I hate when people tell me they "could never" be a stay at home mom

This is a free preview paid content on That Mom. That Mom is a paid community for mothers who are done waiting to enjoy their lives. For $8/month, you get every essay, guide, and reflection — plus a room full of women who get it. No sponsors. No noise. No guilt.

a couple weeks ago I had a DAY: woke up at 5AM, did breathwork, wrote an entire essay for Substack, got kids up, made them breakfast and got everyone dressed. while I was getting everyone dressed, I realized the 4yo went to bed without a pull up on and was covered in pee so I had to strip her sheets and get her pee soaked pajamas in the washer. while I was doing that, my 2yo spilled his entire smoothie cup all over not one but two couch cushions. I stripped those and put them in with the pee sheets and then had to scrub smoothie out of the cushion insert. next, I loaded all three kids into the car and drove 40 minutes to drop off kid 1 at her camp. drove another 40 minutes home, stopped at the playground on the way, came home, made lunch, cleaned up lunch and then attempted to put my 2yo down for a nap.

and that was all before noon.

after lunch? I did nothing. because my 2 year old would not nap, and would not get off my lap, and so there I sat, one kid glued to me, unable to do a single other thing, thinking about how this is not me living my best life.

I hate when people tell me they “could never” be a stay at home mom because I used to say the same thing. and it also assumes that I chose this, that I wanted to be a stay at home mom.

I didn’t. and I still don’t want to be one.

but here I am doing it. so let’s talk about how I got here if you’re new to me and my story. I’ve written a lot about how as a little girl I never dreamed about my wedding day, and I definitely never dreamed about becoming a mom. when I played house with my friends, I wasn’t playing being a mother, I was playing going off to work.

as a little girl, I dreamed about having a huge career. getting a corner office (whatever that meant lol) and living in a city. I thought I’d eventually become important enough in my career that I’d take the elevator down from my high rise apartment and my doorman would open the door for me as I stepped into my private car that would take me to the office. me, being so important, would need to be on all my important phone calls before I even arrived at the office, of course.

that’s what my little girl dreams were made of. not changing diapers, a constant cycle of cooking and cleaning, living in constant chaos of siblings fighting, someone screaming at all times. refilling water bottles, never completing any task start to finish. washing urine soaked bedsheets at least once a week, wiping faces and hands constantly, cleaning spills off couch cushions constantly, feeling like I clean all day but my house is never clean.

and so yes, I hate when people tell me they “could never” be a stay at home mom, because it’s kind of the world’s most impossible job, and it’s not my favorite. I am not one of those moms who dreamed about being a mom and a SAHM and reorganized my life so I could stay home with my kids. being a SAHM does not come naturally to me. in fact, I think my personality is totally incompatible with being a stay at home mom.

working moms will say to me “oh but at least you’re home and can keep up with the house,” and yeah, maybe when all my kids are finally in school five days a week that’ll be a reality. but right now? for the last 8 years I have had 1-3 children at home full time with me. and I don’t know what your kids do at home, but mine destroy a clean house in under a minute. so there is absolutely no keeping up with the house. any cleaning I do means I leave a child slightly unsupervised, and they will create more mess in that time than the mess I’ve just cleaned.

men online will say “yeah, being a stay at home mom is as hard as loading and unloading a dishwasher, all you have to do is make sure the machines do your own work for you.” to which I won’t even validate that thought with an answer, because most of my audience here is women, and we know better than to argue with idiots.

and another thing that drives me crazy: when someone asks “what will you do once the kids are all school age?! go back to work?” because what I actually want to say is HELL NO. I will be retired, thankyouverymuch. I just worked over a decade with no vacation time, no sick leave, no watercooler small talk, no team meetings because no one helped me, no paycheck, and I am going to ride off into the sunset because I earned it. catch me at lunch and pilates living it up every single day, okay?

when I decided to shut down my business last spring, it wasn’t because I wanted to go all in on motherhood. I shut it down because I knew that if I tried to do both, build my business back up after maternity leave and be the default parent of three kids with no outside support and a husband who’s gone 60 hours a week, I’d wind up failing at both and be miserable in the process.

sometimes making a choice isn’t about what you really want. it’s about what you’re willing to sacrifice. and when I made the decision to shut down my business, it went something like this: I will have plenty of time in my life to start and grow a business again. my kids will only be this little this one single time, and I’ll never get this time with them back. even if this time is filled with pee soaked sheets and spilled smoothies.

and can I tell you something else? it’s okay to do something in your life that isn’t your ideal. I know the internet talks a lot about living your dream life and how you should always seek “alignment,” but honestly? I think as a society we’d be better off doing more hard things. a lot of us have gone soft, and life has been too cushy for too long. and let’s remember that diamonds are formed under pressure in the dark, not by floating along at the top of the ocean on a sunny beach.

kinda chic to do hard things, actually, because it’ll be worth it in the end. kinda chic to do the harder thing anyway, instead of taking the easy way out. kinda chic to work hard at something you’re not naturally good at.

it’s okay for you to take a season where things are hard. where things aren’t ideal for you. it’s okay to some days be in it and just call it what it is and say “this sucks!!!!” and then put your big girl pants on and find ways to embrace the suck and create pockets of joy for yourself.

and I’ve made a distinction for myself that really helps: I love being a mom. mothering comes naturally to me. I love talking with my kids and doing things with them. I love reading together, I love dinner at the table every night with them. I love helping them work through difficult things. I love being their safe place. that part isn’t the hard part.

being a stay at home mom is different. being a SAHM is a job, a 24/7, no clock out, no sick days, no one to hand it off to job. and that job does not come naturally to me. having zero autonomy, never getting a full minute that belongs only to me, being needed by someone every single second of every single day, that is hard on my spirit. not because I don’t love my kids. because I am still a person who was built for other things too, and this job doesn’t leave much room for anything else.

so if you’re a SAHM reading this and some days it just feels unnatural, like you’re gritting your teeth through something that isn’t supposed to feel this hard, I don’t think that’s something to fix. 24/7 caregiving to small children is not easy. it’s incredibly difficult, and I think sometimes it’s best to just let it be that, incredibly difficult, and not make it have to mean something.

you don’t have to love the SAHM job to love the kids. you’re allowed to let the job be hard, let it suck some days, let it not come naturally, and still choose it, over and over, because you know exactly why you’re doing it.

the biggest peace of mind I’ve found in the trenches of being a SAHM to small children is this: when I’m 80, this is the season of life I’m going to want to go back to in my mind. when my babies were little and fit in my lap and I was their whole world. to hear the pitter patter of feet. to feel a sticky hand reach out for me. and so on the bad days, I reach into the future and pretend I’m my 80 year old self. and it helps. but it’s not a cure all. this work is really hard, and it’s okay for it to be hard and feel hard. it’s the most worthwhile hard work of all.

that’s not you doing it wrong. that’s just pressure. and pressure is what makes the diamond.

if today was a day like mine, if you’re sitting somewhere right now with a kid glued to you and nothing left in the tank, I see you. you’re not failing. you’re just in it.

usually I post my own posts at the bottom here but today I’m sharing two amazing pieces about being a SAHM from Charlotte Stephens and Marina Mofford. I love them so much I thought you might too :)