If you ask a mother, any mom you know, how she’s doing, she’ll say, “Fine.” You might get a “Good” or a “You know, we’re hanging in there.” You might even get a “Well, it’s been a little rough this week, but we’re doing okay.”
That’s what she’ll say, that mom. Whether she works at home or in an office. Whether she staunchly believes in homeschooling or breastfeeding or no-sugar breakfast cereals…or not. Whether she has infants, preschoolers, tweens, teens or grown children. That is what she will most likely say.
But you should know, when she says that, it’s not what she means. Behind those words are so many things that she doesn’t say.
What she doesn’t say is, “I’m tired.”
Not just the “oops, I stayed up too late reading or watching TV” kind of tired. She’s the kind of exhausted that results in headaches and stomach pain. It’s an exhaustion that means she’s got no censors, that she can’t think of things to talk about, that she’s struggling to put coherent words together, even as she’s chatting in the lobby or over dinner. It’s a tired that comes from days, weeks, months, even years, of putting someone else’s need to sleep above her own. Whether she’s dealing with kids who are sick or scared, teenagers who are driving home late from the prom, or adult children whose marriages are falling apart, she stays awake for those much-loved ones. And she is tired.
What she doesn’t say is, “I’m lonely.”
Sure, she goes to work, to the local mom’s group, story time at the library or the gym. Sure, she chats with her friends some, her husband some, her kids a lot. But she is lonely. It’s hard to really connect when she has to be constantly on guard about where her kids are or what they are doing. It’s hard to relax knowing lunchtime or naptime is a hard and fast deadline for any conversation she starts. It’s hard to feel part of the group when she hasn’t read a real book in ages. When all she has to talk about is poop or fourth-grade homework or when her kid didn’t make the team, the grade, the show that everyone else is discussing. That mom that you know? She wants to be seen again. She wants to feel like she’s part of something bigger than herself. Yes, she knows that parenting is like that, and most days she relishes it, but motherhood lacks clear rewards sometimes. It’s daunting, continuous, and there are no medals; there are few recognitions. There is just more laundry, more dinner to make, more “Hey Mom”‘s. She stays up to finish things while everyone else goes to bed, stays late while everyone else goes home, and sometimes, she just wants someone to go out of their way to SEE her. Because she’s lonely.
What she doesn’t say is, “I’m struggling.”
Sickness, angry outbursts, a broken lamp, a broken heart. They weigh on her, whether hers or her loved one’s. She wants to do the right thing, see her kids grow and become all they can be. And she doesn’t know how to admit that, after the umpteenth mistake yesterday, she heard the voice in her head saying, “You’re a bad mom.” That she is struggling not to believe that voice. Because she’s not a bad mom. She’s balancing a thousand things, juggling eggs (which she didn’t have time to hard-boil), and sometimes one falls. Sometimes they all fall. And she feels like a failure. She won’t say that. She can’t say that. But it’s there. If you listen very closely to what that mom is saying, it’s hidden there. The words she can’t take back. The daughter who hasn’t called in months. The friend who judged her unfairly. The child who refuses to go into the nursery or misbehaves in the grocery store or acts up at school. The husband who gets the very last of her attention, who feels lost in the shuffle instead of part of the two-person team she always swore they would be. With so much on her plate and so many “perfect” moms out there to compare herself to, she’s just struggling.
That’s what she doesn’t say. When she says, “I’m fine,” those are what she means. Those things and more – I’m hurting. I’m angry. I just need a big slab of chocolate and some coffee. (Okay, that last one she probably will say.) But of all the things that most moms don’t say, the most important one is “I need help.”
She doesn’t need your pity. She doesn’t need advice (unless she asks for it). She doesn’t need you to tell her to “enjoy this time…it goes so fast” or “just wait, it gets worse (or better)” or “don’t complain, it was your decision to become a mom.” She knows all of that. But she still needs help. She needs you to go out of your way to connect with her. She needs you to offer help, sometimes multiple times before she truly believes you want to. And even if she turns you down, believe me, she’s grateful that you offered. She needs you to pray for her, for her marriage, her job, her kids, her failures, her health, for HER. She needs you to drop her a note or email or text, out of the blue, because it means you thought of her and then did something about it. She just needs to know that she matters for more than lunches made and laundry done and prayers said and mundane days spent.
Because she won’t say that. And really, on most days, she doesn’t even think it. But some days, she does. And on those days, you will make a world of difference to that one mom if you choose to hear, not just what she’s saying to you, but all of what she doesn’t say, too.
