This past weekend I got a coupon code from Redbox that let me rent one movie and get another one for free. As usual when I get one of those deals, I let Christian pick a movie and I picked one for myself. Christian decided on Penguins of Madagascar. I fell asleep before it ended, lol. As often happens when I get a Redbox movie, I ended up keeping Mom’s Night Out for an extra night because I didn’t get a chance to watch it the first night. But when I did get a chance to watch it, I was really surprised.
If you don’t know what this movie is about, here is the trailer.
As you could imagine from watching the trailer, I thought that it was going to be a comedy. Flat out. What I didn’t expect was to relate so deeply to Allyson, the main character.
Allyson is stressed out and overwhelmed. She questions whether or not she is “good enough” as a mom. She looks at her life and wonders why, if she has the husband, kids, and home that she has always dreamed of, she isn’t happier. She is also in desperate need of a night out that has nothing to do with children.
Though I can’t relate to everything (Lord knows that being a single mom was not on my life’s to-do list, lol) I can relate to a lot of what she experienced. I honestly think that most (if not all) moms can relate. Being a mom can be stressful and overwhelming at times. Our houses get messy and sometimes we just can’t be bothered with trying to fix it when we have so many other things to attend to. Sometimes even a trip to the store can seem like a journey to hell and back. Our idea of dressing up goes from slinky dresses and stilettoes to finding a shirt that doesn’t have any kind of stains on it. Our idea of going out usually involves other moms…and their kids. We lose our identities. We just feel like “mom”.
Sometimes it feels like our biggest achievement for the day is actually just surviving until the end of the day.
Sometimes we just need a break. If just for a night.
And sometimes we feel guilty for wanting that. We want to be like those moms that have it all together. The perfect moms. The ones that everyone looks up to and emulates. The ones that juggle the kids, the home, and the husband with ease, grace, and joy. That never lose their tempers. That always appear to be well-coiffed and supremely poised. The moms that cook healthy, Pinterest-worthy meals every night and seem to always have the most incredible days with their children. The ones that never ever have a bad moment, let alone a bad day.
The thing is…those moms don’t exist. Not outside of TV land, at least. We are striving to be an imaginary and impossible ideal and it stresses us out. Which brings me to this quote by Bones (the tough guy with a heart of gold):
How true is that?! We spend so much time trying to be perfect and trying to do everything that we wear ourselves out. It doesn’t have to be that way. And that is what I took away from this movie. Yes, it was funny. But it was also insightful in a way that I was not expecting. Here are some of the lessons that I learned (or was reminded of) from watching Mom’s Night Out.
I leave you with Allyson’s three takeaways that she shared with her readers (because, did I forget to mention that she was also a mommy blogger):
Have you seen “Mom’s Night Out”? Did you have any takeaways from it?
