Will the Real Mothers Please Stand Up?

I'm a mom, not a superhero.

By Alaina Sheer

Let's just set the record straight, shall we?

Superheroes, by definition, have powers that are super human like leaping tall buildings in a single bound, wielding magic lassos, casting storm clouds or even breathing under water. Last week on Twitter a father I know sent me a a message from the war zone, "I'm @ home all day with sick baby (wife's outta town). Don't know how you do this all the time by yourself. You = superhuman."

I smiled and wrote back, "I know - crazy isn't it? CRAZY. And that is why I tell people I am allowed to "lose it" every once in a while. Tks for the props."

I hear it often. Typically in the most genuine of ways from married parents whose spouse leaves town for the weekend.

But last I checked my only "super powers" are being able to clean the kitchen and entertain my son at the same time, change a dirty diaper without gagging and grocery shopping without losing my mind. I may be a single working mother but all moms, single or not, are not super human. We are just human. And some of us, like myself, may need more help than others but we adapt with or without help in any given environment because we have to -- it's motherhood, baby.

During my pregnancy, like every mother I know has done, I went worked full-time. On the Friday before my due date, two days after the event I'd been planning for the last three months had gone off without a hitch, I sat down for dinner with my husband and my water broke. I was finally ready.

Three months before, starting to swell and so incredibly tired, remember asking myself, "what am I going to do when he actually gets here? How do women do this? How will I work (successfully) and raise a child?"

There were no clear answers. Every book, every magazine, every movie and TV show had all painted pictures of these super hero moms - doing it all without breaking a sweat. These mythical creatures, like Mrs. Brady and Mrs. Cleaver are buried in our psyches. If we are not the perfect mother, with sparkling white toilets and fresh cookies every Sunday, we are failures.

Then something amazing happened. I discovered an article in Elle Magazine by Gloria Steinem titled, "Success is not doing it all."

It's impossible, she wrote, for women to do it all. By telling us that a successful woman should work full-time, be a mother, a wife and -- let's not forget -- look fabulous doing it, society is actually setting us up to feel like failures because it's impossible. We can't do it all, and Steinem says this idea of doing it all is actually the "enemy of equality not the path to it."

And here's the part that burned into my mind when I read it: "The women's rights movement isn't finished."

The pressure of motherhood in today's world, if you think about it, is unbelievable -- and it comes at us from every direction, every day, in every hour and in every minute. If we're doing one thing, we're often thinking about another. If we're working, we wish we could be home with the kids. If we're staying at home, we wonder what it would be like to have that career. But while raising a human is arguably the most important job on this planet, there are no exceptional clauses to protect mothers in the work place. For example, we can't leave work early to pick up our children from school -- no parent can without potentially losing their job.

I tore the article out and stuck it to my cubie wall during my pregnancy so I could read it every day. Somehow, her words had enlightened me to the fact that I had to write a new definition for success -- my own definition.

Today with the advent of blogs and all other forms of online communication, millions of moms are rewriting the definition of success by telling their own stories - re-writing the definition of success one word at a time. The real stories from the trenches of motherhood have emerged.

As a result, advertisers, politicians, employers and the media are no longer telling us how to think, or what we should feel but asking us for a seat at the table. Take President-Elect Barack Obama, for example: His website Change.gov asks visitors for their opinions on issues facing our country. The winning questions, by user vote, will be on the table for the transition team to address. As for whether or not it will work, we'll see but at least it's a start.

Most women's magazine and television websites, like this one, allow you to leave comments -- to offer up your opinion. The collective voice we hear is no longer being written to us, but being written by us. And this is just the beginning. (You can't see my face or hear my voice, but I'm beaming with excitement right now -- I'm cheesy like that and an eternal optimist in the human spirit, especially in the spirits of women).
 
In my corner of cyber space, I have been one of many voices in the single motherhood community for over one year now. 

Finding my voice and connecting with all of my readers has saved my sanity and pulled me through my darkest moments. Now when I pick up a magazine bursting with supermodels and extravagantly expensive handbags I find myself staring at strangers, false impersonators with hallow faces and not one kid stain on their shirts. Then I toss it in the trash and open up my lap top to find real mothers, real women.

Their voices whisper in my head throughout my day. If another mother tells me she understands my pain and has her own, I feel less alone. We're also thinking and creating solutions, in our personal lives that's as simple as realizing that we are not superheros and that we are not perfect.

As WeTV.com's resident mommy blogger I'll be sharing stories from my world as a working single mom. You'll meet my 2-year-old son Benjamin, the hero who pulls me through it all and the love of my life. And because I'm a single mother I'm sure they'll be some fun dating stories here and there, but that's another story for another day.

We'll laugh, we'll cry and yes, occasionally we'll pump our fists in the air proudly and say, "Hey, we are not super heroes, so stop telling us we should be."

What is your definition of success? Leave a comment - it's therapeutic - I promise. Let's start talking, shall we?