What If You Don’t Need To Be A Perfect Mother

We explore the many faces of mom guilt after a busy stretch and trade perfection for presence, repair, and rest. Simple one-on-one rituals and low-pressure learning games turn limited time into real connection.

• balancing work and motherhood during busy weeks
• one-on-one time as an antidote to guilt
• turning games into low-pressure learning
• choosing presence over recording memories
• naming guilt types and why they persist
• asking for help and protecting rest
• honest apologies and emotional repair with kids
• accepting tradeoffs without chasing perfection

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Purpose
• 0:31 Post-Busy Season Mom Guilt
• 2:06 Reconnecting With One-On-One Time
• 3:18 Turning Games Into Brain Builders
• 4:33 Redefining Scrabble For Kids
• 6:13 Naming The Many Shapes Of Guilt
• 7:31 Presence Over Perfection

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello everybody, this is Steele Roses Podcast. This podcast was created for women by women to elevate women's voices. I hope everyone's having a wonderful week. A little on my mind today, and I I think I've been explaining here and there because the the episodes were a little bit lighter in October, um, that I was very busy and I had to scale back a little bit, which I talk quite a bit about giving myself grace, which is why, you know, I do that kind of thing, because I'm not of the mindset anymore that I'm gonna force myself or stress myself out, I'm gonna just roll with the punches. But now that I've finished another busy couple of weeks, I don't anticipate another set this year, but now that I'm coming down from the busyness, I get that mom guilt area. Now, this is something that happens every time I have a busy couple of weeks. In those few weeks, my kids grow up and change, and this is just is what it is. Thankfully, I am able to balance somewhat and it's not intense as much for long, long periods of time. My mental health is much better now when it's busy, just because I'm working with really wonderful people, but that guilt is still there over not being able to be as fully attentive as I'd like to be with my kids. And so now I'm seeing the repercussions of it. This is one of those areas when you have a professional career as a mother that the guilt is pretty much always there. Now I know why I chose to have a profession. I know why I went down this path. I am intensely aware of the sacrifices. I know there's positives to it too, and I know that I am showing a good example to the kids as well with my work ethic, and I know and I've been told by other working moms one day they are going to recognize what I've done and everything that I do. And they're gonna acknowledge it. It's gonna click. But in the moment, it doesn't feel good. So last night was uh one of the first nights that I wasn't busy, and I well, there was two nights this week so far. So what is today? Thursday, Tuesday Tuesday and Wednesday evening. I was able to get off early, you know, six-ish, roughly, and both nights I was able to spend time with my kids one-on-one. You know, one night I've read with my daughter, last night I played games with my son and my other daughter. And it feels good to be able to do that because my whole goal this fall, without them being enrolled in any activities, was for me to be able to just spend time with them and just do things with them that I think are gonna be helpful to their brains, and you know, obviously just spending one-on-one time with them. Something that I've been incorporating into my one-on-one time with them is twofold. Beyond the fact that I want to spend time with them, I also want to make sure their brains are getting exercise, right? My kids unfortunately did not pick up the love of reading like I have. So what I've started to do with them at night, and I think this is actually kind of a fun like workaround. We have two games. We have a counting game and then we have Scrabble, which we called a spelling game. Last night I pulled both out and I was like, oh, you know, who wants to play counting and who wants to play spelling? And for I want to say it was about an hour and a half, we all sat on the floor and just did these games. And the spelling game in particular, I was really happy about that one because I had introduced Scrabble to them before, but they didn't quite pick it up yet. This time I didn't try to do any rules with them. I just said, Oh, the game is the goal is look at your tiles and be able to spell something. And any word, put it anywhere on the board, you know. Once I did that, it was like the lights kind of went on, and everybody was like really into it and putting words on the board. Some of the words are very silly, nevertheless, they came up with it themselves and they spelled it out correctly. I'm not gonna complain. So that was like a fun thing that I was able to do with them, and I think I'm gonna continue doing with them because I left the game upstairs. On the note of mom guilt, I did find a um a thought starter to share with you. These are all the types of mom guilt that the universe never intended for us to really carry. The guilt, I'm gonna read these off to you and then I'll I'll kind of just talk them through as well. So there's the guilt of not enjoying every single moment. I quite often now, and you know how I feel now about being directly in the moment, I am able to sort of pull myself through and like obviously for the most part, you enjoy your kids, you enjoy your family, you're gonna be in the moment with them. I'm very particular about that. I need to be in that moment. I want to pay attention. Um I want to take pictures and like capture as well, but I also want to be fully present and enjoying with them. We did a Halloween activity last weekend. Um, their school puts on a haunted house production, and it's very, very cool. They do a really wonderful job. It's all volunteers, really wonderful job that they do. Um, so we go every year, and I had thought about that. Like, why don't you record it, record you guys walking through? It's a fun memory. It is a fun memory. I didn't want to record us walking through because I wanted to be in the moment with the kids and enjoying it. Um so that I didn't record it. I was just in the moment. Now, there's gonna be other moments though, and other times when you're frustrated or you know, you are stressed out about something else, or you're you know, it is life, you know, and just because we're mothers and just because we're wives doesn't mean that we're not people. And that as people we're gonna have ups and downs. So feeling guilty for not enjoying and being over the moon for every moment, we don't need to feel like that. We're people, you know, we have our ups and downs just like everybody else. The guilt of needing rest and solitude, this is a really big one for me because for a very long time, a very long time, I felt like I needed to sacrifice every single thing, every single moment. All of me was thrown into my kids. All of them. Like every single part of me. I didn't think of myself at all. I felt too guilty to say like I need help. I think it was guilt. I felt guilty and I felt like a failure saying I need help. I felt like a failure saying I need to rest, I can't do certain things, I can't go to the park, I can't go to the park with you and the kids today because I f I need to lay down, why don't you take them? I never did that ever. Now I do it because I'm much more aware. But I used to feel tremendous amount of guilt for that, and there really isn't any reason for that. Big one for me here the guilt of working outside the home. I don't work outside the home, I work from home. But because I work from home, that work bleeds into the evening, early mornings, whatever I can do to make it happen is essentially what I'm gonna do. And I do have to feel guilt about that. But I will carry that load because this is the path that I chose, and I do stand behind my choice, regardless of the ups and downs of it. I know it affects all of us, but I do my best to balance, and I think you guys all do too. Oh boy, this is a big one. The guilt of losing your patience. How often do I feel horrible after having to snap? And not having to snap, but after snapping on my kids because they're just fooling around. I will say this. I actually do apologize to my kids and acknowledge that I lost my temper and that I'm working on it. And then I'll say, like, oh, you guys like pushed me a little bit, but it's you know, mommy was also stressed out and you didn't know. And then we all talk about it. So they're very well aware of that, which has been beneficial. It has been benefici. It has been beneficial because because I'm so open and honest with them about that stuff, that they uh they they pick it up and they um they don't judge basically. Like, so when it does happen, they'll say to me, like, oh, you're having a bad day, are you stressed about this? Like they're very aware about it, which I think is a positive. I do. I really actually think that's very much a positive. But again, I feel horrible. Just just yesterday morning, I uh I didn't lose my temper, but I had to raise my voice at the bus stop and it put my son in a bad mood, and I don't like that. I don't like doing that to him, and then I was it upset all morning because of that. So it's just one of those things that's all wrapped up. There is a few more on here, but I think I'm gonna save them because these are pretty decent ones, and I could probably touch on these. We can have a part two of this. Key takeaway is there's a lot of things that we feel guilty about that we really don't need to. And you know, I think we do put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be this perfect mother, perfect wife, perfect person. And we don't have to be. We just need to be ourselves, and we just need to do the best thing that we can do for ourselves and for our families. And on that note, I am going to hope tell you all that I wish you all a wonderful rest of your week. I thank you all for being with me this morning. I am very appreciative of all of you, and I hope to catch you on the next one. Take care.