Inspiration

I'm not a mom, but dammit if I don't love reading mommy-blogs.  I think that's pretty obvious if you're familiar with any of the names in my list.  I love reading them because these women are real, and funny, and really, really funny.  Seeing the little blue RSS notification button on my toolbar light up means that Amalah, Sundry, Mr. Lady, Mommy's Martini, Redneck Mommy or any of a growing number of my favorite writers has published a new post, and that just makes me all sorts of happy inside.  Not just because it helps me kill a little time at work, but because they are truly fantastic writers, strong women, and inspiring to me in many, many ways.  

(The daddy bloggers too!  Dad Gone Mad and Laid Off Dad and Pet Cobra and Captain Dumbass, you all rock my boat too!)

What's ironic is I'm afraid of becoming a mom.  Babies scare the living daylights out of me.  Not in an axe-murderer-jumping-out-of-the-closet way, but in a fragile-and-valuable-as-a-damn-Ming-vase-and-I'm-a-klutz-and-sometimes-a-dumb-blonde way.  I'm scared of dropping them, making them sick, forgetting them, or otherwise screwing up their development in some irreversible way.  Once they hit the somewhat-communicative-and-made-of-rubber stage, I think I'd be okay.  But up until that point, yikes and yowza.

(Also yikes and yowza on my over-use of hyphens.)

But when I read the writings of these women (and men), I can see that I'm not the only one who's afraid, klutzy, nervous, and overall not perfect.  I now I see the benefit to that.  Sometimes it's good to be bad - if being a "bad" mother means more relaxed, more confident, more able to put my whole self into loving and teaching and caring for a child - rather than stressing and freaking that I didn't do something right or that I'm not living up to someone else's expectations of what a "good" mother is.

I'm not saying I'm going to run home and throw out the little blue pills in my medicine cabinet, but I'm encouraged, and maybe a little bit less afraid.  Thanks, ladies.

(Oh and B thanks you too!)

Motivation for this post comes from this one by Her Bad Mother, and subsequent writings and comments.)