Every morning for the last few months has been rush-crazy. I’m counting in 3000 steps in the first 2 hours of my day. I’m cooking, cleaning, packing, washing, screaming, yelling, growling, mumbling, swearing, anything you can think of, I’m doing it. At the end of it, once everyone is out the door, I think I may pass out just to realize I still have one child at my knee asking me for something more to eat over the ten things he’s already had in the last couple of hours. I remember last week checking my heart rate at this point and thinking, this is it. This is how I go out.

Over the weekend, I coached myself into coming to terms with getting out of bed sooner than usual no matter how much sleep I lacked.

Today, I woke up 45 minutes ahead my regular schedule. The sun being up already helped with the process as well. I was excited about the extra time I had on my hands, so I planned the kids’ meals and did everything nice and proper. The kids were ahead of time respectively too for their school pick up and drop off.

I still counted 3000 steps though, despite starting early. But this time around, I didn’t feel like I was going to pass out. And I was leisurely enjoying my drive home after school drop off when I had a different and heart-breaking realization. I’d forgotten to keep cutlery in the girls’ lunch bags for their meals. I had never done this before, and I couldn’t for the life of me imagine why I messed up for both of them. They say there’s always a first time yeah. And this was mine in this case.

I stepped on the gas and drove the rest of the way home in a frenzy, trying to come up with solutions and anxious about the “if nots”. After all my effort, the girls would go hungry and disappointed. And I couldn’t fathom that I would be the one that caused it. How could I have been so careless?!

By the time I was back home, and the littlest one was carefully laid down in bed to continue his nap, I came to the conclusion that I would contact their schools and let them know and ask them to help with the situation – providing the girls with disposable spoons before their lunch breaks. And this is what I did as opposed to my initial thought of driving all the way to both the schools to drop off spoons. And the schools immediately responded assuring me that they would take care of it.

Now, here’s the thing. My guilt didn’t end there. I had already made up my mind to apologise to the girls once they’re home for making such a blunder. And I felt terrible about letting someone else know that I had made a mistake and asking for their help. And then once that help was offered, I felt guilty for inconveniencing them.

Two things that hit me after all of this happened was that once we drop off our children at school, they are the responsibility of the school. When they are within those walls, the documents that we have signed and witnessed state that the wellbeing of the child will be taken care of by the adults within the facility till that responsibility is handed back to us at the end of the school day. And so, it is okay to ask them for help when the child is within the parameters of their responsibility.

Second thing that hit me was, why do I have to feel so guilty about making a mistake or about asking for help and then receiving that help?

As mothers, and as women, we tend to hold ourselves accountable at a level higher than most human beings are held at. Are we being fair to ourselves this way?

When I teach my children that it is okay to make a mistake because that is how we learn, why is it that I don’t follow the same principle myself for my person?

Am I so all accomplished that I don’t have the need any more to learn and grow and so am refused the opportunity to make mistakes?

Mom guilt is so real, and I know how not alone I am in feeling this. The amount of convincing it took me to reach out for help, with something as trivial as providing my girls a disposable spoon to eat their meal with at school, was exhausting. And the day has only started.

This is a reminder that asking for help is okay. If anyone thinks that we are here to prove that we can do it all, on our own, then we forget the purpose of our existence as a community, the reason that the world is filled with people and still filling up.

Our test is not our own, but of a collective growth. Because if there wasn’t another human being next to us with their own differences and paths, what are we learning really? We would just be going about our day doing the daily things that we do. We would be experts at it and that would be that.

Now, when someone throws a curveball at us, we figure out how to dodge it or how to hit it. And the next time, we get better at it. And every person that is placed in our life is a different lesson to be learned, a different experience to be had.

It is beautiful how different we all are and the difference we all bring to the table. Monotone is beautiful but imagine the vibrancy of colour in its place. Everything has its own season and reason for being.

And that’s what we are, when we make a mistake, and we need to fix it. When we’re guilty about it, we need to remind ourselves instead that what we are and what we’ve done, is a pop of colour, on that bleak background. That’s what brings the fun in and makes life less monotonous. And who enjoys monotony yeah?

So, remember – it’s okay to be a pop of colour sometimes. You’re perfect because of it!

Love always,