I’m as guilty as anyone of writing sappy posts about my kids. The mommy blogging world is full of such posts, in fact. Sickly sweet posts, dripping with ooey gooey love and laced with fuzzy focused pictures detailing smiling faces, dozing babies and chubby cheeks galore. At the same time, you have posts where date nights are detailed; delicious hours spent away from home while the kids are happily cared for by doting grandparents while the parents are able to eat out at decidedly non-child friendly restaurants and view entire movies (uninterrupted!) in movie theaters and spending exorbitant amounts of money on popcorn. And then over here you have the mom who has gotten a fabulous writing gig at a fabulous website and soon will be making fabulous money. Or something like that. And what about that blogger over there who is either publishing a book or is included in a book or knows someone firsthand who has a new book out? The fulfillment they must feel! How about those ladies who blog about their girl’s nights out and seem to have so many beautiful, wonderful and fun friends to hang out with? They sure have it all, don’t they?
No. No, they don’t.
The thing is, I’m as guilty of feeling these things as anyone else. It’s easy when you read a plethora of blogs to see these little glimpses into someone else’s life and feel jealousy. To wish that you had a little piece of their life. If you had what they had, after all, then maybe you’d be happy. Or happier. Life would be better.
The thing is, no one has it great. In fact, I wonder if “great” even exists. The blogger who waxes poetic about their cherubic infant is probably doing so in order to keep from tossing them out the window after they kept them up all night the night before. The gal who scored the fabulous writing gig is probably feeling either a lot of pressure to write for her new bosses and bring in the traffic or is feeling burnt out with blogging altogether or worries that the money she’ll be making won’t be quite enough to cover all those bills that keep pouring in. The people who have ready and willing babysitters every time they turn around don’t always have the money to go out in the first place or have to deal with the inherent consequences of having relatives living nearby. They probably wish, at times, that they had less parental influence in their lives. And the women who seem to have a never-ending supply of buddies to hang out with? Probably deal with their own issues and social politics and whatever else is required to keep those friendships running smoothly. That or their spouses give them untold amounts of grief for wanting to spend time away from their families.
I guess my point is that we shouldn’t look at someone and think they have it all just because of what we read on their blog. These blogs are merely snapshots of our lives. A moment in time. A still life portrait of what life is like. When I talk about how adorable Evie is getting (boy howdy, is she ever getting adorable), I’m not mentioning the half dozen other issues that keep me up at night with worry and stress. The blog is an outlet, after all. I can write about whatever catches my fancy, diffuse frustration, find closure and distract myself from whatever is bugging me at the moment. And believe me, there is just about ALWAYS something bugging me. That’s just the way it is.
We’re all in the same boat here, aren’t we? We’re all mothers who question our choices and our lives just about every single day. We all love our children. We all have hard days. The great thing about these blogs is that through it all, we have each other to support us when we’re unsure, to cheer us on when we experience good fortune, commiserate when we’re frustrated and give us a boost when we’re feeling down. And God Bless it too, I don’t know what I’d do without it all.
