Meredith Ethington - Mom Life: Perfection Pending

Mom Life: Perfection Pending

By Meredith Ethington

A book by Absolute Love Publishing

Absolute Love Publishing

Mom Life: Perfection Pending

A book by Absolute Love Publishing

Published by Absolute Love Publishing

USA

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording, nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private useother than specific rights afforded the reader through purchase or fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviewswithout prior written permission of the publisher.

2018 Meredith Ethington

Photo George Marks

Cover design by Meridith M. Ethington

ISBN-13: 978-0-9995773-1-8

United States of America

By Meredith Ethington

Mom Life: Perfection Pending

Dedication

To my husband, Jon-David, for supporting me in my dreams and encouraging me over and over and over to keep writing. And to my three incredible kids, Avery, Kyle, and Chandler, for giving me all the inspiration and helping me grow into the person I was meant to be.

Praise for Mom Life

E thington has a knack for weaving just the right amount of humor and heartfelt honesty into every page. She provides moms a healthy dose of parenting reality, while encouraging them to be confident in taking on the hardest job on earthbeing a mother. - Jill Smokler, New York Times bestselling author and founder of Scary Mommy

Meredith is no stranger to the perils and woes of parenting. She does a fantastic job at being real and honest. I think we are all ... perfection pending. - Meredith Masony, author, speaker, comic, and founder of Thats Inappropriate

Ethingtons heartfelt, humorous take on motherhood offers overworked and touched-out mamas exactly the right dose of Dont worry, youre doing all right we didnt even know we needed. I saw myself in these pages, and if youre a mom, you probably will, too. - Kristen Mae , bestselling author of Beyond the Break and Red Water

This book has a chapter titled, I Never Knew You Could Ruin Someones Day by Simply Keeping Them from Killing Themselves. If that doesnt make you want to buy it, then we cant be friends. - Clint Edwards, author of No Idea What Im Doing: A Daddy Blog and Im Sorry - Your Husband

Mom Life: Perfection Pending

By Meredith Ethington

Absolute Love Publishing

Introduction

S ometimes I fear I wasnt meant to be a mother. I share that because I want you to know that youre not alone if you feel that way, too. You might be asking yourself right about now why youre reading a parenting book by a woman who admits she sometimes thinks she wasnt meant to be a mother. Well, Ill tell you.

When I wrote my blog post, Sometimes I Fear I Wasnt Meant To Be a Mother, it was one of the most vulnerable pieces I had ever written, and yet it poured out of me effortlessly. Surprisingly, it also was one of my most popular. Readers loved it. They messaged me with comments like, Thank you for writing this! and Im so glad to know Im not alone! and Im crying reading this because this is me.

Honestly, I had thought I was the only one who felt that way. When I wrote that piece, I didnt know what to expect. It was a huge comfort to me to realize that there were other women out there with those same types of thoughts. From that post, we all felt less alone.

Whats more, I wrote that post after having been a mother for years. Some might think that after 10 years of parenting and three kids I would have it together. That I would have realized my purpose, and that I would have recognized my own value in my childrens lives. Some might think I would have learned how to find my joy in the everyday experience without so much angst.

But the truth is that even today I struggle some days to remember that I am meant for this job and that perfection is not a prerequisite. I still have days where I feel down about how I handle the hard parts of parenting and like I am grossly underqualified for the title of Mom.

There are days when I daydream about my pre-kid life or what it will be like when they are grown up and gone. There are days when I eat myself up with guilt and shame over how I yelled or didnt react in the right way. There are days when I am convinced that all three of my kids are bound for therapy because of me.

Likewise, there are days where I stare at their freckled faces and see so much hope and happiness that I feel like I could burst. I see moments where I muster up more patience and selflessness than I ever knew I possessed. Some days, I even handle things so beautifully that I feel like I actually do know what Im doing.

And that, I feel, is how it is for all of us. Some days, we excel at motherhood. Other days, we are humbled by the experience, recognizing that perfection is forever pending because its unattainable in the life of a parent.

When I first found out I was pregnant, I was the type of expectant mom who gobbled up What to Expect When Youre Expecting with a fire in me because I wanted to know how to do everything just right for my new baby. I read all the books. All of them.

I logged in weekly to BabyCenter to check my babys progress and read about her being the size of a walnut. I wrote out a birth plan and expected everything to happen exactly that way. (I wish I had saved that plan. Wed all get a good laugh about it now.) I kept a pregnancy journal in which I wrote things like, I am so attached to this baby already! I cannot wait to meet her in four months!

I recently pulled out that little journal and thought about how different the woman I am now is from that optimistic young woman who just knew that she would love being a mom and that she would be good at it. It made me ask: What had I lost in the 10 years of becoming a mother that had made me doubt everything?

Nothing. I lost nothing, but I did gain somethinga healthy dose of reality.

The reality is that nothing can prepare us for parenting until we live it. Parenting enables us to feel highs like weve never imagined and lows for which we could never prepare. It makes us doubt, because it is an experience full of growth, and none of us knows how to grow. We just do it. And anything that makes us grow and become something more beautiful than we once were is worth the sacrifices it asks of us.

Parenting is the hardest thing Ive ever done, and I wanted to share that with others. I wanted to write a book that was real. One that spoke to the hearts of moms who are struggling, to the moms who just need a laugh to survive the day, and to the moms who just want to feel less alone.