A Love Note to the Work-From-Home Mom

Hey there, sister,

So when is the office cleaning staff coming in to whip this joint into shape? It’s a train wreck in here. What with the laundry piles and the half-eaten bowls of cereal there on the counter, it’s almost like home. Oh, wait? It is.

Now, don’t go & tank on me for that last comment. You.are.okay. Let’s just pretend those high knees over the laundry piles were kinda like we went to pilates class. Lots of core work while taking those orders via the phone. Win-win, girl. All to the good.

And your list making? It’s brilliant. I love how you intermingle bread, bananas and toilet paper right there scribbled next to mail packages, order material and pay quarterly taxes. It’s nothing short of genius.

My personal favorite is watching you eat standing up while you email clients back. It’s as if the seat there 2 inches to your right just can’t house your intergalactic, wonder working powers.

You are the epitome of what one would hear in a late night Waffle House. A third shift hairnet honey shouting to her trusty cook in her most convicted I-could-care-less voice, “Scattered, smothered and covered, Frank!”

To the Work-From-Home Mom,

I feel you. I know your inner crazy. I am right there with you in the trenches where we work to discern our 4 walls from home-to-office and back again. I am your first cup of coffee at o’dark thirty well before any human bearing your last name breathes upright and functioning. Staggering stanky- eyed trying to reveal your inner best with swiftness from last night’s slumber, you work with a motion in and of yourself for both efficiency and assurance that, “Yes, I can do this.”

I know what one hundred eleventy-seven balls feel like up, up, up in the air as you balance and adjust your position just rightly so to increase your agility and your super smooth grasping of fingers around each sphere as they drop with a devout velocity into your person.

It is a J-O-B keeping your family’s dance space both sacred and work worthy. I know those late nights there atop your pillow second guessing the counted sheep as you consider your profession and your family just the same. “Am I doing the right thing for us?” “Should I find something that separates my occupation from the place we rest and bow our heads to pray?” With their twisted baas both high pitched & colicky, sleep never comes from their counting.

I know the long hours and the intentional moments spent ensuring that home is always, yes always, where the heart is. It just so happens that the work is here, too. The struggle for balance and fresh breathes for yourself is real as it settles into your life as wife, mom and employer/employee all under one roof.

So, sister. Just know that you are not alone. That there are those just like you counting those sleepless sheep and stumbling stanky-eyed for the sake of productivity. Just know that you are doing the best for your best. That your shuffling and re-arranging and laundry pile pilates are not just happening, but they’re holding your family in place. Significantly you are home. And your design is wonder working & most certainly rockstar intergalactic. Cut yourself some slack. Pick up the piles when you can, but only when you have given out all the piles of goodness you have there inside you for the ones you love. The spheres you are most completely capable of capturing are waiting for your hands. Yes, with a devout velocity into your person, home is most beautifully where your heart should be.