Releasing the Mom Guilt When Work Travel Calls

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releasing mom guilt work travel Providence Moms Blog

I am a work-from-home mom, and sometimes my work requires travel. I might add, this travel is super fun and is basically a five-day party with my best girlfriends. It feels more like a vacation than a work trip. As moms, I think the world tells us we’re not supposed to enjoy trips away from our families, especially work travel, so I find myself feeling conflicted.

Over a recent weekend, I was at a conference in Atlanta with about 8,000 other women. One of the speakers–a multimillionaire entrepreneur and all-around inspiration–took to the stage and talked to us about Mom Guilt. Not selling strategies, not ways to boost our belief in ourselves, not mapping out a successful year, but Mom Guilt. And it was exactly what I needed to hear.

Here I was, halfway across the country and excited for time with the best work friends anyone could ask for, and yet I was mired in Mom Guilt. Before I left for the five-day trip, I made a detailed three-page schedule of all of the things I keep in my head: this kid gets out 20 minutes before that kid on Tuesdays, but they both have activities until 5:00 on Wednesdays; this kid is invited to that birthday party on Sunday and the gift is arriving via Amazon; this kid gets lunch at school but won’t eat Shepherd’s Pie so make lunch on Monday; and on and on into infinity. This schedule included schematics detailing the pickup and drop off paths at school and other crazy minutiae. In short, this schedule was insane, and it made me wonder if I was, too.

I spent the day before my trip frantically doing everyone else’s laundry and pre-packing snacks for the kids’ backpacks instead of packing my own suitcase, which I did 20 minutes before I had to leave for the airport. I promised to bring back gifts and said goodbye way too many times. And then I got on the plane with my best friend and succumbed to the worry: would my daughter feel sad if she didn’t hear her special lullaby before bed? Would my son remember to bring his snow boots so he could sled at recess? Would anyone go to bed on time? How would my husband handle the morning drop off? Would everyone be stressed and anxious and upset, or was that just me?

Thank goodness I heard the speech about Mom Guilt the next day and not on the last day of the conference. What the wise speaker imparted was this: yes, what’s happening at home is different than how you would have done it, but that’s good for everyone. Let their dad or whoever is taking care of them be the hero and come up with his own solutions to routine problems like not having any of the pretzels they like. She reminded me that while I’m not there to swoop in and supervise homework or remember whose bath night it is, there is another capable adult in the house who can certainly handle it. And she also reminded me that it is a life skill for our children to be able to work successfully with different people. They aren’t always going to have a day that’s exactly the way they prefer it, and the sooner they are able to adjust to that, the better. Finally, she suggested that this could be a form of socialization: because the moms were away, perhaps some teenage babysitters or grandparents were helping out. It’s healthy for children–really for everyone–to learn to get along with people of all ages because when we go to college or get our first jobs, not everyone is the same age as us. Elementary school is a controlled, false environment, where all the 7-year-olds are together. Once little Sally or Johnny gets a job, the 21-year-olds don’t all have their own floor, and they don’t then graduate to the 22-year-old floor. Of course, same-age classrooms make sense, but I had to admit that she had a point.

So I took an empowering breath, released the guilt, trusted that I would get a phone call if anything horrific happened, and believed that my husband and mother-in-law had it covered. I got what I needed out of the conference, and was able to be fully present and worry-free. At the airport, before my return flight, I grabbed the gifts I had promised my children (sidenote: I asked them if they wanted toiletries from the hotel or gum from the airport. Faced with this choice, they obviously chose the gum, saving me from buying an overpriced replica of an airplane…again….).

I got home and was greeted with ecstatic hugs from happy children who had been fed, bathed, driven all over God’s green earth, and loved while I was gone. I learned that my son had conned his grandmother into sleeping in his double bed with him for the past few nights, and thought what a sweet memory that will be for both of them. I also thought that it’s something I would have said no to because it was a school night. I learned that during the school holiday while my husband was at work, she had asked them where they’d like to go for lunch and then used her GPS (which scares her) to take them there. I learned that my husband wrapped the birthday gift beautifully and made friends with other men at the birthday party. In short, I learned that not only did everyone survive without me, they thrived. And all this priceless lesson cost me was two packs of gum. 

releasing mom guilt work travel Providence Moms Blog