It’s Not Mom Guilt… It’s Mom Pain!

Recently our founder, Karmel Larson, shared her insights on what working mamas are really feeling. She wants moms to know that there is truly a difference between mom guilt and mom pain! While that may not make it easier, we want moms everywhere to know that Momni moms are here to help you bear the calling you have been given—whatever that may be! It’s Not Mom Guilt… It’s Mom Pain!

Many working mothers have expressed mom guilt to me from time to time. Maybe you can relate? Pondering upon this common phrase, I believe that it may be a mistaken expression, as what they are really experiencing is mom PAIN . First a quick story, and then I’ll explain the difference.

For two days this past week, I stayed home with my fever-sick four-year-old and I relished our time together. He did as well, proclaiming, “Mommy… I’m going to be sick every single day for the rest of my life so that we can always be together, every-single-day!” Oh man—talk about melting my heart. His dream is my dream too! Painful Mama Tears Last night I raced to Walmart with my husband to pick up cake and presents to celebrate this sweet boy’s birthday.

As we waited for “Happy Birthday Louis” to be added to the cake, we went to get the candles. Considering the numbered candle options, I said out loud to my husband, “How old is Louis turning? Oh, right… he’ll be 5!” And then, unexpectedly, right there in the middle of the deli section of Walmart, holding a pack of birthday candles and staring deep into the soul of my husband, I was consumed with the deepest level of mother’s pain.

And my eyes, still staring at my husband, filled with water and tears began to roll down my cheeks. The tears flowed, right there, for quite a while as this deep mother’s pain settled into my heart. —“He is turning 5 tomorrow!” My mind speed-remembered our bedtime cuddling and rocking and joking that I was going to box him up so that he couldn’t grow up. I was going to keep him my precious four-year-old forever.

What I was really saying was: I need more time. I’m missing all of my time with you. I have missed so many hours of his four-year-old adventure. I miss him deeply and I want to be sick with him every single day so that we can be together.

And so I shed an abundant amount of painful mama tears at that symbolic moment of realizing that my baby boy was one more year grown without me full-time at home with him each day. The sacrifices required of me to do what I am doing instead, daily, were unbearable in that moment. I love being a mother and being with my children and family more than anything in this world! Some may be reading my story and thinking, “This poor woman is so filled with mom guilt… why doesn’t she just quit working and go be with her children, where her heart is?” Well, you would be mistaken.

I don’t have mom guilt…. I have a deep, deep level of mom pain. There is a world of difference. Please let me explain.

Dream vs. Calling Mom guilt ceases when you are certain that your time away from your children is a calling, not a dream. For a dream is something that you desire to do, want to do, whereas a calling is something you MUST do. That very important distinction removes any mom guilt, and yet what it is replaced with is far worse.

“A dream is something you want to do. A calling is something you must do.” –John Maxwell For the mother called to a work that takes her away from her children is often robbed of her dream, what she desperately wants most, to be with her children. The loss of that priceless dream does not cause mom guilt, for she is certain of what she has been called to do and must do, but it does leave a cavern of mom pain so deep that it knocks the wind out of her, sucks the life out of her and drains her soul of delight and her eyes of all tears.

And yet somehow she can still thrive and be filled with a deep abiding joy in life as a whole. Because when you have the pure confidence of knowing that you have been called to a work, and the WHY behind that call, it overpowers the mom pain with purpose and hope and trust —that your children will be better for it. I know that I have been called to link moms together through caresharing to help those impacted by the global childcare crisis.

I’m grateful there are Momni moms mentoring my children when I am away from them. Maybe You Can Relate? Maybe you can relate if you’ve ever snuck away to the restroom at work to hide in a stall and cry because you were missing an important event of your children’s, or just missing them. Maybe you can relate if you’ve ever bundled up one of your babies to send them off to another home.

After all of the hugs, kisses, high fives, knuckles, noses, more hugs, kisses, giggles, more noses, squeezes and an “Oh, wait, mommy, one more noses and kisses,” then, watching them waddle away, bundled up in their layers of fabric and layers of motherly love, and watching the door close behind them, you linger a little longer in the driveway, crying and wishing that you didn’t have to drive away for yet another day apart from them.

Maybe you can relate if you’ve had to step out of a meeting to take the call, “Mommy, are you coming home soon?” and you have to say no, because you are committed to an evening event, and you re-enter the meeting in a hazy fog, totally unable to focus because your mama’s heart aches and you have to expend all of your mental energy remembering your “WHY.” The WHY Behind the Call But that’s just it… it’s the WHY behind the call that tempers my mother’s pain.

Because as I’m working to obey a call… millions of mothers work so their babies won’t starve. Because as I’m dropping my babies off to another mother for care, there are millions of mothers who have no care options at all for their children and often must leave them home alone. Because I know of a solution to lighten the burden of the global childcare crisis and its impact on women and children suffering from its implications.

So to you mothers who can relate, and similarly have been called to something you must do… Momni moms are here for you too to mentor your children. We circle up as mama friends to contribute where we are called and to fill in gaps when another mama is on duty elsewhere, like my blessed dear neighbor who so frequently welcomes my children into her home in my absence. I need you and I’m here for you. Let’s circle up and link together.

Happy fifth birthday, Louis. Today was the first day of snow. I hope that you will keep waking me up every single night for the rest of my life with your whispery little voice: “Scootch ova mommy. I wanna be wis you.” And when the time comes that I have to accept that you’ll grow up and that dream won’t happen, then I will hope you will become a man who obeys the call when it comes, even if it is at the sacrifice of your dream.

I love you, Louis! Mama Karmel PS – Maybe you can relate if you’ve ever turned to your journal and prayer in the early morning hours of the day to release the emotions trapped in your heart, and they come out of your eyes and your pen simultaneously.