The Mommy/Career Choice

Ah! I found words of wisdom on Celebrity Baby Scoop from Denise Richards who is mom to three girls.

"You have to take the pressure off yourself. If you try to make everything perfectly balanced, that can create guilt. When I'm working, things give at home and when I'm at home, things give at work," Denise tells Women's Wear Daily.

This is the message I know that I need to learn well. I often get distracted and guilty feeling when I’m trying to work and then when I’m spending time with the kids I’m thinking of all the work I need to do.

We all need to allow ourselves to do what feels right for us when it comes to the mommy/career choice.

And for those moms who want to have it all, we need to remind ourselves we don’t need to have it all at the same moment!

Of course, it would also be nice to be able to just jet off to a tropical locale whenever we want to have some family down time like Denise Richards…

Suck It, Hypocrisy and Guilt!

Plastic Surgery Blog reports that actress Denise Richards feels hypocritical in promoting her daughters’ healthy body images because of the work she has had done—breast augmentation. She wishes she had not had the surgeries and blames them on her lack of self confidence.

“I often times feel like a hypocrite with my daughters when trying to teach them to have a healthy view on beauty and body image. I’m in a business where looks and weight do matter,” she wrote on iVillage.

I applaud Richards’ courage in admitting the hypocrisy, a conflict I experience within myself. I often find myself encouraging my daughter that looks aren’t what matter, but I am faced with the dilemma of how important looks were to me at one point of my life.

I know there will be a day when my daughter will learn of my past that was centered around beauty, but I hope that the model I am setting now accurately represents how I truly feel: the most important goals in life are not outer beauty, but self-love and acceptance, expression of individuality, a sense of integrity in everything we do, and the development of close-knit relationships.

Hopefully, through the example I set as I live forward, I will teach my children that loving who we are, inside and out, is the most beautiful thing in the world.