Being a mother isn't a job. It's who someone is. It's who I am.
You can quit a job. I can't quit being a mother. I'm a mother forever. Mothers are never off the clock, mothers are never on vacation. Being a mother redefines us, reinvents us, destroys and rebuilds us. Being a mother brings us face-to-face with ourselves as children, with our mothers as human beings, with our darkest fears of who we really are. Being a mother requires us to get it together or risk messing up another person forever. Being a mother yanks our hearts out of our bodies and attaches them to our tiny humans and sends them out into the world, forever hostages.
If all of that happened at work, I'd have quit fifty times already. Because there isn't enough money in the world. . . Do not diminish it by calling it a job.
And please, don't ever try to tell me it's the most important job I'll ever have as a way of trying to convince me to stay at home with my children all day. . . The most important job to a woman who has rent, has a car note, has utility bills and needs groceries is one that pays her money to keep her family alive.
Let's stop trying to make ourselves indulge in the crappy mythological lady-cult that makes being a mother seem like work. Staying at home with your children is an incredible choice to make. And it's awesome and admirable if you make it [but] being a mother still happens if you don't stay home with your kids. . .
Working or staying home, one is still a mother. One is not better than the other. Both choices are worthy of the same amount of respect. Motherhood remains equally, painfully death defying and difficult either way." ― Shonda Rhimes, Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person, 107-8.
The truths mentioned above are things I didn't know or realize before having children. My respect for parents - and the challenges and judgment they face - has increased significantly since having a child.
