Mama, Can You Read to Me?

One of the hardest things about parenting is trying to be present for your kids and for yourself, too.

Like…how? How? Seriously, how?

If I can set everything aside- my goals, to-do list, personal needs and wants, other people’s need and want of me, my junkie-pull to my phone…and just focus on my kids, I enjoy them. Only then am I the patient, fun, attentive, loving, creative, weird, calm and nurturing mom I want them to have…but that’s not the kind of woman I can be all the time. It’s unsustainable. I DO have goals, needs, other responsibilities, relationships, and desires.

Eventually, inevitably, I have people talking to me irl and more texting and I want to get back to that thing I was reading on Facebook, and I haven’t started dinner yet, and ohmygod how many times did I ask them to clean up this art shit and and…that’s when I hate it and scream.

I struggle to make it clear when I’m WITH them and when I’m NOT available to them, so I’m always in this kind of murky middle zone, where I’m half paying attention to them/half my own stuff, and I’m sloppy and snippy toward both.

The lines between me and them have especially become blurry since schooling them through COVID and not having a regular paying job away from home. Since I still feel compelled to put “writer” in quotes, my main job is parenting, so I feel like I should always be up for it…but any job you have to do 24/7 with no respect for your personal life is unsustainable and worthy of resentment. Parenting…