Writing about parenting is hard work, and not because of the reasons you might think. Sure, there is the struggle to find the right words to capture the broad spectrum of universal feelings and experiences. We struggle with what to share and what to hold back. We dig deep into our souls to find the humor in the banal and the poignancy in the mundane. But the hardest thing about writing about parenting is coming up with fresh material. Because it’s basically all been done. And most of it has been written about somewhere.
So you can imagine my delight when I stumbled across a parenting post yesterday that tickled my funny bone and had me sending physic kudos to the author, Parenting.com’s editor at large, Stephanie Dolgoff. I was trolling CNN.com and came across the title: “31 reasons you shouldn’t feel Mom guilt”. Given yesterday’s post, you can surmise that I needed 100 reasons not to feel Mom guilt – but I figured I would start with 31.
The post is really mis-titled. It should read “31 things not to feel guilty about”. Instead of the usual psycho-barf of mantras that typify these articles, Dolgoff hit the ball out of the park, rattling off a mother lode of confessions that I have never heard publicly before but have ricocheted around my mind for some time.
My favorites? Hard to pick one – but I can seriously bond with Dolgoff over numbers 1 – 5, 8 -11, 13-15, 17-20, 22 (yup), 24, 26, 28 and 30. And for the record, number 12 takes the cake, even though I have never done this.
Curious?
Each one of these gems is worthy of its own blog post. And I’m sure we all have ones to add. If so, do share. Here’s one from me: I get insanely envious when a writer I do not know personally puts a parenting piece together that is clever and entertaining — and that writer is not me. So in the spirit of not feeling blameworthy about the green monster sitting on my shoulder this morning, here’s to Stephanie Dolgoff!
Have a great – and guilt free – weekend!
