Thread by @iproposethis

I've been thinking a lot about the prescriptive ways in which we talk to moms about motherhood.

We all know that it's OK to have a messy house - but we keep repeating this reminder to one another (I just did it yesterday!) as if it's a big revelation.

We need the reminders...

because society still ties the keeping of a home to a woman's value. Society still looks at my house - at the piled-up folded clothes and stacks of mail and smattering of toys everywhere - and wonders why I'm so lazy.

Because society is part of me and I am society, I wonder why I'm so lazy. I wonder why I don't just write the bills and recycle the envelopes. I judge me, even though I know that this values system is out of wack.

I never judge my husband for the house's mess.

And I know I'm not lazy. I have a job, three wildly busy kids, and I'm rebuilding a fire-damaged home.

I don't drink, I don't party, I barely even have hobbies because I am so busy. I am the literal opposite of lazy.

And so I applaud myself, in some ways, for my mess.

I applaud other moms who let messes build and aren't ashamed of them.

But inherent in that praise is also judgment of moms who are neat and orderly.

As if they are bending to society's will or have OCD (don't get me started on that one!) or buy into an anti-feminist myth.

And that's garbage, too.

Lots of people enjoy cleaning and organizing. They love things being neat and tidy.

It's not a mental illness (and even if it were, why would we judge that so harshly?). It's just one of the many (gorgeous) differences between women - between moms.

My friend Danielle (who I know is reading this) is very neat and tidy. She stays home with her kids as her primary job. She dresses cute every day and has cute hair.

I'm a mess, I wear men's clothes that don't fit right, my hair is dirty.

We are both good moms, worthy humans.

It feels RIDICULOUS to even have to say this. And that's the thing that's on my mind right now.

Moms are such assholes to one another! Like, it's scary. We judge EVERYTHING that isn't our business. And the reason for that is because we want everyone to be exactly like us.

We extrapolate our own feelings onto other people and assume their motivations are just like ours. I did it for years.

I'm certain this is rooted in the patriarchy, but it's something that we - as women - need to change. We are damaging ourselves and one another.

Here's the reality:

Every mom you know is beating herself up about something.

The mom I look at with wonderment, the one who excels at all the things I suck at: packing lunches, keeping house, helping her kids get As, looks at me and wonders how I do all that I do.

Honestly!

So here I am feeling like a piece of shit because I barely see my friends, don't work out, eat all my kids' Z-bars, send them to school w/quarters for hot lunch, my house is trashed & that "perfect" mom looks at me and feels like shit because she doesn't have a career like I do.

It's pathological.

I think if we stopped seeing mother/womanhood as a "lifestyle" and started seeing it simply as our LIVES, we might feel better.

Lifestyle is a brand. Life is breathing and being and loving and failing without needing to assign value to everything we do.

But that means we will no longer be a commodity.

We will no longer buy into the capitalist system that tells us there's just this one way to be, and that this one book or product will help us achieve that.

So I don't know if it's possible.

We'd have to value other women more than we do now.

We'd have to de-value what men think of us - or of other women.

That'd be tough because it would require unlearning a lifetime of toxic lessons. But I think it's possible.