Not Guilty


4 minute read

Guilt. Such a wasted emotion. It serves no real purpose and yet as a working mum who is juggling, I am riddled with it. It is the sun around which my world orbits, the ‘long iceberg of guilt’ as writer Edna O’Brien calls it – that brutal self-flagellation that comes with being a parent, especially a mum. 

I’m not sure where it started, although probably before my twins were born as I deliberated whether I should have that glass of wine or cup of coffee while pregnant. When they were three months old I took on my first commission post-pregnancy, writing manically while they napped, all the while feeling the nagging guilt that I should be concentrating on being a parent and not on my laptop. Cue two years later as I watched them standing teary-eyed at the creche window, I shut the car door, wincing internally while waving cheerily as I drove away, only to crumble into tears around the corner.

It’s a perennial emotion, there when you serve the fluorescent-coloured shop-bought fish fingers instead of your homemade ones for dinner, when you finally ‘lose it’ after they’ve refused to eat the fluorescent-coloured fish fingers or when they wipe their ‘bolognese face’ on your new white shirt. When they’re explaining the intricacies of their Minecraft game and catch you looking at your phone (in my defence, is there anything more boring than your child explaining video games?). When you eat half of their Easter egg and blame it on the dog (you deserve that one). It’s there while you navigate screen time and when screens become the only leverage you have for good behaviour. As I write this, my three children are next door with the ‘technology babysitter’. I told them they could have an hour while I worked, that’s now trickled to two hours and I’m starting to feel those familiar pangs nibbling at my gut. Feeling guilty takes up so much time and emotion I’d much rather spend enjoying with my kids so this afternoon I’ve promised ice creams at the beach: a happy trade-off. 

It’s like a swinging pendulum: the logical part of my brain knows that I am doing my best, balancing work and time with the kids pretty well but still, it bulldozes me.

Sometimes I get up early in the morning to go for a cycle often returning to sad faces and comments like “where were you mum, we didn’t get our early morning hug?”. A hell of a way to start your day. When I told a friend this, she quite rightly quipped that kids ‘smell your guilt from very far away’. Like an Olympian preparing for battle, you must not show your hand. So when I announced recently that I was taking my own mum, who I hadn’t seen in almost a year, away for a weekend with my sister I did not ‘show my hand’ until the day before when I casually dropped it into the conversation as they were shovelling fluorescent fish fingers into their mouths.

“Yay, a weekend with just dad,” they yelled. I can’t say I wasn’t a little bit hurt but equally delighted there were no ‘sad faces’. That evening when I rang to check-in, they were eating McDonalds and too busy building a fort to entertain my phone call. When I finally arrived home refreshed from a child-free, work-free weekend, the sound of their little steps bounding towards the door in excitement was the icing on the proverbial ‘me weekend’, making me realise that time spent apart is good for everyone. We need short respites from the endless snack requests defining our everyday lives and they need short respites from us, if nothing but to appreciate us that little bit more.

On the mothering radar, I’ve progressed from being required every hour of the day when they were toddlers to finally having a bit more freedom now they are eight and 10. When they were young I clung on, panicked, to my professional identity while tumbling through toddlerdom and bouncing between the time zones of school and work. I’m still bouncing between those time zones only now I have managed to carve a little more time for myself. The guilt still gnaws at my edges but putting my own oxygen mask on first might be the answer to becoming the parent I want to be.

But mentioning the words self-care to mums is often met with gigantic eye rolls. Who has the resources for it? And yet it doesn’t have to be a weekend away, although that really is the pinnacle of therapy. For me, I don’t need a fancy dinner or massage, just the thought of nobody touching me or interrupting me with inane bickering while I lie on a bed binging bad TV, is enough.

It can be as simple as doing something that mentally, physically and spiritually keeps you going. Yes, I know, we feel guilty about taking that time but consider this: have your children ever really seen you putting yourself first in a real tangible way, or just being lazy? If we’re not careful they may start to believe that mothers exist only to serve others until they basically keel over with exhaustion or that taking care of themselves is bottom of the priority list.

Now when I’m feeling the working-mum guilt it’s tempered more often with the thought that staying home will not make me a better mum. In fact, I am not me if I’m not working and being creative.

I want to set an example for my kids, my daughters especially, to show them a  mum that is hardworking and that reaps its own rewards, and one that is part of women advancing. 

Yes, the guilt will always hover but in the words of Mark Zuckerberg ‘done is better than perfect’ (this applied liberally certainly helps). I have accepted guilt as part of my life; you can’t have perfection in every aspect as that requires a sort of mammoth compromising that would break you entirely. When the guilt does creep in I ask myself “Are the kids happy, healthy, safe, loved?’. Yes, they are. Fluorescent fish finger anyone?

Orla Neligan, August 2021

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