When Being a Mom is Too Much
In today’s post, I will share five things you can implement immediately when being a mom is too much. Not long ago, I found myself completely overwhelmed with not just mommy-hood but also being a wife. It’s a difficult story to share, but I hope it will speak to you and give you hope.
These five things that I’ll go over at the end helped pull my burnt-out mom-head above the water and empowered me to keep going, even when I couldn’t see a way out.
The Breakdown
The hotel was cold with stale air and little activity in the halls. It was Parents Weekend at the university my son attended, and I was determined to show up for my 18-year-old. It was his first year away at college, and he was homesick.
The week prior, he called me in tears; Sobbing, he felt like he had made a big mistake by signing to run cross country with the university and didn’t feel like he was ready. If you’re a mom, you know the gut-wrenching feeling of hearing your child on the other end of the line, weeping… hundreds of miles away… it’s like ripping your heart out of your chest and stomping on it. But this is also a familiar feeling as a parent.
I guess this is as good a time as any to introduce myself. I’m Jen Johnson! I’m a mama of 5 teenagers, and I’ve been married to my best friend for 26 years. All of our kids are 18 months to 15 months apart, so you can imagine the craziness of our household when they were babies, toddlers, tweens, and now teens. Oh! And four of them are boys…
A moment of silence for all the boy moms reading this… 😉
I’ve always wanted a big, crazy family! I’ve always wanted to get married, too. I dreamt about my future husband, our kids, and where we would live. I LOVE romance and butterflies and all the gooey stuff! But, I digress… back to the story…
When Motherhood Feels Hopeless
Having your heart ripped out of your chest is a pretty consistent and familiar feeling as a parent. When you have to leave your baby for the first time at daycare; When you drop your child off at Kindergarten; When your high school freshman doesn’t make the basketball team; When your son gets rejected by the first girl he liked; Or the more tough times like watching your child fight for their life in a Life Flight jet on the way to a trauma hospital. (More on that in another post.) But as moms, we love so fiercely that it’s no surprise our hearts are vulnerable to getting broken often.
When I saw that Parents Weekend was coming up, I KNEW I had to be there for my son. I had to hold him, see his eyes and try to assess (and pray for discernment) if this was normal homesickness or a problematic situation that needed attention and action.
But I was also sick, not just a little cold sick, but SICK. Covid had wreaked havoc on my body and mind. I was also fighting a secondary infection (which I didn’t know about at the time.) I was on a nebulizer, steroids, vitamins, minerals, tinctures, etc. My cortisol levels were shot, and I hadn’t slept much for a week. My face was stinging from the constant flow of salty tears on the drive over.
This isn’t me. As we get to know each other over the next few months, you’ll see I’m a super positive, upbeat, determined person, but not then. I was broken, exhausted, and knew something was off. It was a frightening feeling. And when I say frightening, I mean frightening. I was done. I wanted life as I knew it to stop. “Give me the first ticket out of here.” In fact, there was a moment earlier in the week when I entertained the idea of hanging from a leather belt in my closet. I also considered driving into the oncoming lane of a semi-truck. Ugh… I hate even typing those words. Why is it when we put words to our darkest thoughts that shame comes racing in behind? It feels as though I’m speaking about someone else. But this happens to ALL of us. EVERYONE has considered throwing the towel in on this crazy thing called LIFE. It’s REAL. And I wish more people talked about it.
A Care.com survey from 2014 found that “one in four working moms cry alone at least once a week” due to the stressors of balancing work, child care, and household duties. And a study published in Frontiers in Psychology documented that nearly 13% of mothers are experiencing “high burnout.”
Maybe that’s you? Being a mom has brought challenging moments you never expected. Perhaps you’ve experienced the feeling of drowning in your thoughts. They take off like a freight train to nowhere. You feel guilty for having them, but you don’t know how to stop them. You feel like you’re the only one who struggles with motherhood. Well, I’m here to tell you, “Being a mom is overwhelming at times, and being a mom is sometimes too much.”
Ok…wait! You came here to be encouraged…HAHA! Hang in there with me. We will get to the five things you can implement immediately when being a mom is too much… I promise! But as I said, this was intense and eye-opening for me. I wondered how many mothers were also at the end of their rope. And how many of them were fighting it quietly without their loved ones knowing? It’s usually the strong ones. We can push through so much… until we can’t.
You’re Not Alone
A study conducted by TODAY Parents in May 2021 found that 83 percent of moms felt burnout from parenting during the pandemic.
More than two-thirds of moms (69%) reported feeling overwhelmed, according to their online survey of more than 1,200 moms, and 64% shared that the past year has been extremely hard.
TODAY’s survey showed that 83% of moms say they do 60 percent or more of the housework or home responsibilities.
Most moms, 60%, say they rarely take time for their well-being, something Dr. Whitney Casares cautions against to avoid burnout.
I get it. It’s not easy to take time for our well-being. It takes money, planning, and geez… thinking. Thinking feels like too much when crap is hitting the fan.
Onto the encouraging part…
I GET IT. BEING A MOM IS HARD. THESE ARE 5 ESSENTIAL TOOLS I’VE LEARNED TO IMPLEMENT.
By the grace of God, I pulled it together, and my son and I had a beautiful weekend. He thought I just had a cold, and I was able to help him REFRAME and continue forward. But how can WE reframe when feeling overwhelmed? How can we zoom out and focus on the bigger picture rather than the intensity of what is happening? How can WE avoid burnout? There are five things I practice, and you can implement immediately to reframe your perspective and not only survive the toughest of days but come out stronger!
- Journaling – This doesn’t have to be complicated. I love writing three pages a day, first thing in the morning, in a beautiful leather journal like this one from amazon. I’ll cover the benefits of journaling in a later post…it truly is my FAVORITE WAY TO REFRAME!
- Exercise – I’m not saying we need to go to the gym for an hour every day (although I do love a good weight lifting sesh!), but we don’t have the time NOT to exercise. It could be a 20-minute walk outside or a yoga class. Test me on this… watch how much more time and happiness you find in your day when you exercise!
- Talk to someone – Just having someone listen to us over a cup of coffee can feel like a huge weight has been lifted. And I know, Sis, you don’t want to get ready, shower, and leave the house. But guess what? Sometimes THAT is precisely what you need to do!
- Ask for help – When the kids were younger, I was even more stubborn than I am now (shocking), and I didn’t want to admit that I couldn’t do it all. But the reality was that I couldn’t. I wish I had asked for help. You can ask your spouse, a neighbor, a friend, or a parent to help with laundry, dishes, or cleaning. DON’T be so stubborn (like I was) that your mental health suffers further.
“She never needed to be saved, but she thought it would be nice to have someone every once in a while come pick her up off the ground when she felt nothing but defeat.” – Kayil York
- Limit your alcohol intake and feed your beautiful body good nutrition – When I was overwhelmed and reached for that nightly glass of wine or drink, it usually exacerbated the problem, and I always felt more shame afterward. But when I look at parenting as a battle…a battle in which I needed to be strong against the constant “assaults,” I had a different perspective on what I put into my body. Getting enough protein, good fat, carbs, and veggies will help balance our blood sugar and help us concentrate. But hold on… before you roll your eyes and think it’s too much work, it doesn’t have to be. Simply having healthy snacks that are easy to reach can make a world of difference!
LIVING REFRAMED
As I close this up, I want first to say thank you. Thank you for reading this far. 😉 I couldn’t be more excited to share with you many more tools I’ve implemented to help me reframe when life felt like it would consume me. But before I wrap this up, I would be remiss not to share how you’re here reading Living Reframed…
During Parents Weekend at my son’s college, I journaled in the hotel room with tears streaming down my face. I felt this undeniable call to…
“BLOG”
That’s all I felt God impressing on my heart. That’s the only action I felt Him telling me to do.
“BLOG”
What? No. There are so many blogs. Nobody wants to hear what I have to say. Am I a little delusional right now, Lord? Indeed you can’t be saying that to me.
If there is anything I’ve learned from walking with Christ, it’s this:
When He calls you to do something, and it’s clear as day… YOU OBEY. Don’t ask questions. Don’t try to foretell what will happen. Don’t dig your heels in asking for what each step will look like.
Just obey.
So here I am with stacks and stacks of journals I’ve been writing in for 30 years. I’m just a woman who has been through life’s ups and downs and has found myself in so many situations when I wished someone would have shared their wisdom with me or just been there for me while I wrestled with the Holy Spirit. So I’m here… to be that girl for you.
We’ll talk about childhood abuse, shame, marriage, intimacy, sex, sex, and more sex, raising kids, and HABITS. Oh! Habits are so vital when REFRAMING your life!
It’s a miracle that my husband and I are still married.
It’s a miracle that we still desire each other.
It’s a miracle we still have our house and food on our table.
It’s a miracle all of our kids are still alive. (I kid…kind of.)
It’s a miracle we LOVE being around these five young adults who were once our babies.
We have lived so many miracles, but many were simply God’s gift of LIVING REFRAMED.
This will be RAW, REAL, and RELATABLE because that is the only way we can REFRAME.
Living Reframed takes your current circumstances and allows you to gain a fresh perspective through journaling, others’ experiences, habits, and God’s word. As we reframe our situation, we give ourselves the gift of moving forward with HOPE!
I’m so glad you’re here, and I can’t wait to start this journey with you! Now let’s begin LIVING REFRAMED! What is one thing you will implement NOW from our list above? I would love to hear from you!
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I am a coach, writer, and speaker.