You Have Your Birthing Pond, I Have My Unicorn

I don’t care what kind of mom you are.

I don’t care if you had your baby in a birthing pond in the woods behind your house, or if the doctor drugged you into a blissful state where babies arrive on the backs of unicorns.

I don’t care if you breastfed exclusively or bottled-fed your babies formula.

I don’t care if you cloth diapered or used disposables.

I don’t care if you feed your kids organic quinoa or french fries from Burger King for dinner.

I don’t care if you home school, public school, private school or charter school.

I don’t care if you’re a Tiger Mom, a Love and Logic parent or a make-them-do-20-pushups-in-the-middle-of-Target parent.

Are your kids happy? Are they mentally, physically, and emotional healthy? Are they fed, clothed and sheltered? Good, but it isn’t my business how, because they aren’t my kids, I’m not you and we aren’t living the same life.

If you ask me for advice, I’ll share my opinion, but I would never tell you what to do. Also, I won’t sit from afar judging you, believing I know how to better care for your family than you.

Because it’s hard.

It’s hard if you make dinner from scratch and sit down at the table every night with your rambunctious kids. It’s hard if you eat fast food chicken nuggets for dinner in the car while driving your rambunctious kids to soccer, dance and piano.

It’s hard if you can afford the best of everything and are tying to teach your privileged kids gratefulness. It’s hard if you have to explain to your kids why you can’t afford to buy them the expensive jeans everybody else has.

It’s hard if your kid struggles with reading and is at the bottom of her class. It’s hard to teach your kid humility when he’s the star of the basketball team.

It’s hard for all us, no matter our circumstances. We were all handed a squirming little ball of life and told to make a decent human being out of it. Those babies all came without instructions, and all of us are still trying to figure this out.

That’s why I just don’t get the Mommy Wars. Why are moms wasting energy fighting with each other over such petty things as co-sleeping? We all know this is hard, so why on earth would moms ever try to make it harder on each other?

Isn’t that energy better spent encouraging each other to make the brave choices that are right for our families? Shouldn’t we applaud each other for doing the best with what we have? Shouldn’t we offer open hands and open hearts of help when we can?

Because I don’t care what kind of mom you are.

But I do care.

I care that you know your best is good enough. I care that you know there is great value in the work of parenting your children. I care that you know you are a worthy person even if you don’t do it all the way the experts say. I care that you know you are not alone. I care that you know I think this is hard too.

So let’s do the hard stuff together, even if we don’t do it the same way.

I’ll hold your hand on the way to the birthing pond, and you can help me wrangle that unicorn.