The middle ground

There's an ebb and flow to this motherhood thing.

Some days I feel like a rockstar, cooking and cleaning, educating and playing, being brilliant and funny and kind, and some days I feel like I am doing nothing at all.

And I know, I know, even on my bad days, I am enough.  But it doesn't feel that way.

Someone asked me the other day if being a parent is really as hard as they say, if you really go days and months and years without sleeping for more than 20 minutes or ever finishing a meal.

Well, I said.  It's true and it isn't.

Maybe it's only hard because we make it hard.  Because we act like martyrs, because we don't let ourselves eat or go to the bathroom (and for the record, I eat.  I've always eaten.  It's kind of a priority).  Maybe we set expectations for ourselves that don't coincide with reality, we do more than is necessary.  And when we complain about our day, we really did it to ourselves.

Or maybe it's really supposed to be hard, and on the days when it seems easy, it's because we're not doing what we're supposed to.  We're being lazy, we're letting down our kids.

Or maybe, like most things, it's somewhere in between.

I just can't find it yet.