Article: A Natural Woman

This is perfect reading for Mother's Day! 

Arm yourself with a little truth to stave off the M-day blues...

I’m glad I’m a woman. I’m glad I’m a wife. I’m glad I’m a mother. I’m glad I’m a Mormon. In fact, my Mormon-woman-wife-and-motherness is the core of my personal identity, and I recognize it as the source of my greatest blessings and opportunities for growth in this life. I am not, however, a perfect Mormon-wife-and-mother (gasp!). And any Mormon-wives-and-mothers out there reading this post? Neither are you (double gasp!).

Seriously, we’ve got issues, don’t we? We’re lazy and whiny and angry and lustful and controlling and jealous and aggressive and mean and petty and occasionally even faithless. We yell at our kids. We choose going to the movies over going to the temple. We give our husbands the silent treatment. We walk out of the grocery store in the rain with three kinds clinging to the cart, and when we realize that we forgot to have the cashier scan the 12-pack of Diet Coke, we don’t go back inside and pay for it.

And these examples are just the small things.

I don’t mention all this because I want to revel in our faults or air our dirty laundry. I’m saying it because it’s true, and as the old saying goes, the truth will set you free.

As Mormon women, we’re all familiar with the lady I like to call the Angel Mother Straight from Heaven (HT Coventry Patmore and Virginia Woolf). When I was a younger mom, the mythology of the Angel Mother filled me with a kind of numb despair. Mormon women are “naturally” inclined to want to stay home and nurture their children (so who’s this mother of two children under two sitting at the window sobbing jealous tears as her husband goes off to grad school?). Mormon women are “naturally” patient (so who’s this lady rampaging through the house when her son can’t find his soccer shoes?). Mormon women are “naturally” spiritual (so who’s this woman lying in bed reading Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale while her husband reads his scriptures?).

Thankfully, as time has passed, this mythology has held less and less sway over the way I see myself, for the simple reason that I’ve lived long enough now, and known enough Mormon women, to realize that none of us is the Angel Mother....

Read the whole article, by Angela, on Segullah. You'll be glad you did.

Thanks to Em for passing this link along to us.

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