Wanting Time Alone Doesn't Make You a Bad Mother | Speak, Mother

Wanting alone time doesn't make you a bad mom.

It makes you a human being.

I know you've been telling yourself otherwise.

Like, oof, the guilt, the guilt, the guilt around that.

Let's just call it what it is.

Motherhood is relentless.

The noise, the needs, the constant someone touching you when it's hot and you feel sticky, or talking at you, or needing something from you.

The mental load that never actually turns off even when the house is quiet because oh yeah, that thing is happening tomorrow and you still have to prepare X, Y, and Z.

The way you can love your children with your whole entire being and still be [laughs] so desperate for 10 minutes of silence that you hide in the bathroom just to breathe.

Raise your hand, ladies.

I see you.

It's the stay-at-home mom who hasn't had one uninterrupted thought in three days, or the working mom who has a commute, which is the only 20 minutes of the day that belongs entirely to her, and she feels guilty for loving it.

Or the entrepreneur mom or work from home mom whose office is in the house, and the boundary between work and motherhood has completely dissolved, and she cannot remember the last time she just existed without somebody needing something.

It's because you're so damn good at all the things that you do.

Ugh.

You're overstimulated, you're touched out, you're running on empty, and somewhere along the line, we've received the message that needing a break from your dear sweet angels means that you don't love them enough, and that, my friend, is a crock of shit.

The guilt around this is so specific and also so cruel because it's not just the, "I need a break." It's a, "I need a break specifically from them, from the people I love the most, from the people I chose, from the people who need me." And that feels a little bit like a betrayal.

Like if you were a good enough mother, you wouldn't need to escape.

Like the woman who seems to do this effortlessly just must love it more than you do, or that they were designed to be a mother, and frankly, you weren't.

But here's what I want you to consider instead.

The woman who never needs a break isn't a better mother.

She's either lying to herself or completely disappeared so far into the role that she doesn't exist anymore outside of it, and neither of those is a model worth following or idolizing.

We always hear you cannot pour from an empty cup, and it's true.

You know this.

You've heard it a thousand times, but I wanna say it differently.