I am OVERWHELMED.

I don’t know if I am coming or going half of the time. Complete sentences seem to have difficulty forming in my mouth. I seem to stop midway through a sentence frequently and just completely forgetting what I am talking about all together. I will tell one of my kids something, then forget what I told them.

Thoughts go through my mind:

Am I a bad mom?

Other moms feel this way, right?

I cannot be the only mother who feels a bit crazy at times, can I?

This is the side of motherhood that no one wants to share. It is easier to say everything is fine and move on. Well, I am here to say this mom cannot do it all.

It is OK to be feeling overwhelmed. 

I have described my brain as a web browser with a bunch of tabs open. Things are constantly running but I cannot finish the task and close out of those tabs. At night, I get out of bed two or three times because I kept forgetting to do little tasks that needed to be done. If I just try to remember to do them in the morning, I will forget or let it keep me awake until I get out of bed and complete the task.

We have three kids in baseball and one in softball. Between all four of them, we are at a ballpark every night of the week and on weekends. We rely on my parents and sometimes other families to help get our children to their practices. Did I mention my 7-year-old is also in flag football? I must strategically plan supper, which I have failed at lately. I do not want to feed them peanut butter and jelly every night, but that is what they have been eating. I worry about forgetting one of my children at one of their practices. Eeek!

You see, I had this vision when I became an instant mother of four and switched to part time, that I would magically become this perfect mother who would be able to figure it all out.

HA. HA. HA. The joke was on me. 

By switching to part time, I just started to fill my schedule with more activities for me and the children. I am working less, but volunteering, babysitting, and coaching various sports for my kids. I love every minute of it. But I feel like something has got to give. My kids and husband deserve home cooked meals and a clean house. Sometimes, I cannot even do that because we are on the go constantly. 

I fought and fought for a family, but now I am struggling at managing it. I am not Superwoman, or Wonder Woman or a Saint. All these words have been used to describe me (and similar words for my husband). Words that have actually made me feel inadequate as a mother. I felt like I needed to keep it all together all the time. I was under the impression other people must have really thought these things about me if they were staying it to my face. 

NEWSFLASH. Adjectives to better describe me are chaotic, busy, loving, scatterbrained, unorganized, and real.

Motherhood is messy at best. Me feeling like I can do it all is sort of a funny dream. Someone, maybe me, should write a book about all the messiness that goes with motherhood just so those of us who are new, will not feel so lost or overwhelmed. I realized that once I started sharing how I was feeling during the chaotic times of motherhood, that other mothers opened up too. Other mothers had the same feeling of being overwhelmed. 

To all the moms out there, this is for you.

I have always felt like an outsider as a mother, but once I was able to open up to other moms, they too have shared their same struggles. You are not alone in feeling lost and overwhelmed in motherhood. Talking about my feelings have actually helped me feel better. I want you to know that someone has felt this way before and you can overcome these feelings. 

Are you in a season of feeling overwhelmed?

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