Perfect Madness

So I finally finished Perfect Madness, Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety by Judith Warner. It reads much like a text book and is a little depressing. Basically it goes through all the reasons being a mother is "too-muchness" but it doesn't really give any solutions, except to demand more support from our government, workplaces, one another, etc. I guess part of the reason I read it is just for comfort...that there are other mothers out there that feel the way I do. The following excerpt is my favorite passage from the book...I REALLY IDENTIFY WITH IT.

Anxiety is-and undoubtedly always has been-a natural part of motherhood. "There is an enlarged sense of vulnerability, personal and social, created by becoming a mother-and accepting the intimate mission of keeping a dependent being alive,"writes psychologist Janna Malamud Smith, who studied the nature of maternal fear in depth for her 2003 book, A Potent Spell. The writer Francine Prose has described a certain kind of visceral fear that shocked her and changed her life when she became a mother: "All at once, we realize what hostages to fortune we are, how fragile and precious life is-our own lives, and those of our children. Even the bravest of us may find ourselves transformed almost beyond recognition into skittish, nervous versions of our former selves." That is true and has been true from time immemorial. But there is something unique about the nature of maternal anxiety that we live with today. It isn't just that we are so very fearful-and that the world seems so filled with fearsome things, like the pictures of kidnapped children that, Prose wrote, she used to study every morning as she pured the milk for her children's breakfast cerals. It isn't even just that our fears-fanned by the media-tend to be so out of proportion to the real threats facing our children. No-what's really unique about maternal anxiety today is our belief that if something goes wrong with or for our children, it's a reflection on us as mothers. Because we believe we should be able to control life so perfectly that we can keep bad things from happening.

My Mom ALWAYS told me..."You can't control other people and don't worry about the things you can't control." I guess I could have just talked to her instead of reading the book to come to the same conclusion...I need to quit being a control freak; I don't have to handle everything alone.

So this morning when Matalley was screaming, Grayson was making messes left and right (spilled the juice on the table, and while I'm cleaning that manages to spill his cereal all over him and then trapses that all the way to his room, where he proceeds to change into all new clothes and leave the dirties in the middle of the floor), dogs are barking, phone is ringing, my instinct is to just go into the garage and sit in the car and I know that I can't, I just need to remember that God is in control, not me, and I'm okay. Where is Stewart Smalley when I need him?