Trying to be Everything…Until I Can’t – Crying in My Car

I cried in my car twice last week.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve broken down in the driver’s seat. There is something about keeping it all together and then all it takes is one exhale as I settle into the silence of my car and the tears just rush in.

The pressure on moms today is constant. We often carry the mental load, the schedules, the emotions, and so many expectations seem to be on us. All this while many of us are holding full-time demanding careers.

My husband carries a lot of the load along with me. We have both always worked full time so have been used to a pretty equal partnership our entire marriage. He is super involved in our kids lives, he coaches everything, he cleans, he never asks me to be perfect. But I still feel this internal pressure. I think the internal pressure comes with the way that our mom brains are constantly thinking about the kids, the schedules, did I sign the permission slip?

Combine all that with work demands and it’s a lot if you try to swallow it all as one thing to check off a list.

While my husband does carry a lot of responsibilities along with me, there are still things like that constant mental load I referred to that really do fall on the mom.

My husband’s brain doesn’t seem to work like this. It doesn’t seem like he has this same constant internal pressure that I feel.

I want to be the nurturer, the one who keeps us organized, the one who makes sure we have our meals planned out for the week and that laundry is kept up on (and done the way I like it if I am being honest).

I let myself get so overwhelmed sometimes and I let it all bubble up as one giant thing I am trying to manage.

No wonder I cry in my car sometimes.

Last week’s breakdown was not brought by some catastrophic event or some major mom fail. Not at all. It was a series of small things chipping away that had no choice but to be released through two rounds of tears.

The week got off to a rough start when I worked an unexpected 10 hour day in the office, felt like I hadn’t quite met the mark on a project at work and then hit unusually extra slow traffic on the drive home. That was then followed by a miscommunication on dinner plans resulting in last minute “what’s for dinner?” which always drives me crazy. Right there pretty much set my entire week up for disaster.

So I cried.

What I should have done in that moment was to tell myself to stop. Relax. Reset.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I let the stress build. I was feeling incredibly overwhelmed and let that feeling overcome everything. Instead of asking my husband for support or try to reason with myself, I just let it all build.

When I walked through the door, I felt like I had already dropped all the balls and I was too frustrated to even know how to tell myself to just pick them up one by one.

Several small, insignificant yet somehow significant things went wrong that evening. When I left the house early the next morning after getting up at 4:30am for a workout; I was tired and feeling like the week was a failure, because I had let myself believe it was.

Instead of focusing on the wins, like the fact that I had still managed to fit in two early morning workouts in two days thus far that week and that the kids both got all their homework done and got where they needed to be for extracurriculars, I was focusing on the negative.

So I cried.

My husband may never ask me to be perfect, but I certainly put those expectations on myself constantly. The result is not achieving perfection but rather crying in my car from the pressure I put on myself. Not typically twice in one week but it has been known to happen and it did happen last week.

There are tips I use for myself when I need to simply calm down and take the self-inflicted pressure off. Giving myself grace, setting boundaries and reminding myself I am not alone are all things that do help when I remember to actually remind myself.

If you feel this pressure like I do and have breakdowns in your car or your closet or some other safe space, you are not alone. Being a mom is incredibly amazing and incredibly challenging.

It’s ok to let yourself break down sometimes. I think sometimes it’s just what our bodies need to do to move forward. Even if sometimes you need a couple rounds of it like I did last week.

I don’t have it all together and I don’t know why I even try to tell myself I should attempt to. We are imperfect. God doesn’t view this as a failure, but where He can shine light into our lives.