Guilt

A phrase has come into my life and become a norm: Mummy guilt. Aka guilt for going back to work when your baby is still a child. You can’t win that one – guilty if you’re good at your job and not at home and guilty if you don’t care about your job and want to be at home. We’re judged either way. Too many women have just come to terms with the fact that they should feel bad; they should feel guilt; they will be judged.

We are raised to believe that the passion and spirit, the ‘tom boy’ in us must be squashed down deep in order to be feminine and pleasing. Now we have the right to work and have children, we need to work extra hard to overcome our feelings and well being and be the perfect mom or the perfect woman.

I’m sorry but women did not fight for equality and freedom for so many years for us to feel sorry for ourselves! They fought so we could have choices! We can choose our identity and be proud of it. There is such power in a woman who knows what she wants!

It’s time to own our choices. If we can proudly be a stay-at-home mom or proudly feed our kids with minimum wage jobs or proudly be a boss at our jobs, then we own our choices. What message are we sending our kids? That women have to suffer? That women should feel bad for their choices? Across my friends there have been a plethora of choices about how much time they are committing to work/kids. I respect each of them because they made a choice and they owned it. They didn’t apologise.

If you can make a choice about your life, regardless of what others might think of you, then who are they to judge you?

My kids know that I like my job, it’s important to me, it brings in money and I enjoy it. Don’t get me wrong, it breaks my heart when they cry and don’t want me to go. It’s awful but I refuse to feel guilt over it. This was my choice and I give them all I’ve got when I’m home.

As women, our wellbeing is vital. We are pushed down, derided, objectified and made to feel irrelevant most of the time through society, habit and media. It is time to change that. I am not the ‘perfect woman’ that Cosmo thinks I should be. I am me. I am the sum of my choices. I am good at what I do. I love intensely and I dress oddly. I like loud music but soft blankets. I am no where near beach-ready and I don’t care! I stand behind every choice I have ever made and that has brought me to where I am now. So many women have fought to give me that freedom; I’m going to use it!

Make a choice and own it. Own the choices you have rejected.  Own who you are for better or worse. But please please please don’t feel guilty about any of it!