I know it’s been a while, but I haven’t forgotten about our path to fulfillment!

One of the things that helps me to just relax and enjoy motherhood is doing just that. When I get down on the floor and let myself play with them—not worrying about how much I’d rather be writing or whether a new story or comment or email has come along—is not only (at least mildly) entertaining, it makes me feel like a good mother. Woot for a sense of accomplishment.

Now, this is hard for me, because I don’t really find my kids’ games all that stimulating. (They’re under the age of four; I’m not. It’s okay.) But placing that priority on my children and their play helps me to get my priorities in order.

On the other hand, I’ve found activities we enjoy together—reading, for example. And even when the play isn’t something I would have chosen (I grew up with three sisters! I don’t know how to play cars!), I find that the best part is often watching my kids play, imagine and interact.

I can’t do it all the time, and I know that we have to always strive to take time for ourselves, but when I do make the effort to throw myself into my work as a mother, I actually enjoy it more and worry less.

What do you think? Have you found benefits from playing with your kids? What do you like to play?

How many times do SAHMs get this message a day? How many times are we bombarded with images of moms that have it all—a fulfilling career, happiness as a mother, a happy marriage, a good income, a beautiful home, fabulous vacations, loving and obedient children, and basically every dream they ever wanted coming true?

I feel like I find an example of someone I should envy like that every day. But I also know that, although we’ve been told we really can have it all, and have it all right now, we can’t. As Tina Fey said in an interview with Parade Magazine:

I think my generation has been slightly tricked in that you’re really encouraged to try to have it all.

Even Oprah has admitted that we can’t really have it all right now. There are seasons in life—and many of us choose to be at home with our children during the season where they are at home all day.

As if providing for small, needy, dependent people weren’t emotionally demanding enough, we also receive these daily messages that we’re not doing enough (maybe this is why we end up with kids in eight sports, learning six different instruments, at three different summer camps . . . ). Raising our children isn’t enough: we should be “productive.” We should “contribute to society” (my rant on how nothing contributes more to society than raising children will wait for another day). We should be in a “real job” (ha!).

Perhaps most discouraging of all is when someone who appears to mean well tells us we should be working outside the home for ourselves, after we’ve made the sometimes-difficult-but-always-challenging decision to stay home with our children for their benefit. Because, implies this person trying to be helpful, stay-at-home moms do nothing for themselves and allow themselves to be devalued.

This kind of advice automatically assumes that all work in the home is demoralizing and all work outside the home is fulfilling. IT’S NOT.

The fact of the matter is that very, very, VERY few jobs are inherently fulfilling on a daily basis, motherhood included (though I believe and hope that ultimately, motherhood will be the most fulfilling occupation I could devote myself to). Most people I know, at least from time to time, feel like Sisyphus in their jobs—mothers, teachers, loan document specialists, production managers, nurses, web content developers, accountants, social workers, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

While yes, some people find a measure of fulfillment in the fact that their work is rewarded verbally or monetarily, I think that in the end, fulfillment does not come from external sources.

Fulfillment comes from within us. That’s kind of the underlying point of a lot of the steps to fulfillment that I’ve been working on. Fulfillment is rooted in recognizing the good moments and being content with our lives.

If I can’t be content with my (already quite stressed, thank you very much) life as a stay-at-home mom, why would working outside the home, adding more stress and increasing the pressure on me to influence, appreciate, guide, discipline and most of all show my love for my children in a fraction of the time, suddenly make me more fulfilled?

Yes, I know that some mothers do truly enjoy working outside the home and do truly feel like better mothers because of this. But just like staying at home doesn’t work for every mother, another mother’s ability/need/appreciation of working outside the home doesn’t mean it’s right for everyone, no, not even every mother who struggles with motherhood (and, honestly, who doesn’t struggle from time to time?).

The first step to fulfillment—as a mom, as a working mother, as a human—is learning to be content with our season in life.

What do you think?

A vague desire to run have completed a 5K, however, somehow lodged itself into my mind about five years ago. I put it on my list of things to do before I die. And I ain’t getting any younger.

So this is the year, I decided. I set a goal back in January, but I was waylaid by an injury early on. I’ve been back at it, though, for eight weeks now, and I’m up to running over two miles at a time.

It was early on, though, that I learned an important key to running anything longer than a sprint—don’t run. I was trying to work my way up, so I started off by running one lap (<1/6 of a mile). I was so completely winded that I wondered if maybe this wasn’t something I should do, if I was just one of those people who wasn’t meant to run.

Then I realized—I don’t have to run this hard. I’m not trying to set a record here. I just want to finish this race. So instead of flat-out running, I started trying to jog. At the slower pace, I could suddenly run (well, jog) for longer and longer distances. Instead of getting winded and discouraged, I was challenging myself and making progress.

If you haven’t already seen the parallels to motherhood, let me point them out to you—there are no prizes for cleanest house, quietest kids in church (though maybe there ought to be on that one), most extracurriculars (for moms or kids). Pushing ourselves or our families to maximum capacity all the time just wears us down.

But we don’t have to give up. We can still run that we might obtain the prize—time to enjoy together, time to enjoy one another. If we slow down and take the time to enjoy our children and our lives in the narrow slice of now, suddenly we can go just as far or farther.

How have you slowed your pace to finish the race?

My sweet, wonderful, well-meaning husband supports our family and goes to work ten hours a day, four days a week. He comes home and often the house is a wreck, the kids and I may or may not be dressed, dinner isn’t even planned—and I know that although he respects what I do for our family, he can’t fathom what I do all day long (or, apparently, why I’m usually running low in the patience department).

The world perpetuates an image of mothers, especially stay-at-home mothers, as either lazy layabouts who use daytime television to occupy their hours or drones who have given up all hope of future earning potential, “real” careers and intelligent conversation in favor of wiping noses and bottoms in a life that is a litany of thankless chores and children.

The world would have us think that we’re not “contributing to society” if we’re not working, though apparently it doesn’t really matter whether we’re “contributing” as tattoo artists or professors of medieval literature, as long as we aren’t at home caring for our own children. And if we’re not out in the workforce, we don’t have a “real job.”

I’ll be blunt like I never have before on this blog. That thinking is a load of crap.

Do the wonderful people who earn their living caring for our children while we mothers are doing more “productive” things have “real jobs”? Do the wonderful people who donate their time, talents and efforts to volunteer causes—striving to make a difference, to improve the world—have “real jobs”?

Mothering is the most important “volunteer” opportunity I could be involved in right now. I am consecrating my time, talent and efforts to raising my children—and most days, it is grueling.

Mother’s day may seem like an odd time to point this out, since we often take this day as a day to rest from our motherly labors and let our families take care of the meals, the cleaning, and the diapers (oh! the diapers!). But really, this is the perfect time to point out all that we do, because they’ll never understand and appreciate it more, as Elder M. Russell Ballard did:

After sitting on the stand [at church] for 10 years, I was now sitting with my family on the back row.

The ward’s singing mothers’ chorus was providing the music, and I found myself sitting alone with our six children. I have never been so busy in my whole life. I had the hand puppets going on both hands, and that wasn’t working too well. The Cheerios got away from me, and that was embarrassing. The coloring books didn’t seem to entertain as well as they should.

As I struggled with the children through the meeting, I looked up at Barbara, and she was watching me and smiling. I learned for myself to more fully appreciate what all of you dear mothers do so well and so faithfully!

Mothering is not just a “real” job—it’s the most real job there is. No other profession has the influence, the reach and the eternal importance of contributing to society by raising up the next generation to be good, hard-working, righteous, moral individuals.

And you know what else? I have no idea what my husband does all day at work.

I have no idea what’s about to happen.

Parenting is one of those things that we can’t truly understand until we’re in the trenches, raising children for whom we are ultimately responsible. Before we’re there, it’s easy to say “Every Monday, I’ll take my kids to a different museum, Tuesdays we’ll have three hours of music lessons and Wednesdays we’ll perform the complete works of Shakespeare from memory.”

While I didn’t exactly have such grand designs, I still had a major adjustment period when I became a mother. I went from working full time to lying flat on my back (literally) overnight (literally). Suddenly, I had to relearn the most mundane tasks: finding time to shower, cleaning one-handed, enjoying me time, sleeping.

With each new phase and milestone, it was the same story: I had to discover an entirely new routine, and find a “new normal.”

But as hard as it sometimes has been to constantly readjust, reevaluating those expectations are a vital part of motherhood. We learn that the baby isn’t going to sleep until 6:30 anymore (okay, that’s one I’m going to be fighting this week), that dragging three kids under three all over town every day isn’t a good way to inculcate them with culture, that the baby won’t eat baby food, but loves saltines.

We have to learn to let go of old expectations when we realize that they’re truly not reasonable for our present circumstances. We have to see our lives as they are and set reasonable expectations for our families—and most importantly, for ourselves.

How do you set reasonable expectations for you and your family? What expectations have you abandoned?

Really, I know that’s not true. I know that this is what I’m supposed to do, and I’ve always known it. At my high school graduation, they had us fill out a slip of paper with our top three career choices. I put down writer and, after some thought, mother.

As I recall, I couldn’t think of a third.

But even if motherhood hasn’t been the destination you’ve envisioned since high school, you are meant to be a mother. If your arms have ever hungered for a child—if you’ve ever struggled with your children all day, only to miss them the minute they’re asleep—if you’ve ever marveled that this perfect little person, this growing, intelligent, sweet, forgiving child, could be yours—

If you have ever loved your child—

You are meant to be a mother.

My mother on Rebecca’s birthday

But other than that whole biological necessity thing, mothers are important—and not just to make sure that everyone is fed, rested, at school on time, and not without clean underwear.

In a couple minutes, I found a number of scientific studies confirming just how influential mothers are:

• If you, as the mother, are the food buyer and preparer, you controls 72% of all of the food decisions of your children and spouse (Journal of the American Dietetic Association, Sept 2006).
• Mothers’ behavior (specifically, treatment of tantrums/frustration in problem solving) has been linked to their children’s problem-solving abilities (Developmental Psychology).
• Parents influence teens’ attitudes toward drugs, alcohol and substance abuse quite heavily (Child Development).
• Moms even influence whether their teens seek medical care (The Journal of Adolescent Health).
• Mothers’ disapproval of teen sex (surprisingly) discourages teen sexual and being close to a 14- or 15-year-old daughter also delays or decreases sexual activity.
• This influence against sex, drugs and alcohol lasts through college, especially when parents and children are emotionally close (Journal of Youth and Adolescence).
• In fact, mothers have been shown to influence their children’s psychological and physical health through old age—and I mean the kids’ old age, not just ours (The National Institute Of Child Health And Human Development).
• Mothers even influence fathers, especially how involved they are early on in their children’s lives.

It’s easy to look around at the mountain of laundry, the mound of dirty dishes, the teenager’s filthy room we told her to clean fifteen times, the full plate of food the toddler refused to eat, and the grade schooler’s last-minute order of three dozen cupcakes for a class party tomorrow and feel like we’re not important—as if we don’t matter. Yes, being a mother does involve a lot—a lot—of grunt work.

But every once in a while, at least, we need to remember that motherhood is more than chores.

Motherhood is eternally important.

Motherhood is important because being a mother means teaching and guiding future generations. We do make a difference—they do understand and internalize the principles we try so hard to teach them—and they will be better for our efforts.

Why do you think being a mother is important?

But more and more recently I’ve been thinking about finding a real “path” to fulfillment, a process that works for more people than just me. So as I’ve thought about this, I’ve come up with a few “real” steps:

• learn to be content
• recognize that being a mother is important
• recognize that YOU are meant to be a mother
• reevaluate your expectations
• recognize that mothering is a “real job”
• support and receive some support from other mothers
• throw yourself into your work
• pace yourself
• remember why you came here
• love
• believe
• enjoy your children, enjoy being a mother
• create
• make a difference in your home and in the world

Not every step will apply to every one, of course, and they’re not in any particular order. But I think that some/most/all of these things can help all of us progress to feeling more valued as a mother, and possibly more connected to one another.

I’ll be writing on these topics in the coming weeks. If you have any other ideas or ideas relating to the steps described here, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them to blog (at) mamablogga.com .

Coming tomorrow: the 7 Best MamaBlogga Blogging Tips Ever!