Are you always taking the smallest cookie yourself? Or the burnt sausage… ? Be honest!! And have you stopped celebrating your own birthday, because it’s much more important to plan for the kids’ ones?
The Sacrificial mother. A friend lent me the book the other week. How mothers seem to jump into a role very different to where they came from pre-kids.
Putting the children first in everything, buying clothes for them but not yourself. And even taking PRIDE in how some of our favourite pieces are from before the kids (which serves a double purpose in social standing: pride of being able to fit them still and showing that I’m not overly vain).
I’m so guilty of this one – my favourites are mainly skirts, the blouses and cardigans simply were falling apart and I HAD to push myself to let them go. One of the skirts even has a small hole, and I convince myself no-one will see it, or if they do, it could just have happened that morning (really?!! kidding myself for 13 years like that… it was a skirt from after the second child, mind you).
This is where it gets so embarrassing that the children’s social standing may even be at risk. And so many options to fix it – I could just mend the hole, or let the skirt go. I do have others. Why haven’t I? I must really like the story I’ve created, double purpose and all.
Anyway, over to you: where do you always put the kids first? Driving them to and from their hobbies and friends, never putting time aside for your own hobbies and comrades? Spending all weekend, every weekend on the sideline for their sports, where you would rather be home reading a great new book, going for a run or another (indulgent??!!) little wish of your own.
If you love watching their sports and hanging out with the other parents, go forth. If not, be honest and make arrangements to take turns with the other parents, so that it’s maybe only every second weekend you have to go.
Back to the point. Why do so many of us have this need to give our children the best/biggest/nicest cake/sausage/apple (the ones with the bumps always end up going into my own lunch bag…. ?!)?
What if we just SOMETIMES put ourselves first. I know, the world may collapse, be in shock… and after that, maybe start looking at you a bit differently. That you ARE a person with your own identity. That you DO have passions (am I going too far here??) or at least things you like to do.
What would that show them? Hrm…. perhaps that it is OK to speak up about what’s important for you. That putting yourself first sometimes is a healthy, good thing. Wonder if that may be good role modelling…. hrm…. in another life/country/street/house maybe.. what if it was in yours?
It’s OK to be healthily selfish now and then. It only works if you do it without guilt and without indirect hints. It is your choice, stand by it.
Ready to man up? Hahaaa….. that’s so funny. That it’s the masculine energy we through language have linked to taking action and standing up for yourself. Ready to woman up? And let’s come back to that balance of masculine and feminine energy in us all another time.