dear mom, you are not alone

You are not alone.

You are not alone when you wake and you push the snooze button and wish for five more minutes of sleep and push the snooze button again and then proceed to roll out of bed ten minutes later than you should and start the day racing out of breath just a bit.

You are not alone if you find yourself repeating no you may not do that and stop that and seriously? we’ve established that rule and no more media and stop picking on your brother (or sister) every single day.

You are not alone if sometimes you look at the Facebook stream and think that your life doesn’t measure up to the highlight stream that is culled over there.

You are not alone if there are moments when you stand in the kitchen and have no clue what to make for dinner and then you find yourself breathing a sigh of relief for the chicken nuggets in the freezer and can of corn in the cupboard.

You are not alone if you sit at the table and struggle with fifth grade math and have to google the answer to finding the mean, median, and mode again.

You are not alone if you don’t coupon. Or if you do coupon.

You are not alone if your kids play on electronics and then you feel guilt because you let them play just a bit longer so you could get one more thing done.

You are not alone if you’ve doubted that what you’re doing as a mother really matters and you’ve stood in the bathroom and looked in the mirror and wondered if you’re enough.

You are not alone if you’re tired. Trust me, you’re really not alone here.

You are not alone if you’ve ever felt alone in this motherhood journey.

You are not alone if you have that moment in the beginning of the day when you ponder how today will go and if you’ll get the to-do list done and if there is enough coffee in the cabinet to sustain you.

You are not alone if you work. Or if you stay at home. Or if you do both.

You are not alone if you feel guilt for working. Or staying at home. Or for both.

You are not alone if you have Pinterest boards full of awesomeness and you’ve only done two. Or maybe three. Or if they’re full of motivational quotes on motherhood and life like mine is.

You are not alone if you have laundry to fold and a kitchen to clean but instead you decide to close your eyes just for a moment.

You are not alone when you love your kids like crazy and can pick them out of the crowd of thirty-eight kids waiting at the curb for you to pick them up from school.

You are not alone if you know all the songs from Frozen and will belt them along with your preschooler.

You are not alone for finding joy in having a kitchen counter that is clean or that the laundry is done or that there is nothing on your calendar to do today.

You are not alone in worrying that you are doing enough for your children even though deep down you truly really are and yet you have those pesky doubts that like to remind you of all the times you’ve stumbled instead of seeing where you soared.

You are not alone in wanting friendships.

You are not alone if your child is the one at Target having the meltdown at the register because you refuse to purchase the toy that is conveniently placed at eye level.

You are not alone when you consider going to Target or the grocery store by yourself a mini vacation.

You are not alone if you’ve ever struggled with mom guilt or comparison or feeling like you’re the only one that doesn’t have the ideal life and you’re not doing enough.

You are not alone in having dishes that need to be done or a bathroom that needs to be cleaned or any of those normal house chores that are part of life that we often don’t give ourselves grace to realize that we’re always in the middle of them and they’re never really ever done.

You are not alone in having a home that in your head would always look a certain way but you have kids and that means that there are handprints on the walls, marker stains on the table, mismatched socks in the laundry room, and a bunch of stuff that seems like it always needs to be sorted.

You are not alone if you’ve stayed up all night with a sick little one and taken temperatures and grabbed the Tylenol and had to decide if you go to the doctor or not and back and forth.

You are not alone in having days that don’t go perfectly.

You are not alone when you have wonderful days that simply make you smile.

You are not alone when you walk in their rooms at night and you look at those sleeping faces and you wonder why in the world they pushed all of your buttons two hours earlier.

You are not alone if you go to bed tired and you don’t remember your head hitting the pillow.

You are not alone if you’ve cried tears behind the bathroom door and counted to ten and gathered your courage and had to do it again.

You are not alone when you realize what a gift motherhood is in those times where you can slow down enough to catch your breath.

You are not alone if you have those moments where you look at all you’ve done and you just sigh and see the beauty in the very extraordinary ordinary.

You are not alone, dear mother.

You are not alone in this crazy journey called motherhood.

You are not alone.

You are instead strong, beautiful, powerful, amazing, and a life changer.

Sometimes we all need a reminder of all that we are.

And that truthfully, we are not alone.

Motherhood. Collective.

We are not alone.

~Rachel

ps. I’d be super blessed if you liked this article if you’d click like or share it with your friends on facebook – that we the “you are not alone” cry of awesome can continue. 🙂