Happy New year dear friends. Hope you have an amazing New year loaded with all the goodness that you deserve. May you have a reason to smile every single day of the year.
Let me tell you a short story of my life in the last couple of weeks. I am currently pursuing my residency training in the field of Internal medicine at the moment and because of the pandemic from Covid 19, there has been a lot of modification made to our residency program including the fact that now we are doing a lot of rotations in the Intensive care unit (ICU). This is due to the large influx of symptomatic Covid positive patients at our hospital. Even though I had Christmas off, I worked over New year. I had to do work for almost 72 hours over the course of six days. So, on the sixth night knowing that I had the next day off, I made an executive decision to binge on Netflix – a luxury I had not indulged in for months. I gingerly picked up the remote control , being super-cautious so as not to wake the children up. They were resuming back to school at the beginning of a new year to continue with the school year. My son is in Kindergarten and my daughter is in pre-school.
I randomly scrolled through Netflix looking for a lovely movie to watch. I kept scrolling through until my eye caught a movie titled Bridgerton. Being an unrepentant romantic who is a sucker for fairy tales and good endings, I settled for this one. I chose Bridgerton despite the fact that I knew it was a season movie. I typically avoid season movies because I believe it is a waste of my time. Also, I believe I do not have the capacity to entertain such opulence. I watched the first five of eight episodes of the first season that night. I did not go to bed till the wee hours of the morning. I went bed around 5:30 am. So when I woke up at 10:30 am, I realized I had missed seeing my children before returning to school in the new year. I felt very bad. Almost like a very terrible mother. What mother sleeps off and forgets to give her children warm hugs, loving kisses and bear hugs before having them go to school even if school is just for seven hours? That’s me !
By the way, we have a nanny that took care of them and my husband who currently works from home had so lovingly told the children to allow mommy rest. So obediently, they had planted soft kisses while I was in REM sleep. I wanted to beat myself up. I felt a sharp wave of guilt wash over me. I felt a stabbing jab of irresponsibility for my eating the fruit of my desire to treat myself for working so hard. I wanted to regret watching that movie, but I could not. It was that good. Anyway, they came back from school and I gave them each the biggest hugs and kisses ever. Plus we read stories from their favorite books and did some painting. They were very happy. Then, I forgave myself.
I realized that moms are just humans too. We need not beat ourselves up for craving some degree of normalcy in our lives . Neither should we feel guilty for indulging in some self pampering.
“There is no perfect way to be a good mother. Each situation is unique. Each mother has different challengers, different skills and abilities and certainly different children. What matters is that a mother loves her children deeply.”
Elder M. Russel Ballard