{"id":284146,"date":"2020-09-25T02:34:06","date_gmt":"2020-09-25T07:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/dear-single-mama-dont-be-afraid-to-rest"},"modified":"2020-09-25T02:34:16","modified_gmt":"2020-09-25T07:34:16","slug":"dear-single-mama-dont-be-afraid-to-rest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/dear-single-mama-dont-be-afraid-to-rest","title":{"rendered":"Dear Single Mama, Don&rsquo;t Be Afraid To Rest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I ever make <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scarymommy.com\/we-stopped-eating-out-saved-money\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" >my babies out to eat<\/a> on Saturday afternoons. These past six months, that ritual <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scarymommy.com\/takeout-food-delivery-safe-covid-19\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" >has involved getting takeout<\/a> and sitting in the car. It&rsquo;s something I look forward to like Christmas morning because it wants I have my teenagers all to myself and can eat greasy things before plummeting them off with their father for the next twenty-four hours or so&#8211;something that has not gotten any easier for me.<\/p>\n<p>Last Saturday as I was driving, I realized on my way<a href=\"https:\/\/www.scarymommy.com\/single-moms-kids-just-fine\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" > I&rsquo;d forgotten to put in our online<\/a> order and was trying to instruct my lad on how to get it on. This didn&#8217;t go well, to say the least. <\/p>\n<p>My mind had been caught up in running the vacuum and picking a onu to take to Goodwill on the way. I was likewise was just trying to mentally prepare a grocery list because I&rsquo;d left ours sitting on the table near our doorway&#8211;which is ironically the place I always situated things I need when I&rsquo;m leaving because I&rsquo;m sure I won&rsquo;t forget them.<\/p>\n<p>He couldn&rsquo;t figure it out and was overwhelmed trying to put in our tells( without messing them up) into an app so I told him to dial the multitude and I would just call it in. The girl on the other end of the phone was having trouble hearing me and I started to lose my patience. <\/p>\n<p>Why is everything so hard? <\/p>\n<p>Why can&rsquo;t it just go smoothly? <\/p>\n<p>Why do I have to manage everything? <\/p>\n<p>Why the hell am I so damn tired? <\/p>\n<p>I was doing it again&#8211;that thing I do when I pull on my martyr throbs and think that exactly because I am the only parent in the house, things have to be done and taken care of as soon as they come up or things will blow the fucking around. I had to physically and mentally pull myself out of this mood, and it wasn&rsquo;t easy.<\/p>\n<p>It was okay if I forgot something at the grocery store. If we screwed up our succession, so what. If I didn&rsquo;t make it to Goodwill before it closed, oh fucking well.<\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;s been over three years since my ex-husband has moved out, and I am just now learning something: Just because something needs to be done, it doesn&rsquo;t mean it needs to be checked off the to-do list that minute, or even that day. Likewise, it doesn&#8217;t need to be done perfectly.<\/p>\n<p>When you become a single baby, you feel like you can&rsquo;t stop. There&rsquo;s no one to ask to bring home toilet paper. There&rsquo;s no one to sit down and pay the legislations with. There is no one to ask to help your children with homework while you have a big work project or are trying to attain dinner.<\/p>\n<p>When the floors get unclean, they call your name.<\/p>\n<p>When the dog needs menu, it&rsquo;s all you.<\/p>\n<p>If the babies need a lice medication or a doctor&rsquo;s appointment or they are having friendship perturbs, you come in and take care of it because you are the only parent there. There&rsquo;s no enact the buck. You are the banker, ever. <\/p>\n<p>Even if you have a good co-parenting relationship with your ex; even if you have help, you still somehow train yourself to cross the t&rsquo;s and dot the i&rsquo;s because you know how it feels when you let things slide and recognise it&rsquo;s your job to pick it all up.<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s it. Time you.<\/p>\n<p>So, you hinder plugging away. You keep going with no exuberance , no artillery , no hope for a rest&#8211;because you just won&rsquo;t allow yourself that, for panic you won&rsquo;t be able to catch up.<\/p>\n<p>But let me tell you something, single mother to single mother: when you need your rest and to press the suspension button, you should. Things is not fall apart, I promise.<\/p>\n<p>Believe me, for a very long time each time I thought about watching a support, or calling a friend, or only bouncing the damn dishes, the alarms went off and all I could sounds were all the things I &#8220;should&#8221; be doing.<\/p>\n<p>I&rsquo;m now to tell you that is the number one reason why you will burn out, feel agitated, and be pissy. <\/p>\n<p>I still drive myself to a place where I feel like I have to keep all the plates spinning or things will hurtle all over me, but I now know better.<\/p>\n<p>I know if I simply stop and do what I need&#8211;whether it&rsquo;s to plop on the sofa and siestum, or leave the bunked unmade, or dismiss the laundry for a while&#8211;it&rsquo;s an investment in myself. And when I do that and take the respite I need, my force always comes back organically and I&rsquo;m able to tackle my life in a way I precisely cannot when I&rsquo;m running around acting like there is a siren waiting to go off if I don&rsquo;t get things be done in order to a timely manner. <\/p>\n<p>No one cares when the clothes get folded except for me.<\/p>\n<p>No one cares what I feed my kids for dinner except for me.<\/p>\n<p>No one cares if I siesta three days in a row instead of cleaning out the closet that&rsquo;s overflowing except for me. <\/p>\n<p>So, my send to you is let yourself rest if that&rsquo;s what you need. This shit is hard, and you&#8217;re doing it on your own. Let yourself take a breather if you start to feel like you are losing it on everyone who talks to you. Let yourself sit for a moment instead of telling yourself you can rest when it all goes done because the truth is, it&rsquo;s never going to be done.<\/p>\n<p>And if you don&rsquo;t get the nourishment you need from taking a break when you need it, you are never going to get the fuel you need to feel energized.<\/p>\n<p>Everything can wait, except in cases of you. Remember that the next time you think you have to drag yourself around simply to &ldquo;get it all done.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scarymommy.com\/dear-single-mama-dont-be-afraid-to-rest\/\">Dear Single Mama, Don&#8217;t Be Afraid To Rest<\/a> seemed first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scarymommy.com\">Scary Mommy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both;\"><\/div>\n<p>Read more: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scarymommy.com\/dear-single-mama-dont-be-afraid-to-rest\/\">scarymommy.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I ever make my babies out to eat on Saturday afternoons. These past six months, that ritual has involved getting takeout and sitting in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}