There is an image we hold of ourselves as mothers--always patient, always loving, always kind. Every mother wants to be a great mother. She wants her children to think of her as the beautiful queen, the good fairy, and the strong lioness. Before our children are born, we think to ourselves, "I will be the perfect mother. I will always have time to listen, to kiss away tears. I will never yell at or hit my kids. I will teach them compassion and good manners. I will feed them only homemade, nutritious foods. My kids will be different."

Television and film only add to the illusion of the good mother. Marilu Henner hosted a special called "We're Having a Baby." She and several other multi-millionaires talked about their pregnancies and plans. The trouble was, they were standing in their interior-decorated nurseries, wearing custom-made maternity clothes and bragging that they had the best doctor in town. They didn't have to worry about making ends meet, affording insurance, or how they were going to handle a toddler and an infant. They failed to mention their maids, cooks, personal trainers, butlers, chauffeurs and nannies.

But we mothers in the real world know better. At my house, I am the cook, maid, chauffeur and nanny. My personal trainer is my son. He keeps me running all day long. The cook's specialties include burritos and delivered pizza. The maid barely keeps up with the laundry. And the chauffeur never gets a tip.

Despite our honorable intentions, in the real world of motherhood we find ourselves feeling angry, frustrated, exhausted. There are times when the urge to spank boils in our blood. Times when we can't stand facing a sink of dirty dishes, a floor buried in sand, peas and Legos. Times when we resent the fact we can rarely sit through a entire meal or have to drive our kid to yet another practice. Times when we feel no one is listening. We often feel ashamed of these feelings. We're not supposed to feel anger; we're supposed to feel blessed. But the feelings are there and they are real, as real as the joy of a newborn's first smile, of a toddler's wet kisses, of a teenager's mushy birthday card. Feeling angry doesn't mean we're bad mothers. It doesn't mean we love our children any less.

It's time we accept the rage of motherhood. Instead of feeling guilty, let's teach our children and ourselves how to cope with and express anger in a healthy way. We're good at getting angry at things outside ourselves--the Rockies losing, the political fight on welfare, the driver who cut us off. But showing anger to our kids or our partners is much scarier. It takes great courage to express anger, as well as great courage to accept and allow for someone else's anger.

The first step is to acknowledge we are angry. Allow that information to sink into our bodies, tracking where the feelings are located. It could be in our stomachs, our backs, or our throats. Once we can truly sense it, we can begin to discover what it is we are angry about. It might not be the milk on the floor. It may be the fact that our partner didn't acknowledge that we'd cleaned the house. I think much of our anger comes from feeling like no one is paying attention to us. We hate feeling that we're not being seen and respected for who we really are. It's the root of most relationship problems.

To allow our anger to be seen is risky. To do so without destruction requires us to fully inhabit our physical bodies, breathing into the hard places, using our voices to be heard clearly and navigating our internal terrain to know our own roots of anger and maybe see the fear behind it. Are we not getting angry with our partners because we're afraid they might leave if they see our rage? Are we simmering with anger at our children because we want to uphold the image of being the perfect mother?

The path will be challenging. Many of us carry our own unresolved anger from our own childhood. We also associate anger with being bad, violent, unlady-like. Each step we take toward learning to express anger without blame or shame, to receiving anger without taking it personally, makes us better mothers and better people. After all, mothers are part of the human race. And we get angry.

Copyright © 2001 Anna Stewart. All rights reserved worldwide.