Ranting and Rocking It
Written by Sheree Echlin
I’m sure there are people out there that think I am going insanely mad. I mutter expletives under my breath, well most of the time anyway (haha!) and I repeat myself all the time. All the time (see what I did there?!). Nope, that’s just life as a mum, well at least I’m hoping so or I’ve been duped somewhere. Ahhhh yes, life with children, there is nothing quite like it…
You have to love the constant battle to get anything achieved, especially when it comes to the littlest people in the household. I can yell, scream, whisper if I dare and it makes no difference, everything is “too hard”. And that’s usually just to pick something up off the floor two seconds after it has been thrown or dropped. Yep, I’m beginning to feel like I am already dealing with teenagers. Although I have to laugh when my eldest daughter tells me she’s mummy. It doesn’t go so well when I tell her she needs to do the washing, cooking, cleaning and take care of her sister and I. Then we go back to everything being too hard again.
And of course, we have days where it’s meltdown central. One child cries for no reason and the other one goes out in sympathy, sometimes I join in too. There’s snot and dribble everywhere and nobody is making any sense, almost like everyone’s drunk (actually that might make more sense and be easier to understand, haha). No matter how hard I try, nothing will stop them, well until bribery comes into it. Chocolate anyone?! But I still love the kisses and cuddles, especially the unexpected ones – they melt my heart and make everything okay again. Well for five seconds until they remember why the world was ending and we’re back to square one. But as I always like to say that’s the fun of parenting, never a dull moment.
I usually like to keep things light and airy when I write about my life with my girls. Well, if we can’t have a good laugh sometimes what’s the point?! But on another note, I recently shared a post on my own blog about my personal battle with anxiety and depression. It wasn’t easy to put it out there, but I felt it was something I needed to do. As parents, we put ourselves under a lot of pressure to excel in a job that we have zero training for. You are very much flying blind and it’s easy to become lost and struggling.
I became that person who was smiling on the outside and pretending everything was okay when it really wasn’t. For some reason, I felt ashamed to admit I couldn’t do it all. I don’t know why I felt that way, but life seems to have a funny way of teaching us a few things. Even now it’s still all very raw and I’m dealing with a lot of massive changes in my life but I have no shame in saying I wasn’t okay. Life smacked me in the face pretty hard, but I’m doing something about it through counselling and trying my absolute best to keep smiling, especially for my girls. I guess what I’m trying to put out there is that being a parent is hard and nothing prepares you for this massive change in your life. It affects you as a person, your relationships with others and sometimes you can’t control everything, no matter how hard you try. But don’t be afraid to say you aren’t okay and take all the help that’s on offer, even if you don’t think you need it!
I’m still scared that I have no idea what I’m doing as a mum and that I’m going to mess up my girls. I’ll probably feel like that for a long time to come – I guess it’s only natural to feel that way. But you know what? They’re pretty much the best thing I have achieved in my life and they are amazing little girls… well, until it’s “too hard” anyway. But in those cases, there’s always chocolate or some other form of bribery, right?! Just know that you aren’t alone in this crazy world of parenting – that you can and will get through the toughest of days and still love your kids even when they are driving you up the wall. There are always going to be good days, bad days and everything in-between; we are only human after all. Head over to my page shereeechlin.com – it might just make you feel a bit better if you’re having “one” of those days! Until next time…