Hear me when I say this: It doesn’t serve you in any way. It doesn’t serve your children either.
I said something like this recently on a live stream, and a commenter said something like, “No, guilt is so important. Feeling guilty is how we know we’re doing something wrong. Guilt is God’s way of telling us we’re making bad choices.”
Holy crap.
No, seriously. That’s a load of crap wrapped up and pretending to be holy.
I don’t care what religion you were raised in. You weren’t taught guilt and shame by your creator. You were taught guilt and shame by people. That means whatever your people thought was shameful is what you learned to be ashamed of. Whatever your family or the influential people in your life thought was something to feel guilty about is what you have guilt about now.
Allow me to give you a way-too-personal example of this. I grew up in the eighties as a Pentecostal preacher’s daughter. Suffice it to say, I was not taught to view my sexuality as something good. In fact, I wasn’t taught to view my sexuality at all for any reason at any time. That’s something I was supposed to “save for marriage.” Nobody told me exactly what I was saving or what I should do with it once I did get married. It’s not any great surprise or any great originality to say that I was super uncomfortable getting comfortable with sex. My entire life nobody ever spoke to me about sex, except as this thing that was shameful to give away before a certain time. The problem is that even after that time came I couldn’t let go of the shame I’d learned to associate with it. It took me years of work to get past this, and I’m happy to report that now my sex life with my husband is fantastic, thank-you-very-much. But the shame I felt having sex with my husband in the beginning was very real, and I don’t believe for one second that this guilt I was feeling was God telling me sex with my husband was wrong. Guilt and shame are not from God, so please don’t allow yourself to assume that your mommy guilt is something divine.
Mommy guilt only works to make you question everything you have done, are doing, or might consider doing in the future. Everywhere you look, articles and books and shows suggest this or recommend that. The moms at school only like this brand or that style, and heaven forbid you parent differently than your sister-in-law or how your husband was raised.
Stop the madness!
Number one, dang it, you are doing your freaking best! The fact that you’re experiencing any guilt right now tells me that you care about your children and you’re trying. You’re not always going to be the exact kind of mom you wish you were, even when you’re trying your hardest. Today I was trying to put sunscreen on Noah’s chubby cheeks, and she fell backward and bonked the back of her head on the wood floor. Then she cried like the world was ending. You guys, I was trying to put SPF 80+ sunscreen on her to keep her safe, and I accidentally made her trip over her swim diaper. I was trying my best, and I still somehow managed to suck at it! That is life! That is parenting! When did we pass some law that we’re supposed to do this flawlessly?
When I was little we rolled around—without seat belts—in the back of a station wagon. Nobody cared about car seats or automobile safety. One of my friends’ moms laughs and laughs if you try to talk to her about safe pregnancy practices. “Darling,” she’ll say as she waves her hand in your general direction. “It was the sixties. I had a martini every single day during all three of my pregnancies.” I mean, what kind of screwed-up Mad Men situation was going on back then?
We’re all just doing our best, sis, and beating yourself up when you’re trying so hard isn’t going to help you do it better next time. You’ll be a better mama next month than you were this month, and five years from now you’ll be better still. Two decades from now you’ll horrify some new mother when you tell her the barbaric things you did when your kids were still small. In the meantime, hopefully you’ll work to improve in all areas of your life—including parenting—but I promise you it doesn’t serve you in any way to castigate yourself now.
It’s possible to pursue something for yourself while simultaneously showing up well for the people you love. It’s possible to be a great mother and a great entrepreneur. It’s possible to be an awesome wife and still want to get together regularly with your girlfriends. It’s possible to be this and that. It’s possible to decide that you’re going to be centered in who you are and what matters most to you and let other people’s opinions fall away. Don’t buy into the hype or the pressure or the guilt that you’ve got to be one or the other. Maybe that’s true for other people, maybe that’s their opinion, but only you get to decide what’s true for you.
EXCUSE 6:
I’M TERRIFIED OF FAILURE
Eight hundred and fifty thousand people watched me fail.
Let’s go ahead and start right there, because I know for many of you the idea of falling short in front of even a small group of witnesses is terrifying. Eight. Hundred. Fifty. Thousand. They watched me set a goal, publicly talk about how much I wanted it, and then they saw the aftermath when it didn’t happen.
It went down like this.
Like most red-blooded American authors, I have long dreamed of writing a New York Times bestseller. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this mythical distinction, making it onto this list is basically the unicorn of the publishing world. I think at one time it was all dependent on book sales, but somewhere along the way it became more nebulous. It seems nobody—save the people who work there—can tell you exactly how you get on it. It has to do with sales and press and buzz and, I assume, some form of ritual sacrifice.
My last book, Girl, Wash Your Face, was my sixth one to go out into the world, and I knew it would have the best chance of making it onto the list. It’s worth saying real quick that I fully understand that a random list doesn’t determine my book’s, or my own, worth. In fact, to some people it might be a ridiculous target to aim for. After all, it’s about the work, it’s about the women who loved it, it’s about the gift of having your writing in book form in the first place. But we all have dreams we hold close to our hearts. We all have hopes that really only make sense to us. Becoming a New York Times bestselling author was mine. It had been my birthday-candle wish for the last fifteen years. It’s what ran through my head when I wished upon a star or blew dandelion seeds into the wind. If forced to give you a rationale behind it, I suppose it’s because it would feel validating. My entrance into the publishing world wasn’t exactly smooth, and even though my fan base has grown with every subsequent release, I guess there’s a part of me that would love acknowledgment. Like, Hey, the publishing community is sorry about the complex it gave you when it told you no one would ever buy your book. JK. You’re actually a decent writer!
So, anyway, I’d dreamed about it for years but never admitted it to anyone because I didn’t want anyone to know, lest they judge me for not making it. But this time around, I decided to bring everyone in on the dream. I decided to tell my online audience (at the time, 850,000 women all over the world) about this longtime hope of mine. I figured if it did happen, then they would share in the victory. After all, they’re the ones who support me. And if it didn’t happen, well, it would certainly be a lesson for us all.