Dear Jess,

Your last post, “If You Only Knew…”, really resonated with me. I’ve always struggled with fitting in or being “normal”. That feeling amplified after becoming a mom and seeing people’s social media posts about their kids. It became a subconscious competition. I put all this pressure on myself and my kids to accomplish so much more than we needed to because I was basing “normal” on everyone else’s best hits.

That’s why I challenge the concept of Mommy Goals and strive to think in terms of Mommy Muses instead.

To me, the term Mommy Goal is tethered to an end objective. I’ve played my comparison game in my head of what this other person is doing better than me and now I’m going to bust my butt model myself after them. To some degree it can be motivating but most of the time, I end up feeling more drained because what works for someone else may not work for our family.  Then, there’s the reminder of not meeting that goal every time you log into Facebook and there’s someone else easily achieving what you were hoping to accomplish– an adorable photoshoot, a sweet outing with the kids, or some cute Pinterest-y projects, to name a few. “Oh yeah,” I say to myself, “I was supposed to work on that and I completely dropped the ball.” Enter mommy guilt and this toxic mindset to put all these other people on pedestals and myself on the ground floor looking up.

In comparison, a Mommy Muse is someone you take inspiration from. Where you admire an aspect (or several) of how they parent and try to incorporate that into your parenting arsenal as well. There is no end goal and no deadline to finally become this perfect idea of what a mom should be. One day our inspiration can come from a celebrity we follow on Twitter. The next week we could try to model ourselves off of something our best friend did. It can even be a friend accomplishing something she’s been working hard at, like potty training her kiddo, and that infectious positive vibe motivating you to work harder at your own goals. 

We all are the best moms to our kids. We know their personalities, their ticks, their aversions, their obsessions. No one can parent your kid better than you—so let’s put ourselves on a pedestal first and look at the strengths of other moms around us to lift us up higher in areas where we don’t necessarily have a lot of experience in.

I know the term Muse vs. Goal may not seem like a big difference, but to me the semantics of putting myself first is empowering and helps ease the guilt I have on the days when I’m stress paralyzed and plop my toddler in front of a screen for more hours than I should. 

So here are my Mommy Muses in my life in no particular order: