I feel the need to introduce myself as this is my very first step
out into the blogging world and, well, I feel introductions are polite and in
order in cases like these. My name is
Kristin Normandin. I am a 30 year old
mom of two young boys ages 3 ½ years and 19 months old. My husband, Joel, and I live in Central
Massachusetts and I am a stay at home mom.
I am a “baby blogger.” I am
writing this essay specifically for this project. I don’t have an arsenal full of
already-written essays that I can pull from to submit. I don’t even have a real, full arsenal of
ideas yet! My blog “The Mommy In Me” is
one I started in 2011 when my first son was an infant but that I never really
took seriously or prioritized. As you’ll
read later, my transition into stay at home motherhood was not an easy one and my
blog was just one of many things I wasn’t able to commit to while I struggled
to find my feet. When I picked the blog
back up very recently, I sat staring at it for hours on end trying to figure
out if I should keep it, start over, what my direction was. I pondered the title I had given it a few
years ago. “The Mommy In Me.” It sounded meek and mild and amateur. I spent a week trying to change it. Then I sat and tried to think of why I named
it that to begin with. I re-wrote my
blog description and in doing so, found the new and powerful meaning I needed
to try and re-vamp this project.
When I became a mother I didn’t know that I really was one. ‘What the hell does that mean Kristin?’ It means that I knew I was a mother in that I
had given birth to this perfect little boy whom I loved and knew I was
responsible for feeding, bathing, loving and raising. What I did not know was that “Mommy” was not meant
to be just my new job description. It was an identity I was meant to absorb and
become. It took me a few really hard and
emotional years to understand and accept this and this is what I will tell you
about in this essay: The transformation
in my head and heart from “Kristin who had given birth” to “Kristin the
Mommy.” In me I had all of these
versions of myself and “Mommy” turned out to be the most powerful one. My half-hearted title from 2011 suddenly had
new meaning and so it stayed.
I began blogging again in 2014 under the visual theme of “The Well
Stacked Momma.”
It is my representation
of all of those versions of myself in my motherhood: The clean, organized, well
put together version, the mostly there but missing a few pieces version and the
all f’ing over the place version. I spent the first few years of motherhood in
the latter state and I tortured myself into believing that somehow this made me
a failure as a SAHM. I didn’t jump in
and love the water or adjust quickly enough so I thought had no business doing
it. Well, four years later I have a new
appreciation for staying home and have learned to accept that all of those
imperfect versions of myself exist and they are all part of my motherhood. Getting to this place took a complete
identity crisis and a series of duly noted epiphanies along the way. I don’t think I’m about to tell a very unique
story but it is a true one and most definitely the most “brutiful” experience I
have had in my lifetime.
Recently my Facebook account prompted me to clarify some things on
my profile. It asks "What is your position at Stay At Home
Mom?" It gives me the following options in this exact language and
order: A) Maid, B) Chief Executive Officer and C) Mall Cop. (insert
totally not amused, mouth slightly open in total disgust emoticon here). Two
years ago this would likely have prompted an immediate bought of wailing,
chocolate binging and needing to talk constantly about this topic with my
husband and friends in order to work out my anxiety and insecurity. “I’m not just a maid! CEO is so offensively facetious and MALL
COP?! What the f%$k does that even
MEAN?!” A week ago when this happened, I calmly skipped the question all
together thinking "none of these describe my 'job' and it's not important
anyway." Then I ranted on Facebook like all mature, well-adjusted
mothers. My transition from a
career-focused, confident young woman and wife to SAHM was not an easy
one. The change ripped open a part of
myself I didn’t know was hurting so badly and needed such a deep, deep healing.
I became a mom in 2010. I had a son, whom we named Declan,
in October of that year and in the months leading up to his birth my husband
and I had, over and over and over again, the discussion about whether I would
stay home or continue to work in Social Services. My career in Social Work was only 6 years young
(I was 26 years old) at the time. I had
a great collection of experiences under my belt, though, having worked
everywhere from Leadership Training programs while I was earning my Bachelor’s,
to intensive family case management services and finally, youth career training
and transitional services. I felt like I
was finally beginning the “adolescence” of my career where I now knew what I
was doing, was thicker-skinned and could really start to further my education
and find a specialty. I had dreams of
moving into more managerial positions.
Advocating for organizational changes which could better serve our youth
clients. Earning my Masters’ Degree in Public Health. I was just getting started! And now, here I was, expecting the arrival of
my first born child and contemplating leaving work to stay home full time and…do
what? I had no idea what motherhood was
let alone what it would be like staying home all day to do it all of the
time. Yet, I felt this gentle internal nudging
to consider it. I suppose, part of me knew from the start that it was where I
would end up but I was certainly not overwhelmed with some calm, spiritual
calling to abandon my career dreams to stay home and raise kids. So there really was a process involved in
arriving at that decision and much of that revolved around the logistics.
My career, despite my passion for it, is very low paying and
barely covered the cost of daycare. And
when we did out our numbers, we saw that with some real lifestyle changes we
could afford to live on just my husband’s income. Additionally my work wasn’t
always 9-5 type stuff. The world of
transitional teenagers often makes for late nights and weekends. So it began to beg the questions, “How could
I justify working for so little compensation?
Couldn’t I pause where I was in my career to be a mom and come back
later? Did we get pregnant for me to
dive into motherhood or dive further into my career?” I knew that I needed to stay home and I knew
that part of me wanted to. I felt
privileged to even have that choice to make.
But I was most definitely saddened by the idea of saying goodbye to the
workplace. I felt like I was replacing a
part of my life that I loved and knew I was good at with something that I
didn't even know how to do (because I didn't) and it terrified me! I was
angry at the world of social work for not having magic money at its disposal so
I could be paid better to even make me feel a teensy-weensy little bit like I
had the logical option to keep working because it was financially worth it. Magic
money nonexistent and God’s voice in my gut affirming that “nudge” to stay
home, my husband and I decided together that this is what we should do and we
took it on. I don’t think either of us
expected the “breakdown of Kristin” that would ensue but we took that on too
and have survived both!
My first reality check as a SAHM was that the “lonely factor” was
very real. I remember my mom saying that
this was her greatest struggle. But I
dismissed it (like a good daughter).
“How can you be lonely as a SAHM?
I mean, you’re with your kids all day.
And don’t you just go to playdates and have lots of other mommy friends
who you spend your days with and talk to?”
I need not describe the emoticon that belongs here. Or maybe I do: a giant middle finger to my naive former self. I was immediately struck by my loneliness. I
craved adult conversation. Coffee breaks
with co-workers, long meetings, even arguing with teenagers! After a while conversations like, “Where’s
the ducky? Where’s the ducky? YAAAAY!
You found the ducky! Now, what
does the ducky say?!” weigh on your ego.
I literally felt less intelligent.
I underestimated how exhausting spending day after day with an infant
could be. When Joel got home from work
and I finally had another adult to finally talk to I couldn’t muster the
energy! I was also blown away by the
jealousy that I experienced almost from the get-go as a result of my feeling
constantly exhausted and under-stimulated.
Joel would come home rambling about work and the intense meetings and
projects he was working on and I would seethe with jealousy. “Wonderful!
You spend your day with other intelligent people talking about
intelligent things and feeling more intelligent every day! I’m SO HAPPY for
you!” I wasn’t very good at talking
about how I felt at this point. I could
scream about it fabulously and learned that I could use Target as a way to
drown my insecurities with poorly spent time and money wandering aimlessly and buying crap I absolutely did not need! (By
the way, I had no idea this was a “thing” for mothers until I found Momastery. You can imagine my relief!)
But it was about a year out before I learned to be articulate about that
jealousy and why it shook me so badly.
Jealousy was a big issue for me that had itself on repeat for
probably the first two years of motherhood.
I was jealous about some real and valid things like the fact that Joel
still had his career and many adult relationships outside of our family and I
did not. I was, however, jealous over
some pretty rash and hard to explain things.
For example, I was jealous that he got to sit in his car for one and a
half hours to and from work and listen to music and talk on the phone and be
alone (because we all know long commutes into Boston are fun and preferred by
all). I was jealous that he had three
parts to his commute: He got to drive,
ride trains and walk. “Think about all
that different air you’re breathing!” I remember yelling at him once. “Different air?” He asked clearly
confused. “Yes! Different. Air. You breathe car air, and train air and
walking air and office air! I get ‘Normandin
household air!’ And it smells in here! I
need new air!” (I feel the need to
diminish my craziness by noting that this conversation took place in
January. In New England. Winter sucks for SAHMs, I feel safe in making
this generalization). “Cabin fever” fed
my lonely struggles and this then fed my jealously over all of Joel’s
independence, special air and relationships outside of our home.
Jealousy also came into play in a big way when it came to
money. Money was the most logical reason
we opted to have me leave work and stay home to raise kids. We had always had shared bank accounts up
until that point and had never struggled in our trust with each other’s
spending and saving habits. Even when we both worked and I made significantly less then him, I felt fine in knowing that I was contributing all that I could and that our contributions were always to be shared. Suddenly not
contributing at all to that bank account made me feel horribly self -conscious
and insecure. ‘How can I spend this
money?’ I would think. Clearly this sentiment only
lasted until I barged desperately through a Target. Then it was “our money” for sure!
It was always especially hard when Joel would get any sort of
raise, bonus or promotion. This is how
we judge our success in our job roles.
We know we are doing well when we are promoted or compensated
monetarily. Even in the world of Social Work we would get thrown a $20 gas card
here and there just to say “thanks and we like having you around!” Now, when Joel comes home with a bonus or a
raise or a promotion it sure isn’t a $20 gas card and while I knew those raises
and bonuses were things he was working hard to earn and that he earned them to
benefit “us,” I was struggling to consider HIS earned money and achievements at
work as somehow “ours.” I was jealous
that he got to share in the accomplishments of our children as their father but
I didn’t think of myself as worthy of sharing in his accomplishments in his
career…well, because I wasn’t a software engineer!
He got to share my job title and my air and I was beginning to feel
suffocated. In general, I just couldn’t
see or appreciate my own work at home and was lost without the third-party
evaluation of my progress. I couldn’t
see how my work was unique in any way, I had no defined job role, and couldn’t
gauge my success. I lacked purpose in the
role I felt demanded the MOST purpose of all!
And I was struggling.
In 2012 my second son was born.
Liam, we named him. His first
year of life was a transformational and painful year for me. I struggled with my changed body, my raging
hormones and the leftover battle of still trying to find myself in
motherhood. As I began to get over my round
of pretty intense baby blues, I happened upon another important realization. That a big part of my struggles revolved
around my suddenly feeling quite small.
As a social worker I had a center of 300 plus students and 100 or so
staff that I interacted with in some way or another daily. I had students that would leave the program
and move on but that kept in touch. I
didn’t feel huge but my world did. Now,
staying home, my scope of influence on the world had been reduced to the people
who lived in my home and this crushed my ego and my spirit. I felt alone and dependent. I was terrified that I had somehow fallen for
the great American fallacy: that you can
be a SAHM and live a happy, full, dreamy life without ending up the subject of
an episode of Dateline! I had drank the Kool-Aid! I was now a SAHM living in Suburban
Massachusetts, married to a man with a lucrative, growing career that requires
travel and before I knew it he would be having affairs, we would be divorced,
my children would be secret delinquents and I’d be a depressed, washed up lady,
mourning my crushed dreams and replaying my life out in my head like a bad Lifetime movie “Lost, Abandoned, Forgotten and Alone:
The Kristin Normandin Story.”
Ok, so clearly these were thoughts I had during raging moments of
panic. More often and more
realistically, I worried that I would wake up in 25 years and resent everyone
in my household for having sacrificed a thriving time in my career to stay home
and serve the family. That I wouldn’t
feel it was worth it. I worried that if
I didn’t resent them, my husband would resent me for having an easy ride.
Staying home all day, bonding with our children and spending the money
he worked hard to make. I worried that
if everything here fell apart, I would have nothing left to fall back on. Nothing left that I was good at. No one left to tell me that I was valuable to
them. That the children I gave it all up for would suffer and be robbed of the
happiness I knew they deserved.
It was at a well-baby Doctor visit for Liam when I had my first
breakdown to a non-biased third party and came across another significant
realization: that I wasn’t doing much to
help myself learn to love staying at
home. We were at the Pediatrician’s
office and I was trying really hard to pay attention and interact the way I had
when Declan was a baby except Declan was now a two year old and the kind of kid
that can climb smooth walls with his socks on.
So he’s running rampant through this Doctor’s office touching and
licking everything with a haz-mat symbol on it and the Dr. must’ve seen my eyes
start to well up because he stops and says “mom, you hangin’ in ok?” And, of course, because I wasn’t, I
completely lost it. I started crying and
telling him how I just don’t think I’m very good at staying home with my
kids. That maybe everyone would be
happier if we did daycare and I went back to work. And he says to me, “Kristin I’ve known so
many moms in my years practicing medicine.
I’ve met plenty of working moms who say they wish they had stayed
home. I’ve never met a stay at home mom
who wishes she had worked. They are good
kids! You’re doing a fine job.” He asked about my choice to stay home and
what my plans were for it long term and I answered, for the first time, that I
didn’t really know. This stood out to me
because until that day I had always promptly answered “oh, as soon as they’re
in school, I’m going back to work.” It
was then that I began to pay attention to how I talked to others about what it
was that I did. I started realizing how
I down-played it. "Oh I just stay home." "Oh I'm only a SAHM." "I don't do much." I lacked vision for
stay at home motherhood. I still didn’t
know I was good at it (because I really wasn’t yet) and I didn’t know what my
goals were in this role. So I could only talk about it in a way that was diminished and half-assed. Frustrated by
this I fought the idea that this was “what I did now.” I could only feel comfortable with the
thought that this thing I was doing was not forever. That it would be over soon and I could get
back to doing what I was really good at in life. To write that out, for real, makes me choke
on my own tears. Right now, I’m sitting
in my office chair (which is in my living room/play room), wreaking of chlorine
because we just got back from swim lessons at the YMCA and my boys are bouncing
around my living room laughing at an episode of “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood”
asking me when snack time is and when Daddy will be home….and I am lost for
words over how sorry I am that I ever spent those 2 years of my life wishing
for this magical thing called THEIR CHILDHOOD to go faster so I could get back
to “me.” It was most certainly the
reality check I needed to see that despite my having become a mother I was still
so inwardly focused and consumed that I was hindering my own ability to be the
best mother I could be. I had not embraced
what motherhood really was and I was not doing a good job of trying to help myself embrace that. It was not a part-time or temporary thing I
was supposed to do on the side of my other life’s work. It was THE thing I was meant to do in life
and it really was forever! Whether I
worked outside of the home or in I was a mommy forever. Staying at home to be a
mother was my choice and I wondered why I began to wonder why I felt so self-conscious about
that. I began analyzing everything from
the food I ate to the movies I’d seen and how so many things had embedded
themselves in my brain over the course of so many years that made me feel
overly reliant on outward approval to know who and how I was.
I did not think of my role as a mom as a job and I suppose I was
just realizing how much my former job (s) defined me as a person. If I was doing well at school and work I was
doing well. If I was falling apart
personally but school and work were going well, I was, therefore, not actually falling
apart. If I was struggling at work or school, then I was struggling. Without
the structure of a “real job” I was lost and did not know where I stood with
everyone and everything around me. Was I
the same wife to Joel as I was when I worked? How could I be if I was literally turning into a different person? I inherently had less friends to spend time with because all of my
friends worked. But did they still love
me the same? Even strangers made me feel
out of place. When I ran errands during
the day I thought constantly about what people must be thinking of me because
it was 11a.m. and I was clearly not working.
“Spoiled, stay at home mom? No
education and no job? Too lazy to find
work?” At no point did I think that anyone had anything good or nice to say
about the choice I had made but I was realizing that neither did I. After all,
it’s not like those complete strangers were actually accosting me at the
grocery store in the middle of the day pointing and yelling “Lazy!" "Stupid!" "DOOMED!” I was projecting those thoughts out onto them
because that’s what I feared I had become!
I realized it was time for a major overhaul of my brain, how it took
in information and how it talked to my heart.
I am submitting this article just two days after my 30th
birthday. Thirty is the first birthday I
have felt excited about in a long time and I wonder if this milestone age has
helped me take all of these epiphanies I have experienced over the last couple
of years and put them together in a way that will (and actually has already)
produced real change. When 2014 rolled
around, my husband and I started having the conversation about our personal
health and fitness and how, if we didn’t start developing better habits in that
area now at thirty, it would only get harder and harder to get and stay
healthy. We started getting tired of
complaining about the time we didn’t have and just decided one day to simply
use the time we did have differently. We
started waking up at the unholy hour of 4:30 a.m. to work out together, in our
home, every single morning. Though
daunting at first, we knew it was the only way we could make fitness a priority
and we have been at it since the start of the year. I’m up, energized and showered and fed before
my kids wake or the sun is up and I love it! This process and the prospect of
thirty being a decade to start doing away with old and unhealthy habits has
helped me see that my motherhood rut needed the same type of treatment. I
first needed to commit to seeing
things differently. Just as I had
committed to stop complaining about not having enough time, I needed to commit
to no more self-judgment. No more projecting made up opinions of others onto
myself. No more internalizing the
sometimes not-so-made-up but negative attitudes and opinions that actually did
exist. No more confusion about what it
is that I actually do. If stay at home motherhood didn’t come with a job description
I needed to write my own:
Stay At Home Mom (SAHM) Also
Referred to As “Home and Family Manager.”
Hours: every hour, every day. Vacation
time: variable. Breaks: Minimal but can be negotiated with helpful
supportive partner. Primary Responsibilities:
keep children alive, nourished and properly stimulated. Clean up after their immediate messes. Manage the family budget and oversee large
financial decisions. Abandon your need
for frequent reminders that you are performing well and for clear guidelines as
to what it is you should actually be doing.
Learn to perform well and figure out what you should actually be doing. Secondary
Duties: Keep up with the laundry
and the dishes. Socialize your children.
Socialize yourself. Be involved in children’s schooling, monitor
their development and advocate for them when they are trying to learn. Take immediate responsibility for errors and
remedy them quickly. Manage your sanity
and emotional health. Tertiary
Responsibilities: Shower, eat, clean your bathrooms. Salary: None. Other Compensations: complete and total freedom in how you
structure your day and time. Bonds with
your children that are just, well, special.
A priceless spiritual awakening as you experience the true meaning of
selflessness.
Note to applicants: if you do not know if you are suitable for this job, you probably
inherently are.
So, it doesn’t translate well on a resume and Facebook doesn’t
have an accurate description of what it is that a SAHM actually does. But those things only matter when I let
them. I think part of me needed to let
them matter for a while so I could mourn the loss of an identity that I had known exclusively for most of my life but was much
stronger than it should have been. A
young, ambitious but overly sensitive and outwardly motivated self that needed
to sit the hell down so this new, confident, wise, secure and peaceful “mommy
in me” could emerge. Motherhood changed
me as I think it changes all moms. But I
think staying home full time is what produced the depth of the change I
underwent: The full and straight dive
into the most set-in-stone role a woman can take on was shocking and caused
some panic but it was transformational and euphoric in its release. Staying home with my boys, having been
witness to every single day of their lives, has made every hard and pitiful day
of my past feel worth it. It brings me closer to God because I know all those
hard and pitiful days were spent preparing me for this very role. Someday, when I die, my boys are going to bury me. And I want them to remember me as an honest,
real and truly content woman who didn’t fear or regret or resent that I was
their Mom.
Wow. The “Mommy
In Me.” I guess when I think about it,
the word “Mommy” when it is misunderstood (as I misunderstood it in my first
years of motherhood) sounds meek, mild and amateur. When you understand Mommy as the most
important thing in your life you will ever, ever, ever do…well, that’s not as
meek and mild and amateur anymore is it?
Hey messy, beautiful warriors.
It’s so nice to finally meet you all and thank you for reading my story.
This essay and I are part of the Messy, Beautiful Warrior Project — To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE! And to learn about the New York Times Bestselling Memoir Carry On Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life, just released in paperback, CLICK HERE!
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