This was going to be a review about Sex and The City 2, but that will have to come later. This goes beyond a review of the movie and has made me review my life.

I am warning you, please do not read any further if you have not seen the movie.

Today I went to Sex and The City 2, I have been so excited about this movie. I loved the series, loved the first movie and just could not wait for the second. I love Sex and The City for many reasons. I have a love affair with New York. I feel like that is the city my soul was born in. Returning to NYC feels like coming home. So the second movie was going to take me back to that beautiful city I love and reconnect me with 4 women I grew up with and came to love.

The movie was hilariously funny and surprising ….

I have never really been a fan of Carrie, I have always found her character to be very selfish and toxic and this movie reinforced my opinion. But I love the other girls, I have always identified most with Miranda and Charlotte. Miranda because she is so driven, she doesn’t hide the fact that she loves her job and I love that about her. Charlotte is the perfect women, kind, sweet and sexy and oozing with class. She is the perfect New York socialite hiding deep inside of me. The women I would love to be with a bit of Miranda splashed in.

The movie for me was very emotional and I had to force myself to disguise my tears for laughter, because it was so overwhelming (sorry Bec). I was sitting there and watching the ever so perfect Charlotte who in the eyes of the world is the perfect women and mother, breakdown in a pantry cupboard because her children were so overwhelming and she wasn’t coping. Here is a women who has a full time nanny and a loving husband and she has spent so long pretending to be this perfect mother because she thought that is what she had to be. She is a women of privilege and felt it wasn’t fair for her to feel overwhelmed when so many other women out there do it alone.

Later in the movie we saw Miranda’s admission. A strong independent women who had just quit her job to stay at home for a while, admitted she needed her job and enjoyed being a mother but needed more in life.

This hit home to me in a big wave. I instantly burst into tears and honestly if it wasn’t such a great movie I would have had to leave.

In New York last year I had a bit of a breakthrough, something I still haven’t really dealt with but I made myself aware and shared my thoughts and feeling with Marc.

I love being a mother, Cooper is the light of my life and the reason I do anything! ….. but I need more.I realised that being a stay at home Mum was not for me, while I never wanted to work full time I still needed to have something for myself. Something that I could create and build outside of my relationship and being a Mum.

I really thought I wasn’t maternal and there was something wrong with me for not wanting to be a stay at home Mum. I always thought I was being selfish or doing something wrong. Here I am with a husband who earns great money that allows me to not only stay at home but also to live a fabulous lifestyle and I want to work and be my own person. So many women would kill to be able to stay at home and I always felt like I was being ridiculous for not working, that I should love staying at home and being a Mum.

But in all honesty for me being a full time Mum is overwhelming and sometimes like Charlotte I close my bedroom door and cry. It doesn’t happen all of the time but at times I feel like I lose myself and have to pick up the pieces again and this is where I have been again for the past few months.

This movie today reinforced my feelings I had in New York 6 months ago. They made me bring all of those feelings to the surface again and realise I am not a bad person for wanting more, I am not a bad person for not wanting to be a stay at home mother. It’s just not who I am. It doesn’t mean I don’t love Cooper, because I love him more than anything in this world.

I think it’s a combination of pressure from society and mostly pressure on ourselves. When I grew up my mother worked, however she only worked because she needed the money. If my parents didn’t need the money I am sure my mother would have stayed at home and loved it. So we are always taught that women with children work for money and if they don’t need it then they should be at home with the children …. women who want to work and want to achieve something and are not content with just being a stay at home Mum are never talked about. I have never heard anyone talk about it so I assumed that I was wrong in what I thought and felt. I felt I was doing a disservice to my Son because I can’t spend every single day at home being a Mum, that I need to work and need to have something outside of my family life.

Today I realised …. I am not alone. If they can portray that storyline in a movie there must be other women out there.

Being a mother is hard. Some women take to it like a duck to water and others struggle everyday. I struggle daily. I love being a Mummy, I love my son more than anything in this world but I also love Tuesdays and Thursdays. These are the days he goes to kindy. He has 2 days to play with other children and have fun and I have 2 days to be me … just me. I have always felt guilty for this and have had many comments from other women about the fact that I don’t have to work and I am home so why would I put my son in kindy for 2 days a week?

We are so hard on ourselves trying to live up to what we think society expects of us. The truth is we can be whatever we want to be and the only person looking down on us is ourselves.

Jen xx

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