Get Me Out of Here

no, wait... don't! // on the topic of mom burnout

I am writing this from my bedroom, alone—door locked, wood stove blazing, all children’s problems being handled by someone who is not me. Finally. It’s a relief to at least have some quiet, to let my mind de-fuzz and my fingers type some coherent sentences. It came on suddenly, as it often does, but last night I just kind of reached my parenting limit; it had been too many days and nights in a row of near-solo parenting while Martin was working, and some of the girls were in really terrible moods. Ingrid and Sylvi are going through a particular phase of severely disliking each other, and after awhile it just grates on me. I want them to speak nicely. I want them to stop bickering. I just want them to get along, or if they can’t get along, for heavens sake, go to different rooms.

This wall of parenting burnout that I’ve hit makes me think of all the other times I’ve been here, how common a place it is to be as a mom. We all spend some time here behind our locked bedroom door, not knowing how we’re going to emerge and keep going without blowing our top, not knowing when the tide will change and the family dynamic will return to peacefulness. It’s a familiar place to many of us, certainly a space of solidarity, when we speak of it to other moms.

I think social media—for all its problems—has been a great helper for mothers in this boat. A crutch has been provided to us by way of assuring us that burnout is normal. We can scroll through our friends (and strangers) on our chosen platforms and see countless other mothers talking about burnout, past, present, or as a generalization. It is very comforting! To know that we are not alone, that we are NOT bad mothers (I repeat: WE ARE NOT BAD MOTHERS) I think it really helps the rough times to pass more quickly. It’s easier to keep from wallowing when we understand that what we are feeling is a completely normal and universal experience.

Another thing social media has promised us is the idea that we can do something about the burnout, and it supplies the encouragement to take action. We can combat it through self-care, primarily. Dates with our lovers, little treats for ourselves, time alone, practicing our hobbies and outside interests. This all sounds very nice, and gosh, wouldn’t I love to indulge! I would! And sometimes I do. Now, behind my bedroom door, and, in fact, just the other day, Martin and I went on a date. It was an ironic time of self care that led to me feeling totally burnt out.

He was off work and we had an errand to run. We left the girls at home and zipped out, completed our errand, and took advantage of the time away to have a cup of coffee together. We both were reading, not really talking, and it was very peaceful, but it kind of ate up our afternoon. We were gone less than two hours, but it felt like too much. It felt too indulgent. On the way home, we talked about people who inevitably turn their hobbies into a business and discussed the idea that art should be worth the time and effort without having to provide monetary gain. People should practice their hobbies without always feeling like they have to turn it into a business. I recently read that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had daily writing and drawing time allotted in their schedule. It sounds wonderful, and like something I truly value. Journaling, written correspondence, sketching, making music, making anything. These activities stand alone as being worthwhile, and it is disheartening that so many people (particularly women, in my observation) have turned their passions and hobbies into side hustles. (I am included in this group.) Martin was saying all this, and in my heart, I was agreeing with him. I believe that! I believe creating has worth beyond monetary form. I believe in the arts as standalone endeavors without needing to bring in an income, without needing outside recognition, even. Art for the sake of art has value enough. Our children should witness us keeping up with things we love simply because we love them. I believe all these things, yet I felt myself becoming irritated by the conversation. We talked about the importance of taking time to oneself, the importance of keeping hobbies for joy, and the whole time I was thinking, “…and who will do the work?” It was easy for Victoria and Albert with their meals made, their houses cleaned, their children attended, to devote a chunk of each morning to writing, drawing, and walking. Their needs and the needs of their children were being met while they were doing these things. But if ever I decide to take a long walk, or sit down to draw, or lock myself in my bedroom to write a Substack post, rest assured, I will return to a backlog of chaos and unmet needs of my household.

Just like every time I take a breather for myself, that day of the coffee date, the short time away was enough time for my work to accumulate. Some people didn’t like the lunch I had left for them, so they didn’t eat, and therefore were now hangry. Those who did eat made messes and left their dishes on the table. There were dishes in the sink, there were messes in every room of the house, I had neglected my home in order to have some time alone with my husband, and I was reaping what I had sown. I was not surprised—this is how it is every time I leave—but I was discouraged. Cue burnout.

This is why, I told Martin, people—and moms in particular—feel like they need to monetize their passions and hobbies—because they are putting aside something that needs to be done in order to practice those side interests. They need to monetize those things so they can feel justified in ordering pizza for dinner. They need to monetize those skills so they can be practiced while the cleaning lady visits, or so a babysitter can be hired. They need to monetize because so many of us feel that practicing a hobby without a payoff seems frivolous and wrong. It’s a nice thought to preach that your children should see you doing things you love for yourself—but with just a teensy bit of time mismanagement, the window can be missed for feeding the child with the sensory processing disorder, or a brief time of self-care can eat into the schedule of driving kids where they need to be, causing tensions and tempers to flare. An extra ten minutes spent on a sketch with your children gathered around idyllically, is an extra ten minutes in which the dishes still aren’t getting done, which you will realize when you go to serve dinner and see you have no clean bowls. The time spent in a bubble bath with a book is the time when someone’s uniforms for the next day are not being washed, and you’ll have to stay up later than you’d wanted to, in order to make sure they get switched to the dryer to be ready for wear the next day. The needs are endless and ever accumulating. There is no pause button.

And those are just the physical demands, the things that need doing that aren’t necessarily fun, but are time sensitive and important. But there are the emotional needs as well. Parenting five daughters is a bumpy trip through the Forest of Emotional Upheaval. Sometimes everything is just fine, but my goodness, you never know when it no longer may be. Meltdowns lurk like vicious animals. How often have my extra few minutes spent on a stupid watercolor been met with an argument that needed intervention *just* that many minutes earlier? Sour feelings between sisters and many tears could possibly have been avoided if I hadn’t been acting so selfishly with my time. Time spent on myself is not extra time. It’s just putting myself further into debt. It can become difficult to feel like any sort of practice of craft for self fulfillment alone is worth that debt. Cue burnout, again.

You’re not alone if you feel this way. You’re not a bad mom when you hit these walls and feel like you just need to come up for air. You give and give and give and give to all these needs surrounding you, to all these people you love, and those people and those needs are valuable and they need your attention. But… Sometimes it feels like the needs will never end. And that’s hard.

But then… they do end. I catch glimpses of my future every once in awhile, much more frequently now than I used to when they were all tiny. We will have days when everyone is pleasantly occupied, when these young humans seem to be mindfully practicing becoming nice, helpful, older humans. Strings of days where no one is really fighting, everyone is pulling their weight as a household, and attitudes are cheery. Those are great times. Those are easy times. And in those times I can take moments to write and make and record just for the joy of it, while also recognizing, like so many everyday mothers do, that every penny I may earn from my art endeavors with help me out when I need a moment—I don’t make much money on my art, but it’s enough to supply me some time in a coffee shop every once in awhile.

And those are the times—the calm times—that I try to keep in my mind when everything seems to be going down the drain. I try to remember that no, my children DON’T fight constantly every day of their lives. In fact, they fight way less than my sister and I did! Their deeper personalities are unique and special, and they are people I truly enjoy being around. They are the very ones who generate all those endless needs… the meals, the laundry, the dishes, the late night talks, the picking up a gazillion stuffed animals eighty times a day, the crying, the injuries, the confusion of growing up. They are the generators and they are also the exact reason I love fulfilling all those needs. I love being a mom. I love mothering these particular daughters. It is a privilege to be the one meeting their needs, it is a joy to be the ears they need, the arms they need, sometimes the voice they need. It is a joy to sit at the table and make art with them for no payment other than the connection it gives us and the happiness it brings. Not just “it should be”—IT IS.

At times it’s easy to feel my gratitude for this place in life. Sometimes my heart is absolutely full to bursting with gratitude. But occasionally I need to lock myself in my bedroom and make a substack post to remind myself of that. When I am facing burnout I need a little time out to remember that it’s up to me to see the joy on the other side of that wall I’ve hit, and realize that I’m the only one who can scale the wall and grab that joy for myself, and then hold onto it as best I can—even when my interests seem frivolous, even when self care isn’t readily at hand, even when the schedule is off and it’s a scramble to get out of chore debt, even when parenting just plain isn’t easy. The joy of the present moment is there for the taking, and it is absolutely enough—but it’s also ok to need empty, quiet times in order to remember that.