Balance for Moms
Being good to yourself when you’re a mom is an important job, but it can feel impossible to find the time to do all the things you need and want to do. Finding a balance that works for you is a key step to nurturing your health and happiness, and that means setting realistic priorities, valuing your own needs and honoring the power of choice.
Priorities for work, parenting and life balance
If everything is just as important as everything else, how will you know what really needs to be done? On a to-do list there will be things that are absolutely critical, things that are urgent, things that are important but not urgent and things that can be delegated, done later or not done at all.
Spending a few minutes at the end of each day planning out the following day and prioritizing your to-do list can help increase your productivity, but it can also help you ditch jobs that suck lots of time and aren’t really that valuable to you.
Valuing your own needs
It’s so easy as a mom to see your role as making sure other people’s needs are met. And yes, it’s important to take care of your kids and do a good job at work–but your own needs are equally important. Needs are always in flux and different for different people, so figuring out what your needs are in a particular day will take some reflection and self-awareness as well as assertively asking for and taking the time to meet those needs.
Meeting your own needs helps care for everyone in your household, ’cause if Mama’s not happy, ain’t nobody happy.
Honouring the power of choice
Balance and happiness go beyond having a weekly bubble bath while the kids watch a movie with your husband. Life choices like working full time or staying home with the baby, whether or not to move closer to extended family, and how many commitments to take on are choices we actively make. Being at peace with those choices is a key part of staying in balance. If you’re happy with the choice you’ve made, great.
If you’re not happy, you can make a different choice. We don’t get to choose everything in life, but it’s important to recognize and take ownership of the things we can and do choose.
Making choices around work and life balance can be difficult for everyone, but moms especially can feel a lot of pressure to do everything and be Supermom. Balance is most easily achieved when we do things that align with our personal beliefs and values and meet our needs, and when we are honor the power of choice in our lives.
Michelle Carchrae is a freelance writer and homeschooling mom to two girls. With a serious love for Vancouver and an equally serious need to get out of the house with two young kids, Michelle searches out the best kid and parent friendly places to go. Michelle also writes about parenting at her blog, The Parent Vortex.
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