Good for her

Good for her, not for me.

I first heard this when listening to Amy Poehler's book Yes Please.  She was talking about motherhood, the idea of "having it all", and the disagreement, hate, etc., etc., that can come from differing opinions on parenting. You know, the classic ones.  Working vs. staying home.  Bottle vs. boob.  Organic formula vs. non-organic formula.  The list truly goes on.

I heard Amy talking about this whole good for her, not for me notion and I wanted to scream "FEMINISM" out the car window. Because it brought to light what supporting other women actually meant.  The idea is we hear a parenting choice like a mom deciding to go back to work after having a baby (or choosing to not go back to work) and we say good for her, not for me.  We don't scoff and say oh..poor kids or  she thinks she can have it all.  We also don't turn on ourselves and think wait, is she a better mom than I am?  We remain confident and continue doing our best.

All parenting choices, ergo baby carrier debates, and motherhood aside, this idea, this good for her, not for me idea applies to all areas of life.  Later, when listening to Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, she reiterated this notion and encouraged this way of thinking.

They are words I now try to live by.  I easily compare myself to others and can quickly doubt my abilities to be a writer, a mom, a wife, a person of faith, a friend.  When if I took that negativity out of the equation I could recognize that while I'll always have room for improvement I'm doing the best I can and I'm not half-bad.  I don't need to feel bad that I don't breastfeed, or that I do stay-at-home with my kid, or that I sometimes buy organic food and sometimes I don't.  All I need to do is look at myself and my family once and a while and ask "are we happy?", "what can we do better?" and if one day I answer that question with a "I want to go back to work", then so be it.

We can't let others' opinions of us dictate how we feel we're doing in life.  All that matters is we're happy, our family is happy, we're doing the best we can, and we're living the life we want to live.