I posted a link to this video on my Facebook page Thursday afternoon, and as of writing this post on Thursday night, it has ONE like and zero comments. My BFF who just had a baby in June was the only like.
Here is what I wrote as a caption on the post: This resonates with my mind and my heart on so many levels. We shouldn’t always look to our children our or spouses or our workworkers or to our friends to find happiness. We shouldn’t put that burden on them. It will never work in the long run. We need to find happiness from within, and the happier and more fulfilled we are as an individual instead of just as a mother/wife/friend/whatever, the happier and more fulfilled those around us will be as well.
It is SO interesting to me that this post was such a dud on my social media. I mean, I post a pic of my kid in the garden and can get a gazillion “likes,” yet this video (which I found to be totally fantastic) was almost completely ignored. Now I’m stuck vacillating between two thoughts:
Did I post it at a weird time and people didn’t see it?
or
Am I alone in identifying with the video and its message?
What do you think?
I know this is controversial. I get it. I know many women pour their hearts and souls into their children, who are happy never leaving them for any length of time because their children are their focus in life, and who never want to go out on date nights or girls’ weekends or wedding trips away because that would mean leaving home and children. We all parent differently, and I respect that.
Here’s the thing though – does that respect about parenting styles go both ways?
I am a great mother. I feel like I pour my heart and soul into my kids. I also truly can’t imagine never feeling comfortable leaving my kids. I would be so unhappy if I always had to give all of myself to them and save nothing for myself. I know that I would be miserable if I never had a date night with Charlie or drinks with girl friends or workout time by myself. I fully embrace that there are times (like infancy or sickness or times of great change) where the balance is tipped and your child might need you 110% for awhile, but as a long term way of living my life? There’s no way.
As Jada Pinkett-Smith said (you should really listen to this entire video, but especially starting around the 3:30 mark), “…you always have to remember to take care of you, first and foremost, because when you quit taking care of yourself, you get out of balance, and you really forget how to take care of others. And I think that we’ve been taught that taking care of yourself is a problem. And I’ll tell you something about being a mother and some of the message we get in this country about being a mother – that you have to completely sacrifice everything…you have to completely sacrifice every single thing. And I think that the re-messaging that we as mothers need to have and gravitate to is that you have to take care of yourself in order to have the alignment and the power to take care of others at the capacity that we do.”
Thoughts?
#stateyourunpopularopinion