Rough Season

A post and subsequent comments made a couple days ago on a Facebook group I'm part of has weighed on my heart heavily. I wanted to share my experience that it might offer a perspective younger women have not heard.

In the post a woman was very critical of her mother, she was talking with her father about her and she admitted her thoughts about her were harsh. She had been a SAHM for 25 years and this spring she saw her last child graduate. The young woman took her mother to task for her poor housekeeping & cooking and for not going back to work when the youngest started high school.

Some thoughts on this life after being a SAHM. I married at 17 and became a mother at age 19. My oldest child will be 29 this year. I have been caring for my family every single day of my adult life.

In 31 years over 33,000 breakfast, lunches and dinners have been served. Maybe I didn't cook every single meal. But the grocery shopping, organizing and preparation along with all that cooking is still a VERY big number. I don't even know how much laundry I've done. Miles driven. Shoes purchased. Their entire lives are etched in my memory. When they had chicken pox, how much they weighed, what day of the week they were born on and what their 7th birthday theme was. It's in my head. All in my head.

I have homeschooled for over 25 years. All my children graduated from our homeschool program.

I have a congenital heart condition and 10 yrs ago I was diagnosed with MS. I have been in Congestive Heart Failure for 5 years. The steroids that have treated my MS has caused steroid induced diabetes.

I was a size 8 when my youngest child was 3. I am now an 18. Medication and illness have wreaked havoc on my system. I was hospitalized this year for weeks. Had home health nurses caring for me for a few weeks. I had a hysterectomy 2 years ago.

My family isn't swirling around me telling me to get a job, or do more. They are always, daily telling me to slow down. I run 2 businesses, I'm a writer, I have my grandkids as much as I can - that's the good stuff! I run an online women's ministry, I volunteer all the time.

Still...I battle depression tirelessly. I'm familiar with the battle because I was abused as a child. Depression and I are well acquainted and there is no way, it will win even one day of my life from me - not ever. I don't suffer with it, I battle it. And I win.

When your last child passes into adulthood, when you are experiencing pre-menopause symptoms, when your youthful figure has departed, when your health is questionable when you reach this mid-life, there is an unraveling that happens. I heard it called that and never has anything fit so perfectly.

It's very hard this time of life. I suppose I am coping with it pretty well because I am not a stranger to this adversity and I was emotionally prepared for it. Not all women are so lucky. Some have become alcoholics to cope, some sank into depression, others actually left their families - abandoned their spouses and moved out. So much turmoil.

Before younger women look at older women and criticize, especially their mothers, have the humility to accept that you know absolutely nothing at all about how life looks from this point.

The dyes are cast, or seem so. Your kids are what they are. Your marriage is what it is and the youth and energy for yourself is often times gone. Baggage, trauma and regret weighs in on some women and it crushes them. Give them some grace.

I still meal plan, I still tend my home. I'm more in love with my husband than ever before. But I have always enjoyed it. Some women I know don't even go in their kitchen anymore. My husband says his mother never cooked again after her hysterectomy. I love that story! She turned in her apron with her uterus! Good for her if she wants to do it! Some women at this stage are just plain tired.

The ministry I began is ALL about Titus 2. Older women teaching younger women AND vice versa. Fostering a sisterhood that crosses generations.

I hate to hear women my age criticize young mothers, they are raising kids in difficult times - support them, encourage them. Love on them.

As women we have to go out and gather one another in and love on each other. We just have to. I have such a wonderful relationship with my kids and my girls are my best friends.

Anyway, for the women crossing through the unraveling, I'm praying with you. For the mommies still on diaper duty, I'm praying with you. Let's pray for one another.