I’m a working mom.
I wear this title like a badge of honor with a side of “please feel bad for me, I’ve got a lot on my plate.”
I’ve always sung the praises of all moms. Stay at home or working, we all bust our butts for our families. It wasn’t until recently, four months, 21 days and 11 hours to be specific, that I realized who the true superhero parents are who never get their due respect:
the work-at-home moms.
By now, hopefully the whole world realizes that staying at home is a full-time job, but working from home while staying at home and parenting your kids is double time (without the time-and-a-half pay).
I know this because, like many of us, I recently became such a mom — and I have not handled it well.
During my time as a work-at-home mom, I have resorted to taking virtual meetings in the bathroom, melted into a puddle of tears on a moment’s notice, and heavily relied on frozen pizza and crap snacks to sustain my family. I tried, and while I haven’t completely failed (they’re still alive and I’m still employed), working at home doesn’t always look like this.
See, I was given a peek into the life of a “real” work-at-home mom — one who had been doing this crazy gig for years before the rest of the world was dropped into it. My BFF manages not only parenting and homeschooling her four kiddos but also her professional life as she works, writes, sells, and hustles at her plethora of jobs that help to financially support her family.
She somehow succeeds at being 100% mom while also killing it at work. Meanwhile, just a few months in, I've been feeling overwhelmed and underpaid, ending each day feeling as if I’m drowning in one of those funhouse ball pits while people just keep jumping on top of me.
So while I bellyache about this crazy-challenging new addition to my job description as I anxiously await the time when I can go back to “just” being a working mom – and I complain about being expected to work a full-time job and facilitate whatever the heck I need to with my own kids this fall – I want to take a second to recognize those who have been rocking this double life all along.
Work-at-home moms, you and your multitasking, to-do-listing, late-night-hustling, boo-boo-kissing, 24-7-snack-making, Amazon-woman self are rocking it.
We get it now.
We feel you.
We see you.
We think you are absolutely amazing.
