I Love Women
What an odd way to start a post right?
Let me explain...
I remember growing up through high school always saying that men (boys at the time) were better friends than women. I mean think about it.
Women. We are:
catty
selfish
backstabbing
gossippy
super judgemental
hold grudges
That's who I always thought women to be. Even as I have grown, I do not have a large number of great girl friends; however, the friends I do have are none of those things. We might be a little gossipy I guess.
I recently reposted a blog post from a gal sharing with the world the reason for why she doesn't go to sleep at a decent hour. I read this post and laughed because each word that she described was exactly me.
When I posted this on facebook, I was amazed with how many women responded by saying, "That's me!" "This is who I am." "Oh thank goodness someone else does the same thing."
That's it.
That last comment, right there is what got me.
This woman was relieved to find out that she is not the only crazy one in her life that has a particular 'issue'. At first her words surprised me, but after pondering, I realized it should be no surprise at all.
As women, moms, females in general we feel sometimes like we are walking a lonely road of struggle.
We look on facebook and see perfect family pictures, and even though we know it took 43 crying and pulling hair pictures and bribing with 6 suckers to get that one perfect shot, that's what we focus on and we think, "Wow. They really have it all together. Look at that beautiful family. She must be a great mom."
We walk into houses unannounced and see that there is no toy out of place and nothing sitting on the counters and no clean clothes lying on the bed (if we are lucky it's on the bed) and we think, "Holy Crap! How does she do it? I can barely do the minimum of picking up my house after a full day of running around after kids, or a full day outside of the home and I have dust stacked for weeks. I have to be a better house keeper."
We see awesome pictures of healthy meals and when we realize that we have fed our children chicken nuggets 3 nights in a row because we didn't have time to go to the store, or the thought of going to the store with kids actually makes us want to vomit, we instantly think, "Ugh. She works all day and comes home and makes that?! No wonder my husband is fat."
We watch couples who have been married for years swooning over one another and we feel so much guilt because at night when our husband wants to physically love his wife, we are so exhausted and the idea of physical activity makes us want to fall asleep even quicker. So we think, "Something has to be wrong with me. I love him so much, but I just don't even have the energy for that and it always turns into a fight. My poor husband. If only he would have married someone like her."
Now I don't think it's that we are fake. We are not trying to hide truth. We just forget to show others and we forget to admit that life is not a perfect snapshot. Maybe we are ashamed, but I think more than anything we try to live up to what we THINK we should be and we just forget.
We forget to post on facebook pictures of our messy house.
We forget to show that I slept in and the kids woke me up so I actually did not even have a second to pee until noon. And because of my unpredictable bladder after having kids I had to literally run to the bathroom and I peed a little.
We forget to tell other women that we cried ourselves to sleep at night because we have this internal struggle of wanting to rest but feeling so guilty about actually letting our heads hit the pillow before we pick up toys or wash dishes with ketchup all over them.
We forget to admit that the reason we are 'grilling out' is actually because hot dogs are so much easier than anything else.
We forget to tell people that we actually are struggling financially now because we took that romantic vacation.
We forget to say that our brand new SUV is way more than we can afford, but it sure looks good when we pull up to the family Christmas.
We forget to write the posts about how even though we are super happy and love our coworkers today, we actually feel dead at a job the other 362 days of the year, but the comfort and predictability of our job is too much to even think of leaving.
But this is why I love women.
I love women because we really do encourage each other. Yeah...we don't always do it as often as we should, but every once in awhile we get a glimpse of how amazing us beautiful creatures really are.
We get to see that we are not alone. We are not alone in our battles. We are not alone in our tears. We are not alone in feeling like we are the world's crappiest mom, or the worst wife, or the dirtiest house keeper. We are not alone.
It's all of us.
All of us struggle.
Sure maybe some struggle more than others, but it doesn't' matter. We just have to be honest.
So women...
Let's just love each other. Show one another that we all suck 82% of the time. Show the piles of laundry once in awhile. Show the day without make up and don't turn it into selling a product...just show your damn naked face. Show that it is 3 in the afternoon and instead of washing dishes from last night's supper, breakfast, and lunch, you are watching Scandal and drinking wine.
Show this and love another woman for showing the same thing.
Here is my first struggling picture. This counter has looked like this for...umm...I have no idea. I can't think of when it didn't look like that. I suppose when someone came over last. This causes many upset comments from my husband, but I never seem to put the junk away; even thought I HATE having a cluttered counter. Oh and that rag on the floor. My dog threw up on it. I forgot to put it in the basket.
Let me explain...
I remember growing up through high school always saying that men (boys at the time) were better friends than women. I mean think about it.
Women. We are:
catty
selfish
backstabbing
gossippy
super judgemental
hold grudges
That's who I always thought women to be. Even as I have grown, I do not have a large number of great girl friends; however, the friends I do have are none of those things. We might be a little gossipy I guess.
I recently reposted a blog post from a gal sharing with the world the reason for why she doesn't go to sleep at a decent hour. I read this post and laughed because each word that she described was exactly me.
When I posted this on facebook, I was amazed with how many women responded by saying, "That's me!" "This is who I am." "Oh thank goodness someone else does the same thing."
That's it.
That last comment, right there is what got me.
This woman was relieved to find out that she is not the only crazy one in her life that has a particular 'issue'. At first her words surprised me, but after pondering, I realized it should be no surprise at all.
As women, moms, females in general we feel sometimes like we are walking a lonely road of struggle.
We look on facebook and see perfect family pictures, and even though we know it took 43 crying and pulling hair pictures and bribing with 6 suckers to get that one perfect shot, that's what we focus on and we think, "Wow. They really have it all together. Look at that beautiful family. She must be a great mom."
We walk into houses unannounced and see that there is no toy out of place and nothing sitting on the counters and no clean clothes lying on the bed (if we are lucky it's on the bed) and we think, "Holy Crap! How does she do it? I can barely do the minimum of picking up my house after a full day of running around after kids, or a full day outside of the home and I have dust stacked for weeks. I have to be a better house keeper."
We see awesome pictures of healthy meals and when we realize that we have fed our children chicken nuggets 3 nights in a row because we didn't have time to go to the store, or the thought of going to the store with kids actually makes us want to vomit, we instantly think, "Ugh. She works all day and comes home and makes that?! No wonder my husband is fat."
We watch couples who have been married for years swooning over one another and we feel so much guilt because at night when our husband wants to physically love his wife, we are so exhausted and the idea of physical activity makes us want to fall asleep even quicker. So we think, "Something has to be wrong with me. I love him so much, but I just don't even have the energy for that and it always turns into a fight. My poor husband. If only he would have married someone like her."
Now I don't think it's that we are fake. We are not trying to hide truth. We just forget to show others and we forget to admit that life is not a perfect snapshot. Maybe we are ashamed, but I think more than anything we try to live up to what we THINK we should be and we just forget.
We forget to post on facebook pictures of our messy house.
We forget to show that I slept in and the kids woke me up so I actually did not even have a second to pee until noon. And because of my unpredictable bladder after having kids I had to literally run to the bathroom and I peed a little.
We forget to tell other women that we cried ourselves to sleep at night because we have this internal struggle of wanting to rest but feeling so guilty about actually letting our heads hit the pillow before we pick up toys or wash dishes with ketchup all over them.
We forget to admit that the reason we are 'grilling out' is actually because hot dogs are so much easier than anything else.
We forget to tell people that we actually are struggling financially now because we took that romantic vacation.
We forget to say that our brand new SUV is way more than we can afford, but it sure looks good when we pull up to the family Christmas.
We forget to write the posts about how even though we are super happy and love our coworkers today, we actually feel dead at a job the other 362 days of the year, but the comfort and predictability of our job is too much to even think of leaving.
But this is why I love women.
I love women because we really do encourage each other. Yeah...we don't always do it as often as we should, but every once in awhile we get a glimpse of how amazing us beautiful creatures really are.
We get to see that we are not alone. We are not alone in our battles. We are not alone in our tears. We are not alone in feeling like we are the world's crappiest mom, or the worst wife, or the dirtiest house keeper. We are not alone.
It's all of us.
All of us struggle.
Sure maybe some struggle more than others, but it doesn't' matter. We just have to be honest.
So women...
Let's just love each other. Show one another that we all suck 82% of the time. Show the piles of laundry once in awhile. Show the day without make up and don't turn it into selling a product...just show your damn naked face. Show that it is 3 in the afternoon and instead of washing dishes from last night's supper, breakfast, and lunch, you are watching Scandal and drinking wine.
Show this and love another woman for showing the same thing.
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