But the highs of motherhood can often be accompanied with lows. And last year, as I tried to be a fully devoted mother, a thoughtful wife, juggle household responsibilities, attend to stressful financial matters, attempt to maintain a social life, deal with family issues, transition my baby to daycare, tackle the nighttime routine alone (because of my husband's long work hours), all the while trying to succeed in my demanding and competitive full-time job (and equally feeling extreme pangs of guilt for having a full-time job), the time I actually had left to focus on my own needs quickly fell to the wayside.
And If there’s anything I’ve learned from dismissing your own needs it’s that it can have an adverse effect on your overall health. It made me irritable, fatigued, stressed out, angry, sad, mean (especially to my poor husband, who got the brunt of it), and resentful. I was jealous of my friends who got to read three books a week, my colleagues who talked about the latest workout class they did before work, my carefree friends who got to travel the world. And those precious moments of silence I did have at the end of the day when the baby slept and I finished all my work were used to scroll Instagram in a zombie-like state, which unsurprisingly didn’t make me feel any better. (Although, empowering mom-focused Insta accounts did provide me with an ounce of encouragement.)