If Mama Ain't Happy by Rachel Norman

Author:Rachel Norman [Norman, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION / Christian Living / Parenting, RELIGION / Christian Living / Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9781496459824
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
Published: 2022-10-11T00:00:00+00:00

Connected but lonely

If I’m obsessively following the lives of total strangers, I am not focused on my own life. I’m focused on what others think about my life.

Thanks to the internet, we are more connected than ever before, but interestingly enough, we are also lonelier. Funny how that works. The more we live online, the less we live in the here and now. The less we live in the present, the more anxious and depressed we feel.

But this isn’t because we are bad mothers.

We are often caring for small children at home with little social interaction. The days are long, but the years are short. Playdates often seem like more trouble than they’re worth. Running errands or getting coffee with friends when you have three kids three and under? Fat chance. Grocery delivery and the Keurig will do.

Days go by without shaving or doing our hair; after all, why would we want to spend two hours getting ready to spend one hour in a coffee shop in fight-or-flight because our toddler won’t sit still just so we can attempt to have an adult conversation?

Also, many women live far from their own families. It can feel exhausting to put roots into an area or even just put yourself out there. Who knows how long it will be before you move again? And if you’re introverted, it may feel like too much effort for too little gain. It can take months or even years to make deep friendships, so of course it’s easier to message existing friends even if they live states away.

Sometimes our daily lives are so full that we don’t think we even have time for people outside our household. There’s work and then all the cooking, chores, and bedtime routines.

We’re in survival mode, just trying to stay afloat.

Then to top it all off, most people’s focus has shifted away from local issues. We are obsessed with national politics and don’t know who our town’s mayor is. We chat with strangers in online mom groups from across the country, but we haven’t met our neighbors in similar life stages. We stream sermons from pastors in another state and barely even talk to our own.

While none of this is necessarily bad or good, in a moral sense, it does have effects. We become disconnected from the place and people where we are actually living our daily life—including, at times, our own kids!

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