The Whiplash of Balancing Working and Mothering

A glimpse into my brain right now…

People told me that being a mom would help me become skilled at getting work done efficiently in the pockets of time available for it. This has been somewhat true for me, but not in the way I imagined it, where I’d become this superhero work machine who could perfectly manage time and pump out mass quantities of finished tasks.

For me, it’s looked more like the slow shedding of the fear that the quality of what I produce has a direct impact on my value as a human being. The same boldness that I felt when lactation consultations made certain parts of my body public in new ways, I feel when I send off a document that I know could be more polished but by God it is done. I am more willing to show up as I am, rather than hiding because I’m not yet who I ‘should’ be.

So this morning, I’m hopping between building block towers and writing a few sentences about museum workers’ imagination for what digital interpretation projects can achieve and looking all over the house for Silver Car (don’t worry, I found him hiding in Big School Bus). So far, no whiplash.