I spent yesterday shooting a new series, Mom Tales, over at the Better TV studio in midtown and wearing very cute things. That top is from Loehmann’s, but I forgot to check the label…and now I’m on the hunt for something similar.
So far I’ve found these (L to R: Whistles, Mina, Vero Moda, River Island), which…ehhh. Not exactly right. But I’ll keep looking around, and let you know if I come up with anything.
(Also loved this bracelet.)
Here’s the final look that stylist Felix Mercado (pictured with me above) put me in: a black silk dress paired with a neon belt and my own black-and-white L.A.M.B. pumps.
These women (left to right, that’s actress and comedienne Kelly Deadmon, TV personality and author Alex McCord, Better TV host Audra Lowe, me, and Parents.com blogger Jill Cordes) were unbelievably fun to work with. I mean, shoots like this always sit somewhere on the Fun Scale, but this one was special.
Seriously, the producers called it a wrap, and not a single one of us budged an inch: we sat right where we were, and kept chatting away about all those parenting-related topics that had been a little too risque to mention when the cameras were actually rolling (everything from circumcision to sex lives). It was like hearing the little voices in my head – all those things I think, but am generally too nervous to say – coming to life.
Some of the topics we covered – the working-mom guilt, the feeling of never being able to devote enough of yourself to either your job or your child – is stuff that we’ve all heard before, but to hear it said out loud by other women you admire…it’s pretty intensely relieving, just knowing that all that anxiety isn’t yours alone, and that the fact that other people who seem from the outside to be handling it all pretty well feel the same way probably means that you’re doing better than you think.
As an example, when Jill mentioned “The Failure Hour” – that time between 4:30 and 6:30 when you completely stop knowing what to do with your child, your house is a disaster, you start wondering whether watching a little extra TV would be so bad, really, you have no food in the house, and you have to start dealing with the uncountable logistical issues associated with day’s-end (see: aforementioned no food in the house)…and suggested just going ahead and embracing all that inadequacy (click here for her how-to suggestions; they involve wine), my jaw dropped.
I feel like that every day. At 4:30PM on the dot.
And then, she just casually dropped in a mention of this little conflict: how your heart aches terribly for your children when they’re not around (literally, I wake up in the middle of the night with pain in my chest because I want to hold my son so badly)…but then when they are there, sometimes you sort of…
well…
…want them to go to bed. So you can get some work done. Or do chores. Or look at the Internet. Or watch Gray’s Anatomy. Whatever.
I’m sure all moms feel this way. But to hear it out loud? Floored. And grateful. A big thanks to all the women out there for sending me home with a ton more knowledge and security than I started the day with.
