INDEPENDENCE FROM...GUILT!

- Liane Weintraub, Editor-in-Chief

Guilt – it’s a killer.  Almost every ethnicity and religious tradition has its own unique spin on it.  I’m especially acquainted with the Jewish Guilt variety.  Whatever the particular flavor of your brand of guilt, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.  As life gets busier and more complicated, that only means there are more opportunities to feel guilty.
I used to go through my entire day feeling rotten about something.  During my morning rituals with my children, I would fret about what was happening at the office in my absence.  At work I stressed about not being the one to pick up my daughter at school.  When my son was younger, I felt badly every time I pumped rather than ran home to nurse him.  And so it went, from the moment I woke up in the morning until I lay sleeplessly in bed at night, I felt guilty all day long. 

Women have the ability to do 12 things (usually pretty well!) at once

And then there are all of society’s pressures – it’s easy to feel under attack (and therefore guilty) if you fall short of perfection.  As someone who wants to consider herself an environmentalist, I felt terribly inadequate whenever faced with someone whose commitment seemed greater and more noble than my own. After all, shouldn’t we all be able to renounce cars, wear only rubber shoes and live off the fruits of our own land?!
See what I mean?  The guilt thing can really be a killer.  You start out just wanting to be a good mother and a decent person, and the next thing you know you’re beating yourself up about everything you do. 
So I say, no more! 

When we came up with the Tastybaby tag line, “The Flavor of a Balanced Life,” we chose our words very carefully.  In fact, “Balance” has become a sort of mantra around here.  The idea behind it, which I remind myself of every time that guilty feeling starts creeping up on me, is that balance is the key to a happy – dare I say, “Tasty?” – life.  What good is it to incorporate healthy, planet-friendly behaviors into your life if the result is that you’re going to feel worse about things?  I’m sure you’ve heard it mentioned before, but no one is perfect, so drop that as your goal and you’ll be able to feel a whole lot better about the things you DO, as opposed to the things you DON’T.

To clear your mind, find a sanctuary or a calm place to meditate for a few minutes a day.

The entire premise of the Tasty lifestyle is to celebrate whatever we all do to make our children happier and healthier and to make our world a better place.  That means we delight in stories about giving up premium TP in favor of recycled toilet paper (Suzy Shuster’s blog, “My Tush Will Never Be The Same”) or the decision to switch to fluorescent bulbs (Debbie Fisher’s “Project Green Light”).  And the truth is that everything counts.  Whether the changes are life-altering and the sacrifices major or whether they are the small, incremental ways we choose to make difference, it all adds up and makes a positive impact.  And what could there be in that to feel guilty about?