Guest Blog: Mrs Chandler

Welcome, Mrs Chandler from Charmingly Chandler! Mrs Chandler is a military wife and mama to a pretty little girl named Sophia. She's a stay at home mom who recently started a weight loss journey. (Check it out every Monday) Today she's going to talk about that juggling act we call motherhood.

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Women. Mothers. Sisters. Daughters.


We manage to be a bigger enemy to ourselves than other are to us. We feel like we never measure up fully. We aren't funny enough, pretty enough, smart enough, multi-taskable enough. I haven't done the research, but I think it's safe to say that we buy more self-help books than guys. We want to be better cooks, better girlfriends, better friends, better at work....and we stress about it. We dwell on it. We obsess about it. Once we become mothers all of this own-worst-enemy business gets about a trillion times worse. We are then responsible for a whole new life. We have a billion new things that we have to measure up on. And with all the Mommy Judgement out there, it is NO shocker that we feel the need to balance perfection.

I'd like to brag about how I'm above it, how I can't be bothered with such pettiness as trying to achieve woman perfection. But I am in the thick of it. I am a constant thread of thoughts. For every judgment women pass on each other there's about 10 more that a woman judges herself on. Things we don't even take note of on each other.

The things that keep me from buying out the entire self-help section of the local book store? My friends. The friends that don't have to listen, but do. The friends that openly share their war stories. The ones that don't brag about the three course meal they made for their family, while mentioning in an after-thought how they polished the silver too. It comes down to surrounding yourself with good people. Not the haters, the braggers, the negative Nancy's. I do my best to avoid the people that have a herds of drama llamas follow them everywhere they go (llamas are herds right? I don't want to google...so just go with it). It was a hard lesson to learn, but the constant internal dialog that tells me I'm not measuring up is so much worse when the people to my left and right are talking trash about the girl who just can't keep up with life.

Am I ever going to be able to balance the housework, the play time, the social life, the errands, the cooking, the hobbies, and raising children the way I imagine Mrs. Perfect SAHM/HW does? Ha! Am I always going to think 'If there were just 3 more hours today, I'd be able to get it all done'? Probably. But am I working hard to be a better cheerleader for myself and less of an enemy? ABSO-Freaking-LUTELY.