Where have all the happy moms gone?

It's like they've all been swept away by the Covid pandemic leaving people -- mainly their kids and husbands -- wondering if they'll ever come back?

I'm here to tell them (and perhaps you?) that they will.

It's just that on a random day in early 2020, our world was shook.

Our kids were shook,

our jobs,

our finances,

our sense of security,

our marriages,

our kids' education

our friendships,

our home life,

any semblance of stability and normalcy of routine,

with, for some, our physical and emotional well-being as a casualty of this unforeseen health war.

Mothers everywhere, all over the world, suddenly got a few new pretty freakin' dire tasks added to their already full plate with those responsibilities being,

don't catch covid,

don't let your kids catch covid,

don't let your parents or grandparents catch covid,

don't give covid to anyone else,

distance from your village,

figure out a way to carry on without them but still be there for yours (at six feet apart, of course),

keep gettin' sh*t done but give grace to those who aren't,

keep your woes to a minimum and your gratitude at maximum,

and find a way to optimistically and successfully navigate a global health pandemic that has and continues to unrelentingly wreak havoc on all that you had come to expect and want from your everyday daily life.

And as if mothers didn't already innately demand so much from themselves, now everyone is expecting and urging us to carry and press on, complaint-less,

"like a good woman should."

Or so it seems.

Until we don't oblige.

Until we openly talk about our anxieties and struggles and how pandemic life is hard, and we remind the world

-- and some of its fake and overcritical people --

that the best way to deal with the hard stuff isn't to ignore it, but to lean into it, our ever-changing moods, and each other.

For many of us mamas, the way to a better outlook and cheerful mood is paved with honest disclosures of our less than social share-worthy moments and perspectives, as it's through our sometimes embarrassing and guilt-provoking admissions that we find the need, desire, and energy to introspect our way to a more upbeat version of ourselves.

Where have all the happy moms gone? The answer is nowhere.

They're still here.

They're just buried under the pressure that is parenting during a pandemic.