Half Jewish, Half Catholic, Full Mommy

A mother's guilt knows no bounds as I have blogged before. No matter what any mother does, there will be someone who will disapprove of the action/ decision. And I was reminded that it never ends because when they grow up, everything bad that they do would be our fault. "Our" here refers to parents in general and since Dads often take a more laid back view of everything, moms tend to take on more of the guilt.

I've felt and feel guilty about a host of things from spending more time with one child than the other to feeling totally responsible for the fact that Baby J threw up her dinner when I fed her. The onset of guilt is very rapid. All it takes is a look, a word that can be misinterpreted wrong or my baby's (either one's) face and I'm self-flagellating.

Apparently, all mothers feel it to some extent or the other. And someone I talked to asked if I could do an experiment to try and move beyond the guilt and focus on what I actually do do for them. Either tell someone, everyday, 3 things that I did for my kids that show that I am, in effect, a good mom, or I tell myself that. Since self- flagellating moms generally have a lower self-esteem, I thought the latter was easier to do though it was pointed out to me that since self-
flagellating moms were self-flagellating, we were unlikely to believe ourselves anyway and that was going to defeat the purpose of the exercise. So, inspired by Offspring's 7 day record of various things, I shall try to find 7 things I did to show myself that I am, indeed, a good mom.

The actual exercise was 3 things but since some of the stuff I do are pretty much run of the mill things, I won't delve too much into those ones.

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