I saw a comment underneath someone else’s blog the other day. It was from a man saying that his grandmother raised umpteenth kids and never complained about it.

At first I couldn’t pinpoint why his comment irked me so much, and then I figured out why.

1. Hopefully his grandmother did complain.

To her friends. That lived in her neighborhood. That, I assume, based on his commentary, were all back-in-the-day, life-was-better-then, stay-at-home moms with an actual community and not one online. And, hear, hear! Good for her.

These days, many of us are having a glass of wine and texting or calling our best friends and family because they live nowhere near us—but that’s a difference in modern society versus “back when,” and this really has nothing to do with a mother’s frustration level and tolerance.

2. Kids shouldn’t know about all difficulty.

Your grandma didn’t complain? Let me rephrase that—your grandma didn’t complain? That’s right, she didn’t. To you. Her grandkid. And my children aren’t my go-to for complaining either. That’s, apparently, why we have Facebook, Twitter, and a semi-social life outside of being mothers.

3. We’re allowed a voice.

Most importantly, your grandma had one main difference from modern mothers—we’re allowed to complain.

We’re allowed to think that life is imperfect, or to have a bad day, and we’re allowed to voice it. We don’t have to Donna-Reed suck it up and vacuum more while muttering underneath our breath.

I’m being factitious in part, because I know that strong, loud women have always exited. (Thank God.) But we’re moving towards the type of equality that means that women have important voices, and away from from feeling like we had a single, silent role.

I have many friends and family members that have chosen to not have kids, or get married, or do any of this family stuff at all. That should be seen as a great choice, too. But for mothers like me, having access to reading stories from other moms out there dealing with poop, and stress, and guilt, and this insane amount of love—it’s more than helpful; it’s the life-line that I don’t have states-away from my best friends or extended family.

I’m a full-on feminist. I don’t mince words, or think I need to explain my word choice. I support LGBT rights, marriage equality, working mothers, stay-at-home moms, stay-at-home dads, and anyone in between or outside of these too-succinct ways to sum up being a human being.

I’m the picture of an average, contemporary mom—I’ve got dyed-blue hair (because I fucking felt like it), a college degree, jeans from Express, shoes from Amazon, an old shirt from too many lifetimes ago, an always-churning brain, an always covered-with-crumbs floor, two kids, a rented house, homemade tomato sauce that covered pasta from Sam’s Club.

I’m a middle-of-the-road, proud, usually happy, sometimes resentful mom. And I read mommy blogs. And I contribute to them. Because I believe my life and myself are important enough to be heard.

The post 3 Reasons Why Your Grandma Didn’t Complain About Having Kids and I Do. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

I’m not superwoman.

I don’t even want to be superwoman, but I don’t have a village.

I have my husband, and he’s amazing. He’s more than just a good father—he’s a good parent. I don’t even differentiate between how he cares for our kids, as dad, and how I do, as mom, when he’s at home. I have my parents, too, and they visit as often as they can, which usually works out to about once a week. I see my sister regularly. My long-distance best friend and I at least text every day. But I don’t have a village. Today I was reminded of that, when I could have used one.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s inspiring and powerful to remember that we are in charge of making our own friends, and that we can’t always do it all alone. Yet making friends is like dating, and I already have to work like hell to have a relationship with my husband, in our “spare” time.

I thought I had a village once. I had amazing friends, and their kids, and we played, and we took care of each other. They helped me stay afloat when I moved away from my family, and they gave my child an extended family nearby when she really didn’t have one. But not all friendships last, despite our efforts and attempts to make them. It’s also incredibly hard to make good friends, around children’s schedules of different ages and needs, and caring for small children in general.

These last two weeks have been especially rough for my little family. Today, gratefully, a friend stopped by with her daughter, and I don’t know who loved their company more, me or my kids—but it’s just me with these girls largely all day long, and visits like this afternoon’s are a rarity for us for a plethora of reasons.

I don’t want to be superwoman—mainly because I’m not one, and I know it. (Today I yelled at my kids, and I’d like to say that it was just one time, but it wasn’t.)

I’m not superwoman, but, like a lot of women I talk to—including my friend that came over today, and another friend who stopped by last week—we’re often doing it alone.

We are stay-at-home moms, or we’re working-outside-the-home moms, and we’re parenting alongside our husbands, with maybe a little help from our parents, but there are a lot of us, where it’s the mamas and these babies most of the time. It’s us.

We’re not superwomen, and we all know it, and we try like hell to make up for it, too.

We make playdates. We try to meet new friends. We try to keep the ones we have. We ask our husbands if they can come home early, or at least not late, when we have days like mine today, where I’m trying simply to neither implode or explode.

We hold our kids, and we read books. We draw, and we make lunch. We meet school buses. We pick kids up, and we shuffle them to their activities.

We drink coffee, even though there are always those mornings when there is never enough of it.

We make jokes about how hard it is, and we tell the people who truly love us when we feel like we can’t make it until dinnertime.

We wipe butts. We wipe noses. We cuddle little hearts. We discipline and send kids to timeout.

We go to school meetings. We have doctor’s visits. We try to make at least one thing feel special for our kids each day, even if it’s only running through the cupcake drive-thru (and that was really so that we could get out of the house for a few minutes).

It’s why we read blogs, and share posts on social media about motherhood—because we sometimes feel so alone in this experience, and we want to both offer and receive reminders that we aren’t.

One day, this will all be over. Registering my daughter for kindergarten this week was one of the most devastating and exciting things that I’ve ever done—ecstatic for her, and grieving for me. I like her—I like my daughter, and I enjoy her company. I will miss her so much next year, when she’s gone for much of the day.

Mothers have this secret, tucked inside of our mommy-hearts. It’s knowing that these days are long, and that the years feel unfairly short. It’s not having much of a choice. It’s why we pretend to be superwoman.

The post Why I Pretend to Be Superwoman first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

Right now, for a few minutes, I’m on the computer when I “should” be playing with my kids.

Apparently, according to all of this sage parenting “wisdom” out there, it’s not okay to ever be on my smartphone when I’m parenting. Which makes sense. My kids need me. But this makes me feel totally alone.

Am I honestly the only mother out there without regular babysitters, or friends, or a village?

If I’m never supposed to be on my phone around my kids, then should I just throw my phone away? Because that leaves about an hour or two in between their bedtime and mine, and I’m sure as hell not going to be on Facebook when I could be finally cozying up to my husband after our long day apart.

There’s a point when all of this parenting advice needs to stop.

Read one article and we’re told that we should always be good listeners, always hold our tempers, always show love with our spouse in front of our children, and never say certain phrases to our kids (like “you’re driving me crazy”). I’m left wondering, though, with all of these “should’s” and “should not’s,” how are we supposed to be the fallible humans that we inevitably are?

If motherhood is a reminder of my imperfection, then I’m a perfect mother. My inappropriate usage of my cell phone, or my impatience, or the way I occasionally fight with my husband in front of my children are constant seeds of the ugly fruit I grow daily.

I am not ugly—I am just not always beautiful; no one is always beautiful.

Sometimes, my mouth kisses my children, smiles for selfies with my girls, and sometimes it lets the f-word fly at an inopportune time.

I try to be perfect. I always have. It’s why I was perfectly anorexic and an “A” student—until I broke.

When we hold ourselves up to standards that are not obtainable, we by default create the imperfections that we are trying so hard to run from.

I’ll tell myself, for instance, that today will be the day that I don’t have a glass of wine. Every. Single. Night. I tell myself I won’t have a glass of wine, and many nights I have one—especially if I stressed myself out over the self-judgment of not having one—to the reoccurring questioning of my husband. (“Why are you doing this to yourself? Who cares if you have a glass of wine?”)

Perfection should not be our goal in life. Rather, learning and growing and evolving should be the goal. (This isn’t to say that I should have a wine glass superglued to my hand, letting curse words fly as I fight with my husband in front of my kids.)

Regardless, I write parenting-inspired articles for a living. It’s what I do, and it wasn’t intentional. I write about motherhood because that’s my life right now. I write to remind other moms that we’re not alone, and that someone else out there is going through this same thing, even if sometimes we feel so isolated and lonely it’s painful.

Sharing thoughts on how to work through a situation, or how to become better people (let alone mothers) is helpful to the world, but creating a constant newsfeed of fake idyllic “should’s” is not.

I don’t have a village, and I’m reminded of this continually.

I read and write mommy blogs, and so do many other moms I know, because we’re trying to create this “village” that we never had and probably never will.

Just yesterday I told my husband that I “should” be doing more with my kids. I should be letting them color for hours a day, instead of the random 30 minutes we break out when I think of it. I tell my husband that, typically, I’m trying to get through a day.

Of course I’m conscious that this is the only shot at childhood that my kids have, and I’m also more than aware of how special it is. That said, I’m a human being.

Sometimes I have a headache, but I can’t take anything because I’m breastfeeding (and lying down to sleep it off isn’t an option either). Sometimes our kids didn’t sleep well because they’re sick and have runny noses, and now I’m tired and I really have to watch those f-bomb drops. In short, I love being home with my daughters, and I’m fortunate to be a stay-at-home mother, but it’s also a lonely “job.”

My own mom is more than two hours away—my whole extended family is over two hours away—and it’s hard to make friends around kids’ nap times, and activities, and school, and life—and did I tell you I’m tired? I mean, scheduling and keeping regular playdates is almost a job in and of itself.

I don’t have a village made up of a cute little pack of mom-friends who do everything together. (If you do, I hope you appreciate them.) I don’t have family here. I don’t have a village. I have me. My kids have me.

I have to be enough, but I’m not. One human being and my husband home in the evenings and on weekends will never constitute a village—and I have an out-of-the-ordinary, fantastic husband-daddy too.

This means if I want to be a writer, then sometimes my kids are watching a show for a half an hour in the background so I can add another page onto the book I’m writing that will probably take months to finish. It means I text a friend while my daughter is tugging on my sleeve simultaneously. It means, too, that I’m one of those horrendous moms who makes that rare phone call and then says one sentence to the person I called and two to my kids.

And, you know what? I might not have a village, but I’m a damn good mom, and so are you.

The post When We Are Missing Our “Village.” first appeared on Jennifer S. White.