Women's Health: Working Mom Guilt!

 Working Mom Guilt!

Have you ever experienced the working mom guilt syndrome? Do you work outside the home? Do you have children? If so, I can almost guarantee that you have experienced the working mom guilt syndrome at one time or another.

I can still remember pretty clearly my bouts of the “working mom guilt” syndrome and my daughter is now eighteen. I have worked outside the home pretty much my daughter’s entire lifetime. Luckily, at first her dad and I worked opposite shifts so my daughter was with either me or her dad, except for the few hour overlap, then my mom stepped in to pick up the difference. Eventually, we both ended up working during the day, so she had to start going to a babysitter. That is when the guilt really started to kick in. Not because I didn’t feel comfortable with the babysitter, but because she was with someone other then me, her dad or her grandparents.

Boy did I torture myself over this. There are a lot of instances I can recall. One in particular occurred when my daughter started school. I was bound and determined to make sure that my daughter didn’t “suffer” because I worked outside the home, so when the inevitable note came home requesting each parent to send a treat to school, it was going to be a “homemade” treat, just like the stay at home mom’s made. Or that was what I believed anyway. So we stayed up late making cookies or candy. And they couldn’t just be ordinary cookies or candy they had to be unique, cute and special.

Undoubtedly, the vision of the stay at home moms baking cookies was my own self imposed belief and in fact, stay at home moms are just as pressed for time as the moms who work outside the home, so sooner or later we all resort to store bought treats

Maybe making “homemade” goodies wasn’t your guilt trigger it could be not having a life of your own, because you feel guilty leaving your kids with a babysitter for an hour or two during the evening or on the weekend. After all they just spent the week with a babysitter, right. So you feel guilty if you want to get together with your girlfriends for a few hours of grown-up time. Or maybe there is an organization or sport you want to sign up for but feel guilty about leaving your kids.

I can totally relate to where you are coming from, my life was my daughter. So how do we let go of the guilt? Well, my guilt releaser came from the person I was feeling guilty over, my daughter. She was around twelve years old when she told me to “get a life”. She pointed out that I had no friends or social life outside of her and encouraged me to start getting out and cultivating a life of my own. I signed up for the women’s golf league and started to, with baby steps – two hours a week, have a life away from my daughter.

Getting permission from my daughter gave me the freedom to start designing a well rounded life for myself. Not only did this benefit me it benefited my daughter too. She had a much happier mother and she no longer felt the stress of being my whole world. That is a lot of pressure to put on a child, don’t you think?

What areas of your life are you feeling guilty about? Give yourself permission to be a whole, well-rounded, person and start taking time for you without the guilt. Show your children how you take care of you so you can continue to take care of them. Give your children the gift of a happy, healthy and guilt free mom. They deserve it, don’t you think? Get out and start exploring the world, your children will eventually thank you for it! Lift the burden from your children’s shoulder of being your whole world. They don’t deserve that type of pressure, do they?

Do you need support in giving yourself permission? If so I encourage you to hire a coach and begin designing a well rounded healthy life for you and your kids. You can begin today by contacting me for a 30 minute self empowerment coaching session.

Article written by Lisa Fredette

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