GAIA RISING
What a Good Mom Is Supposed To Look Like
And why it’s hard for real moms to fit the bill.
She stood in the middle of the park on a gorgeous February day, her body oddly tense with a potent cocktail of frustration and simmering ire.
All around her were smiling mothers with their little children, out enjoying the sunshine in their yoga pants and shirts. Some blissfully wore their pregnant belly bumps while they bucolically pushed one or two other small children on the swings.
Meanwhile, she was feeling torn between the desires of her overtired daughter who was plunging toward the highest and most precarious obstacles on the playground and her wired and tired son who was throwing a tantrum about having to turn off his audiobook to go outside and play.
He was loudly refusing to leave the car. So she had walked away from him in an attempt to gain some space to reconnect to her cool. Finally, she heatedly but quietly threatened to throw down a screen-fast + audiobook-fast + cookie fast for the whole next week to coerce him to come into the park.
She needed him to come out of the parking lot so she could go spot her daughter who was calling frantically for her from the monkey bars.
