Why Can't We All Get Along?

Rereading my post from yesterday, I began to get down on myself. I made a snap judgement about a stranger, based off of a 60 second encounter on a checkout line. Surely, I'm not always at my finest while juggling bags of junk and 20 lbs. of squirmy baby. Maybe she was having a bad day, fought with her husband, needed a hug for goodness sakes. And I played sanctimommy, tsk tsking a woman I envied for not being the mother I hope I am. One of my least favorite things about new mommyhood is other mommies, I have to admit. Being a young, working mother, I have faced serious judgement and outright distain from other parents for my "choices". Having bounced back from a pretty gruesome labor and delivery in no time (I wolfed down a pizza burger in the recovery room as my family watched on in horror), I assumed that I would waltz down parent lane, an example to all who saw me. Well... not so much.

I read a lot of parenting jazz online as a substitute for real life advice. My friends are young. Childless. Awesome but clueless to the problems I'm facing in some instances. My parents are old. My mom had me at 37 and was completely rooted in life when she entered parenthood. My surprise pregnancy - 6 weeks after the ink on my marriage license was dry - was a totally different ball game and, while supportive, she wasn't particularly useful. Although I used to nanny, parenting full time is a totally different story. I figured the companionship I was missing in real life could be substituted, virtually.

Apparently, the Internet isn't the place to go for support. I lurked on blogs where I watched moms snip at each other, criticizing parenting techinques, childcare philosophies, even children's fashion! And I began to absorb some of that attitude. Instead of focusing on feeling better, instead of focusing on supporting other mother's so they never felt the way I did, I became a mean girl. I would make snide comments in my head - and sometimes on a blog - about how wrong everyone was, how superior I was. Yuck. I started to feel better but for all the wrong reasons. At least there were people out there worse off then me. I might not have it all together but at least I didn't (blank).

And then yesterday happened. I was having a bad day. I hate Mondays. After a fun filled weekend with my precious daughter and beloved husband, I have to wake up and trudge through my paperwork, interface with my clients, and appease my difficult employers. It's not that I hate my job... it's that I love my family more. And this woman, who I will call Target lady, who I would have traded places with in an instance, set me off. I wish I knew her so I could apologize but... shoulda, coulda, woulda. Odds are we'll never cross paths again. So I'm going to make the change where I can. I'm not going to stop voicing my opinion - there are blogs I regularly post on, posts that I stand behind, that I feel strongly about, that I have no problem defending. And I'm not going to fail to protect a child in need - in real life or virtually. But I'm going to work on the personal thing. I have so much to be thankful for - and so many better things to be doing - then bashing a stranger.