace for not being able to work on this course with the tenacity and speed that you would have before your kids came along.
The course is here—you bought it for life. You have a group of many like-minded people in similar situations. Make some friends, schedule some calls, and bond with other moms who can work along with you and challenge you but also help you step back and put things in perspective. Some of you are in challenging circumstances that this may not apply to. But for the typical mom here in our circle, this is true.
Also, my wife read and approved this post.
So, remember . . .
Going slow is okay.
Being a mom first is okay.
Giving yourself (and others) grace is okay.
You got this, mom! :)
