Some mornings you just have to laugh at yourself. I just stood in the middle of my kitchen, overcome with anxiety and rage, as I looked at the mess that smirked from spaces I clean three or four times a day. I know what you’re thinking. Why do I continue to clean-up the same mess every single day, multiple times a day- especially when the mess is not mine?

I know. I’m working on it.

So, this morning, I just looked at my husband and said, “I am so sick of cleaning up the same mess and feeling like people are not following through on what I asked them to do!” Those people that I am referring to, by the way, are him and my children. And before I throw this bus in reverse to run over them, again, hear me out.

I’m laughing even writing this right now. Because the next words out of my mouth were, “I just want to take all the stuff that I see right now and throw it around the room and make an even bigger mess. I want to have a massive tantrum.”

Do you ever feel like that?

When I read those words back, I go between shame and absolutely zero regret. Because it’s the truth. As a SAHM, I clean up the same messes one million times over. I probably did as a working mom to, however, because I had so many other things to focus on, maybe I didn’t feel quite so resentful about doing it then, as I do now. Maybe this also happens more because the house with all of those messes, is my office. And I get sick of cleaning up the same rooms in that office every single day. I would love for my coworkers to pitch in once in a while without being asked.

Yes. I know. Another pattern I have contributed to creating.

So here is the truth. The patterns I created with my family have served me. They fulfill my need to be the “cleaner”, “fixer”, “be busy”, “never-sit-down” mom and wife. I have replaced work outside my home with feeling worthy by trying to do everything for those I love- and then getting resentful when they do not see that sometimes there is a bit of a struggle. Or that I am tired. Or that I want to be seen as someone other that someone that serves as any of these particular functions, in our home.

But in fairness, I helped to create the pattern. I will have to be part of the solution.

I wonder how many more of these I have created without realizing what I have agreed to. And as a few come immediately to mind, today I will focus on this:

My role, in my home, is to make sure that my kids have the best opportunity to be successful in the world outside of these walls. And they won’t get there if I do everything for them…even if that means that I need to discover some other way to feel useful, needed and accomplished.

This will be good for all of us. Right? Right.

Today is a great day to choose solutions, instead of resentment.

Today is a great day to admit that a pattern that no longer serves you, can be done being your pattern.

Today is a great day to choose your way into an alternative truth for your future.

Let’s do it, today. Together.

I know this is best for my sanity. Hopefully my house survives, too.

#theunitedstateofus

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