I have been a stay at home mom now for a year. I struggle with the term because of all the baggage that it carries (for me). I picture one of these two scenarios…

Either you’re totally disheveled, overweight, un-showered, unhappy, and late to everything, or you look fabulous every day with a perfect body, impeccable clothing, hair and makeup, your kids are clean and well-behaved, basically life is effortlessly beautiful.

90% of the time I feel like the former, while it seems that the Insta-famous moms are 90% the latter. Of course we know it’s never that black and white and all moms have moments when feel like we can barely keep it together and others where we feel like we’re totally slaying motherhood.

It feels really vulnerable to admit that for most of the past year, my self-concept around “successful mothering” has had a large part to do with comparing myself to other moms.  I recently started following a few mom bloggers on Instagram because I wanted to connect with the social media mom community, but I quickly found this more unhelpful than supportive. These women are all thin, blond, beautiful and have homes and children that always look perfect, shiny and new. Bleh.

I think (correct me if I’m wrong) that many of us struggle with this comparison game, especially now that social media makes it extra easy. Sometimes I feel like I live in a twilight zone where everything is beautiful and happy for others, while my life is messy, and filled with just a fraction of beauty and joy that my “friends” are experiencing.  (Here’s some of that joy…)

I often find myself saying things like, “well of course they had to take 100 photos to get that perfect shot,” or “shame on you beautiful woman taking a selfie” but this doesn’t really help either because it doesn’t deal with the innate inferiority I am feeling in the moment as I compare all the ways in which I’ve failed in a given week to the effortless perfection of my peers. Psychology Today recently published an article that was all about social media and comparison. They argue that that people who spend more time comparing themselves to others are actually less happy than those who stay in the present moment with their lives.

I’m digressing a little. What I am really trying to say, is that the hardest part for me about being a stay at home mom is that I don’t know where to look for feedback. For ambitious or competitive people (as I can be), being a stay at home parent can be challenging to fulfill this aspect of myself. I spend all my time nurturing a little beast. My reach is small, there is no upward movement, external feedback, and minimal appreciation (except periodically from my wife). I feel like I’m always covered in kid grime, obsessing over naps, washing the dishes, meanwhile trying desperately to fit in time for myself.

But I also love that I am able to have so much influence over my child’s development, free from the conflict between work and family. I love dreaming-up the daily adventures that The Beast and I go on. I like planning and cooking meals for my family, and generally keeping things moving in our home. But I miss the intellectual validation that I got from work outside the home.  I imagine that this is in part, what led to my frequent comparison/judgement to other moms: am I as patient as she is, as well dressed, are my kid’s snacks as healthy, are they cloth-diapering, is my daughter as intellectually stimulated as her kids, do I have as many friends, am I as fit, am I as laid back (clearly not), am I as well read etc. etc.  I compare my kid too: Is she developing as fast in language and physical ability, is she as social, is she better at emotional regulation, is she resilient, is she as cute, well dressed, and on and on and on. I’m not proud of this crazy, type-A, American Helicopter mother internal dialogue.  I am hoping to alleviate my shame by assuming that others have the same conversations with themselves.

This isn’t what I want to be doing all the time, it’s exhausting and feeds into competitiveness with other moms that feels counterproductive.  I would like to develop a healthier way to feel confident about the work that I do. I recently read a blog post  by a woman who offered, what I found to be, profound insight about the role of mothering in our society. She argues that society’s patriarchal valuing of money and status is incompatible with seeing any aspect of mothering as an indicator of success. This perspective suggests that my obsession with judgement/comparison is my response to a deeply ingrained “masculine” concept of success. I found this perspective liberating.  Rather than just trying to ignore my impulse to compare, it has offered me a different way to think about measuring my success.  My type A-ness isn’t going away, but I can develop new measures.

I haven’t crystalized what this looks like but I am endeavoring to focus on patience and surrender this year.  Can I be patient with myself, my child and the process of mothering? Can I give my best effort and surrender the outcome? Can I see mothering as a profound process of growth rather than a series of achievements?