Melissa Shortt
Stories (2/0)
To Err is Human
The sun is shining brightly as I arrive at the Commons, yet I hesitate before exiting the truck. For those who might be unfamiliar with the area, this a large park right in the center of the Lilac City. There’s a bit of twisted humor for us; lilacs, which represent innocence, purity, divinity, and love, have shrouded this city – with the highest crime rate in all of New Hampshire – in a sweet and satiny veil of duplicity. I contemplate my love/hate relationship with my surroundings as the butterflies and bees take flight deep within core. As always, the gazebo, with its massive size, is the first site to steal my attention. Gazing up at her, I know that I have no choice of where my mind is about to take me.
By Melissa Shortt10 months ago in Families
The Goddess Myth
My nine-year-old thinks I walk on water. In her eyes, I am the epitome of the perfect mother. In contrast, my 16- and 18-year-old each cannot wait to escape what they often perceive to be my totalitarian regime. Balancing out such sharply contrasting views, my 24-year-old admits that, while there have been times that my mothering techniques might be questionable, at best, he can no longer deny that he didn’t make things any easier for either one of us. Today, as an adult who can reflect on the past with less biased views, my first-born child thinks I am a “good enough” mother. Personally, there are days when I have to strongly question my own methods, just as there are days – well, fleeting moments, anyway – where I think I should win the “Best Mom Ever” award. When measured against societal standards for mothers, though, I fall short. Some might even consider me a bad mother. I used to care what the outside world thought of me, and I tried, in vain, to adjust myself to better meet societal expectations. When I did, one of two things would happen: either I would continue to fall short in some (insignificant, in my mind) way, or, more often, I’d finally meet those ridiculous expectations, and then society would change them! Eventually, I had to do some real soul searching, and I had to honestly ask myself whether I was truly “good enough” to be a mother to my children. To this day, I still have moments when I am left questioning my own adequacy at mothering. Often, the only thing I can do is throw my hands up and say, “good enough.” Heck, we may as well just face it, perfection will always remain just out of reach. We mothers must stop reaching for something that we will never be able to grasp; that we were never meant to grasp. In the race to become the mythical perfect mother, we place ourselves in an unfair and burdensome position, where in the end, we are sure to be judged as failures – whether by those around us, or even worse, by ourselves. It is time that mothers unite against unrealistic parenting expectations and say, “No, thanks. I’ll settle for good enough.”
By Melissa Shortt10 months ago in Viva