The other day, I ran to the grocery store after work with both my kiddos. I was still in my scrubs and my girls were both being little angels. I ran into an acquaintance.
“Man, I just don’t know how you do it all!” she exclaimed with a look of wonder.
“Well,” I said, “it’s really not that hard. I stay organized with meal prep schedules. I keep my coupons organized digitally on my phone and record when I need specific groceries. I wake up at 5 AM every morning to prep dinner and to make it to my 5:30 AM spin class before having to be at work at 7. During my lunch break, I check my email and update my Instagram. When I get home from work, I hug both of my wonderfully-behaved children and finish dinner prep. We eat dinner as a family. After dinner, my kids and I do structured playtime for an hour before bath time and bedtime. We read two books, sing one song, and the girls fall asleep. Then I do a load of laundry, vacuum, and clean the kitchen. I shower, wash and dry my hair, do my skincare routine, and climb into bed.”
Right?
That’s how we moms do it.
Sure. In our Instagram influencer-fueled fantasy land.
No.
What I actually said was this:
“Well, I have a lot of help. A lot.”
And what I meant was that I literally could not function without all of my help, paid and unpaid.
I have a nanny who comes to our house, watches our girls, feeds our girls, does their laundry and washes their dishes, preps their lunches, and takes them on playdates. I don’t have to rush to pack bags and to get the girls to daycare before work, and I don’t have to rush out of the office at the end of the day before daycare closes.
I have a cleaning lady who deep-cleans our house every other week so I can spend less time cleaning and more time with my family.
I have a husband who gets up with me at night every three hours to give our newborn a bottle while I pump, who fearlessly takes both girls out on errands with him so I can get an hour of peace and quiet, and who pretty much does all of our laundry.
I have a sister-in-law and mother-in-law who, even though they live over an hour away, are our go-to babysitters on weekends and who both came to stay with us for a week when we had a newborn so I could shower and eat and feel like a human.
We have an office manager who keeps handles all of our business errands, reminds us of deadlines, keeps track of our schedules, and helps run the business. She keeps us sane during the workweek and handles a lot of grunt-work for us.
That’s my team. Those are people. I love them all. I need them all.
A few months ago, someone on Twitter asked Chrissy Tiegen how she “does it all,” and she got a lot of flack for admitting that she has an entire team to help her. She got a lot of “Oh, wow, must be sooo nice to have all that help.” But she was answering the question honestly, and essentially saying (paraphrasing here), “Yes, it IS nice to have this help. I couldn’t do it without it.”
So why did everyone get so upset about that? Why would we rather believe there are these superwomen that exist who can do way more than humanly possible with their 24 hours every day? Why do we want to feel “less-than” on days when our lives are chaos: when we feed our kids cereal for dinner, saturate our hair with dry shampoo, and rewash a load of laundry because it sat in the washing machine for two days? Why are we so scared to acknowledge that we can’t do everything every day?
I’d rather peek behind the curtain and know that we’re all human and all need help. And I’d rather admit that I have a support system than perpetuate the lie that mythical “do-it-all” women exist. Who does that help? Just my ego. No thanks.
Instead, I choose to appreciate all my “people” by verbally acknowledging them. I choose to uplift other women who are struggling to get through the day by saying, “Hey, me too. There’s no way I could do it alone, either.” I choose to show my daughters that it’s both okay to accept help and to celebrate those who help us.
That’s how I do it all.
