Mom Guilt: Can We Overcome It and Is Balance Possible?

Being an ambitious mother is kind of a paradox. It shouldn’t be, but it is.

I should note before I go any further that I know for some people, being the best mother they can be is their only ambition, and I think that is really amazing. I’ll admit that there is a part of me that feels shame for not being one of these women.

I love being a mom. And the most important thing in the world to me is raising my son well. But it is not the only passion that fuels me. I learned in my first year of motherhood, and throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, that just focusing on momming with no attention to my ambition or passions has serious repercussions for my mental health. I learned that fact would forever make me feel judged and ashamed. Enter: “mom guilt.”

The messaging is clear, even in a time when there are more opportunities for women. You should be at home with your kids. You don’t have to believe me. The numbers on this are clear.

It takes about two seconds of Googling to find a plethora of articles about working mothers who are struggling to stay afloat, in the midst of a global pandemic, with everything else they’d normally have to balance. I’m sure some of those women are working jobs they love. But it’s a struggle enough to make money and raise a child at the same time.

So where is the time, energy or support for women trying to also pursue their ambition? The type of ambition that deals with dreams and goals apart from motherhood. Maybe career, but more passion and creativity. The part of life that’s not about paying the bills or cooking food night after night that you have to watch your picky eater not eat night after night (I’m not bitter, I swear.)

I was at a hair appointment a couple of years back where I was chit-chatting with my stylist — a very blunt, rough-around-the-edges kind of a woman. I should have known she wasn’t a safe person to bare my soul to, but my emotions were right at the surface that day. And while I was sitting in that salon chair, getting taken care of for a change, I couldn’t help it.

I told her I was running on empty. That I was struggling with the balance between being a good, active and present mother, and fulfilling the needs of my soul through my creativity and ambition.

“Balance? There is no balance. You’ll never find it. Maybe when your kid leaves for college.” She was tearing through the tangles in my hair with her wide-toothed brush, so she didn’t notice right away that I had burst into tears.

She tried to backtrack, but she had spoken so harshly and directly about a truth that I feared. A truth I never even considered before I gave birth.

Before motherhood, I always told myself I wouldn’t be one of those women who lost themselves within motherhood. I wouldn’t forget my goals, I wouldn’t disappear from my friends, I wouldn’t lose my grip on the fun, creative life that I loved so much. But of course the common wisdom that I’d pushed aside was true: you can’t know what it’s like to be a mom until you know.

Being a mom changes you, and even as an empathetic person who tried to understand what my mom friends were going through before I joined the club, I never fully understood in the before times.

Being a mom means loving another person more than you value your own wellbeing. It means that any time spent not in the service of that little person produces mom guilt. The guilt comes almost immediately. Am I a bad mother because I’m not producing enough milk? What if I can’t take the exhaustion anymore and decide to sleep train my baby and let them cry? Am I a bad mother because I don’t want to be covered in breastmilk and pee and drool and spit up right now and I miss my before-life? Am I a bad mother for [insert any number of things moms feel guilt and shame over on a normal basis]?

The guilt is so powerful, so visceral, that it’s hard (even for me) to describe it with words. For me, it’s like a bully that makes me feel inadequate as a mother when I consider my own needs. It’s like a constant ache, a tightness in my chest, that whispers “you’re selfish” or “you’re not giving him enough.” It might as well be saying, “you are not enough.”

Like-minded friends, family and even professionals can say reassuring things until they’re blue in the face. Things like, “you have to fill your own cup before you can pour from it.” But the logic doesn’t pierce the armor of mom guilt. Mom guilt is strong. Mom guilt is crippling.

I recently found a journal entry I wrote around the time when my son was 6 months old — a time when I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize myself. While my husband went off to rehearsal for a musical he was working on, and I was stuck, once again, on the couch for another night of nursing and housework and mindlessness. I wrote in my journal, “Maybe I’m not cut out to be a mother. I shouldn’t feel this way, and I feel so guilty, but I just miss my old life so much.”

Missing my old life tore me apart. I remember feeling like the worst mother in the world. I felt so much guilt for not loving every minute. Little did I know that missing my old life was totally normal, if there is even such a thing as “normal” when it comes to feelings surrounding motherhood. There are usually growing pains, and they were indeed painful for me. I just didn’t see any other women talking about them. They all just seemed to be crushing the mommy game from the outside. They seemed so happy in their posed pictures on social media. Thrilled to be with their kids 24/7.

I spent the first year of my son’s life at home. It seemed too hard to maintain my breastfeeding schedule and a rigorous theater schedule, so I gave up theater for that year. I didn’t see friends too often because it felt too hard. Too hard physically (with naps and feeding schedules to work around), but also too hard mentally. Too hard to try to be a version of myself that didn’t, that couldn’t, exist anymore.

I wanted to be that old version of myself so badly. But I couldn’t be her because I wasn’t doing any of the things that used to make me feel like her. And clinging to her made it hard to step into this new life of motherhood — a life of overwhelming love and obligation. I felt guilty just for having thoughts about missing my passions. How wild is that?

After becoming a mom, I felt I had to justify everything I did that took me away from my baby. I had to be able to justify leaving my child, because “what kind of mom leaves her child for ‘no reason’?” I had to be making money or it “wasn’t worth it.” I would get so jealous of moms who had time to go running, perform, travel, do all sorts of stuff without their babies. Were they not experiencing mom guilt to the level that I was? (Little did I realize that they had just beat me to figuring out the secret — that we don’t have to cave to the bully of mom guilt, and our old selves don’t have to disappear into the past.)

After a year at home with my baby, I thought I wouldn’t feel guilty carving out more time for myself. I thought that after spending most waking moments with my child for years during a global pandemic, I wouldn’t feel guilty leaving for longer stretches. I was wrong. Mom guilt is relentless.

Unexpected Enemies

The “feedback” from well-meaning people doesn’t help either. And I don’t blame individuals — I blame a society that says men are free to pursue their dreams and goals without their dad-ness being brought into the equation, but that it’s perfectly okay to judge women who are not with their children 24/7.

I can’t tell you the number of people who have seen me perform in the last few years and come at me with the, “so where is your kid?” question. Sometimes, it’s said in jest as they look around pretending to to try to spot him. Sometimes, there’s genuine concern on their faces. Like I must have left my three-year-old at home alone if I’m performing in a play at night.

I know that their comments are more about them than they are about me. But that embedded mom guilt part of me flares every time. They’re right. You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t need to fulfill your passions. There’s something wrong with you. Go home where you belong. You’re a bad mom.

The thoughts that come up are logically ridiculous. I know this. But I’ve learned that mom guilt doesn’t really respond to logic. Like, at all.

And the most illogical thing of all? I’ve found the biggest perpetrators of mom-shaming tend to be other moms. I know this to be true because I’ve regularly encountered these moms, and I have also been this kind of mom.

I think it comes from a place of resentment. A place of, “hey, if I can’t do all of the things I want to do without guilt, you shouldn’t be able to either!” I know now that any time judgment has risen within me seeing another mom chase her passions and ambitions, it’s coming from a pre-programmed place inside of me. A message I’m actively trying to eradicate.

A book I read recently (Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski) says it in the best way I’ve found so far. The sisters would call some of the topics I’ve addressed by different names. They’d say that “mom guilt” comes from “Human Giver Syndrome” — a condition that plagues mostly women and speaks for itself. And they’d call our passions and ambitions our “Something Larger”. They believe that engaging with your “Something Larger” is the only true antidote to “Human Giver Syndrome” — i.e. mom guilt:

We say it all the time, to other women and to ourselves. To suffer from Human Giver Syndrome is to be convinced, on some level, that everyone should suffer along with us. And so if we see someone who looks like they’re not even trying, we feel outraged. When we see women […] who use their time, money, and labor to improve their own well-being rather than someone else’s, “What’s the matter with her?” we say to ourselves. “If I have to follow the rules, so does she! She needs to get back in line.“

[…]The good news is, when you engage with your Something Larger and thus make meaning in your life, you’re actually healing Human Giver Syndrome, both in yourself and in the people around you.

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski

Balance?

It took me a long while into motherhood to realize that I had let mom guilt completely cripple me. I lost myself for a while. I gave my soul the bare minimum because I felt too guilty to nourish myself too often. And that was the sadness I brought to my hairdresser that day. And she told me it was never going to get any better.

She was wrong. At least, I realized, she was wrong for me. I’ve chosen instead to listen to Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed (side note: if you haven’t read this book yet, go order it right now before you finish this article):

Mothers have martyred themselves in their children’s names since the beginning of time. We have lived as if she who disappears the most, loves the most. We have been conditioned to prove our love by slowly ceasing to exist.

Glennon Doyle, Untamed

Mom guilt isn’t going anywhere. At least for the time being, while my little guy is little, there will always be that voice in my head criticizing me when I’m not with him — when I decided to carve out time to perform in a show, go away for the weekend with friends, or take weekly yoga classes. That voice, the one that criticizes me even when others don’t, has been programmed into my brain by the world we live in.

But I want to be a model for my son, not a martyr. I want him to fill his own cup when he needs to. I need to model that for him. And I need to engage with my passions, I need to pursue my ambitions, to continue to be me. It’s important that I feel like myself, and that I ‘mom’ from that place. Balance isn’t impossible. It’s just more of a north star. And that’s the best I can do for now.

So, fellow moms: let’s listen to the Nagoski sisters. The giver part of us, the deep love we have for our children, is embedded within us. It’s not going anywhere. So let’s make more of an effort to engage with what fuels us, so we can heal ourselves and each other. Let’s recognize the mom guilt when it flares. Then let’s reject it and step out of line together.