When I'm feeling overwhelmed with the many 'hats' I wear; mother, carer, writer, cook, cleaner, gardener, farmer's wife; I try to remind myself that no-one can be everything to everyone, and that ultimately, something's gotta give.
For example, on days when I'm nailing the cook & cleaner roles, I'm often then too exhausted to play handball or hopscotch with my children after school. Or when I get to the end of the day and feel really good about how much one-on-one time I spent with each of my children, I can't help but notice the piles of neglected dishes in the sink or mountains of dirty clothes all over the bathroom floor.
So how do we find balance in our crazy busy lives?? Maybe the answer is simple... we don't.
Battling to achieve 'balance' each day is exhausting, and truthfully, we all need different amounts of balance to maintain a satisfactory level of sanity.
I know I write from a place of fulfilment and gratitude after publishing Boy of Steel and living through an earth shattering reality check in 2020, but the over-achieving, structured mother that existed inside of me pre-childhood cancer diagnosis, yearns to return some days. What's changed for me though is the realization that life isn't perfect and neither are we. 'Perfectly, imperfect' is my new mantra and remembering that almost always, something's gotta give, frees me from the shackles of my own perception of perfect.
Balance within I think, is what we ought to strive for. Just doing one or two little things for myself each day helps keep me afloat. After all, motherhood really is one big game of survival, and if you're lucky, self-preservation.
Boy of Steel is now available WORLDWIDE at crystalleonardi.com/shop. Read more about how the reality check of 2020 opened my eyes to what's really important in life and how shocked I was to realize that it wasn't the cardboard cut-out nuclear family image that I had been working so hard to live up to.