You know what I find fascinating?

The religious conservatives, by which I mean the specific people in my life, who have always been the biggest influences on my own Internal Mommy Wars are in full, unequivocal support of Sarah Palin and have no doubts that can be both an effective mother and vice president.

Then why do you doubt that I can be both a great mom and fulfill my professional ambitions using the gifts and the calling God gave me? I wondered, as I lay sobbing during one yoga practice last week. If there is some distinction between she and I – and our worthiness for my family’s support – I don’t get it.

My whole motherhood and professional, experience would have been vastly different had these same people in my life been as unquestioningly supportive of me and my abilities to do both as they have been about Sarah Palin.

The economic and emotional toll of my own internal Mommy Wars can be added up to include: poverty and massive amounts of debt including a bankruptcy, unbelievable strain on my marriage almost leading to divorce, addiction to anxiety medication including a hospitalization that incurred yet more debt, severe post partum depression, not to mention the decision to stop having children so I could return to work without debilitating guilt and extreme economic “sacrifice” sooner.

But, at least I was a “good mom,” according to the specific narrow definition my family and cultural influences – religious conservatives, represented by Sarah Palin – have held out as the one virtue I must live up to above all.

Go figure.

They don’t even know her, they’ve never met her, they’ve never seen her with her children, they know very little about her politics even. Yet, they support her without reservation, judgement or criticism. If only I’d been worthy of the same support.

Thank God for Sarah Palin - I’m choosing to make their full support of Sarah Palin apply to ME and all other women. Her mission is no more important than mine, her abilities to both be a good mother and ambitious in her work is no more developed, her values no more sacred, and above all – she is no more entitled than the rest of the working mothers of this nation to respect, equal pay and working hours that adjust to acknowledge the existence of a family.

I’m choosing to let go of their judgement that has so effected my choices. It’s quite liberating really. Its like releasing a burden that has weighed heavily on my soul and tainted my experience of motherhood.

My motherhood experience has been about unnecessary guilt and sacrifice – false choices really. False choices that have made me teeter on a fence between working and motherhood, judgement and approval, fear and love, economic stability and poverty as sacrifice, powerfulness and powerlessness, economic independence and social acceptance - it’s not as though choosing to not work to be a good mom to acquire the currency of their social acceptance and approval came without serious consequences.

Forgive them for they know not what they do. I want to be free of their criticism and judgement, therefore I forgive it.

I don’t think they knew. They didn’t know they would feel this positively and supportive about a working mother character. They may or may not realize the kind of inner-turmoil they’ve caused in my own emotional life. Likely, it is only a reflection of their own inner conflict about themselves – not really about me at all.

I’m going to expect them to feel the same about my abilities as they feel about Sarah Palin’s and if they choose not to, well, this time I’ll perceive that choice as their failure, instead of my own. I’ll figure out a way not to internalize it.

Surely, I had this power all along – lots of other women have done it – but I wasn’t strong enough to apply it. So, I forgive me too.

Thank God for Sarah Palin, she’s liberating me from a social construct and false choices and a deep inner conflict about working and motherhood.

Image source: JohnMcCain.com

Post from: Blisstree

Thank God For Sarah Palin

The Association of University Women and some other political action groups which aim to improve working conditions and benefits for women are asking your opinion.

That’s right, you can participate in the political process by taking a simple survey about how you work, why you work, when you work, what’s stopping you from working and what you want from work.

Take the Working Woman Survey.

You should also take this survey if you work from home, work part time, freelance or quit working because of working conditions for mothers.

It take about 5 minutes.

Post from: Blisstree

Working Woman Survey

I’m in the middle of FEMININE MISTAKE, THE: ARE WE GIVING UP TOO MUCH?
Leslie Bennetts, the author brings up the idea that, as she puts is, motherhood is a Temp Job.

Being a mom is a temp job, and if you take that temp job and become completely dependent on your spouse, that makes you so vulnerable,” says Sylvia Law on page 100. The odds that your spouse will die or fall in love with a younger woman or have a midlife crisis are pretty good. Of course you can’t depend on a guy – just read the divorce statistics.

Motherhood is a vital temp job – vital to society, vital to the family, vital to women and vital to children – but a temp job nonetheless.

She says it’s ludicrous for women to give up their entire careers and professional ambition for this 20 year temp job when it’s unnecessary and puts women’s financial security at risk.

While you’re a full-time mother for a good chunk of time, she argues, you have a profession for much longer.

Women shouldn’t be giving up a validating and exciting 40-50 year career for a temp job, when they can have both.

Kids. Grow. Up.

People. Get. Divorced.

Our job is to get them to grow up so they leave home. (If your kid is still in the basement at 40, that’s failure at your mothering job. If your daughter and her three kids are still in your basement, that’s failure at your mothering job.) We’re here to raise independent adults who contribute to society.

If we are successful, we are no longer needed. We’ll still have a function as mothers, but it won’t be enough to build a purpose and an identity around. In fact, many women find that it’s not enough to build their identity around in the first place when the children are still young or once their children are in school.

Women who have shed all identities other than mother, even if they remain married and financially viable, suffer from an identity crisis when children leave and their purpose is gone.

What do YOU think?

Post from: Blisstree

Motherhood is a Temp Job : The Feminine Mistake