You can’t color outside the lines when there are no lines.

Did you ever have a problem that you didn’t realize was a problem until it wasn’t a problem anymore? Like when you don’t know how sleep deprived you are until you finally get enough real sleep and you wonder how you haven’t killed anyone lately from brain impairment? It makes you feel like a different person to be well rested. Or to have been ill for so long you start to forget how “normal” feels. (Bronchitis and February are both like that for me.)

Mommy guilt is one of the things that we allow to tag along after us until it feels normal. It turns into something so insidious that we forget it hasn’t always been there. The constant shaming and belittling and devaluing of what we do that comes in from the outside turns into a hum that goes on in the background like cicadas in the summer and we don’t notice it anymore, until one day we manage to slam the door of its cage and we are blessedly free of it. If we can forget for just one day that nothing we ever do is ever going to be “good enough” and just be Good Enough, it’s like the sun coming out after the rain. It’s like slipping on your favorite jeans for the first time in a long time. It feels like playing hooky and never wanting to go back.

There are so many categories of things we are supposed to track all the time and so many balls we are never, ever, ever supposed to stop juggling. They nag us like a sad, unwanted fifth horseman of the apocalypse riding after the others on a lame horse and shouting “wait for me!” The Apocalypse would roll on, but we stop and wait for Guilt to catch up. Because that’s what we do. We’re nurturers and tenders and lovers and carers- we are getting so used to ignoring the impulse to say “oh, shove off, would you?” that we forget to say it when we really should. We forget that we are not just nose wipers and boo-boo kissers. We forget that we are making the mold and pouring ourselves into it, and our children will follow after us. If you’ve ever heard your own mother’s words come flying out of your mouth, you know this is true.

With Mommy Guilt constantly whispering “what’s your excuse?” in our ears, we forget that We Don’t Need It. We don’t need an excuse because we don’t need to be excused. Guilt, take your pony and go home. You’re not riding with us any more. We’re going to fly by the seat of our pants. We’re going to run with the wind, make it up as we go along, and Find Our Singing Voices. There’s no room for pathetic tagalongs. The only lines we are going to pay attention to are the chalk lines on the sidewalk, while we color outside them. Come on over and join us… I hear there will be a squirt gun fight later. Maybe we can have a watermelon seed spitting contest after that.