Resentment is something we deal with constantly as working moms. Feeling like we’re undervalued, being stepped all over, or stuck in a career that we don’t want. Dr. Whitney gets to the root of why we feel resentful and how to move forward in your centered life living out the vision you’ve created for yourself.
Key takeaways:
Why do we have resentment?
There are so many systemic forces at play against us as working moms. Nobody out there is coming to save working moms. Traditionally, moms in the workforce haven’t really been respected or even given value. It’s been an old boys club for a long time. It hasn’t been until recently that we’re starting to talk about fairness at both home and our places of work? Is it fair women take on most of the load? Is it fair that women aren't getting paid family leave? It’s been like this for years. That builds resentment.
And at home, there’s a lopsided distribution of labor and mental load towards women at home. Traditionally, women are doing all the things that go beyond just taking care of the home like laundry and groceries (think Easter Bunny duties!) In raising kids, as the pendulum has swung from militant, “these are my rules” to more emotionally connected parenting, women are trying to figure out how to not get walked all over in being loving but at the same time to get their kids to listen and follow through with their boundaries.
How do we come out of this?
We have to set boundaries around ourselves, while also differentiating between them and all of the other aspects of parenting. We have to find the difference between okay-ing the emotion and okay-ing the behavior. For example, I can’t let it slide for my 5 year old to hit me in the face. I can acknowledge that she was angry because I took away her screens, but that her behavior was absolutely not okay and now she won’t be having screens the rest of the week. But if I swung to the emotional side of the pendulum and just told her that I understood that she was angry and being angry is normal and hard but didn’t enforce a boundary, I would be totally resentful.
With our partners, we can develop a system where we’re equitably splitting the workload. The biggest help in that area for me has been to learn the communication style of both my husband and me, while simultaneously giving him grace. This past weekend, my youngest got up really early and I took care of ALL the things while my husband laid on the couch. And I started to get really resentful. BUT that’s partly on me because we never set up a system where I took care of one weekend morning and he took another. I just started doing. So after the moment had passed, I let him know how I was feeling and asked how we could divide up parenting so that neither of us feel alone. He came up with a great idea and now we’ve got a system in place.
In our careers, we can decide what things are our energy drainers that are breeding resentment. And if there’s too many, maybe that means that you need to look towards a different career. But it’s possible that you can’t just up and leave. So what small, almost microscopic movements could you make that put you on a different path?
That’s what we’re all about on The Modern Mommy Club app. We’re helping you to work towards putting yourself at the center of your life and helping you find both solutions that are sustainable and a framework that works for you–and we know that doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and that’s okay. But when you CHOOSE to make the small changes, it gives you freedom because you’re starting to take ownership and pieces of control in your life. And control is the thing that ultimately makes it so we’re not resentful.
And building more control means having a vision for your life of what actually matters to you, and where you want to focus your time, energy, and purpose. and then finding small, incremental ways to deal with the rest.
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