Mom’s Night Out

For Mother’s day, my daughter wanted to take me to see the movie Mom’s Night Out. I loved this movie. It’s about a mom who is at her whit’s end. She has the life she always dreamed of, but for some reason, is not happy. Most of us moms have been there at some point. Before I had children, I had a list of things I couldn’t wait to do with my kids as a family. That dream was crushed when my son was diagnosed with autism. Only, I didn’t realize it right away.
Doctors, therapists, social workers, family members and friends all told me early intervention was the key. “Do the intervention and everything will be fine.” they said. But so far, that has not been our reality. After his diagnosis, I focused on his therapy sessions. I believed if I focused on his therapy, one day, everything would be fine and I’d have the family I had always dreamed of.  
I reached my breaking point shortly after we moved out of our home state. For a while after we moved there, most people didn’t know my name. They’d call me Desiree’s mom or Chris’ mom, or they’d call me by my last name. I woke up one day and I didn’t know who I was anymore. Everything I liked was because one of my kids liked it. Everything I did was because my kids wanted to do it. I couldn’t think of anything I liked that was just mine and no one else’s. I began to feel like I didn’t have any identity other than that of “mom” and “wife.”
I knew that because I had a special needs child I wasn’t going to be able to do the things I had always dreamed of doing with my family. I also knew I couldn’t go on feeling the way I was feeling. I had to re-define myself and my ideas of how a family spends time together. I had to find new interests. Most importantly, I had to find interests that included children with special needs.
I looked up different events going on around town and attended the ones we could. I attended more events at our church. I did some volunteer work at my kids’ school. I volunteered at the local animal shelter. Shortly after the birth of my 3rd child, I joined a mom’s group. That was probably the best thing I did for myself, because there were always new members looking for new friends. I started attending mom’s night out events. It felt fabulous to get away and have my own identity even if it was for a short time. I was trying to re-invent myself and had no idea what my likes and dis-likes were. I did as much as I could in an effort to figure out who the “new me” was.
Back to the movie. The mom was spending so much time beating herself up because she couldn’t keep up with the world around her, she was making herself miserable. The mom in the movie hadn’t gone out in ages because she felt so guilty about leaving her kids. She felt so bad that her house wasn’t clean all the time. She sacrifice her sleep to clean the house before the kids woke up. Why do us moms do that to ourselves? Even in an air plane they tell you in an emergency, put the oxygen mask on yourself first THEN put the oxygen mask on your child. You can’t safe your child’s life if you are dead because you didn’t take the time to put your own mask on first. It’s so important that us moms learn to give ourselves the time to take care of ourselves without feeling guilty. It’s so important we put our oxygen masks on first.