What happens as a result when you give yourself small breaks from your responsibilities?
It is difficult to know what the result is of giving myself breaks from my responsibility.Since becoming a single parent I've not taken much time to myself. It is not that I don't want to, or think that my children can't survive a few hours without me, but it is more due to financial reasons. I am a single parent household, with no child support. It is my income only that supports us. If I take time to go out then it not only costs me the money for whatever I am going out to do (whether that be dinner, drinks, or a movie) but it also costs me the money for a babysitter. I don't have the freedom of bringing my children to relatives who will watch them for free, as our closest relatives live 2 hours away. I simply don;t have extra money in my monthly budget for added babysitting costs. I have to save those for when I have a work meeting or event in the evening that I have to attend.
I do know that when I began listing all of the household chores we have each week, and letting them go if I didn't get to them, I felt a sense of freedom. A little anxiety too because I was giving up doing everything that "needed" to be done. But I can see that we've survived, even if the house is not spotless, or the lawn is a little longer than the neighbors.
I guess what I need to do is start viewing breaks from my responsibilities in different ways. It doesn't necessarily mean I have to spend money. Maybe the break is not cleaning the house when I'm too tired, and not giving a damn if it's not done. Maybe the break is taking a Friday afternoon (when I'm not working and the kids are in daycare) and just spending it reading, or window shopping, or sitting on the beach quietly, instead of rushing to fit in all of the errands of the week into one afternoon.
I imagine if I can do this that the result will be a happier mom and therefore a better mom to my kiddos.
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