Moms who like to be alone: are you one?

I have been thinking about Uma Thurman's doctor's prescription for alone time.

Now that's a prescription to which I could get addicted.

Human beings are complex. We often feel seemingly contradictory feelings about something at the same time. That doesn't make one feeling or the other any less real or less valid. It might just mean something is a little out of balance in our lives.

For instance, sometimes I just want my family to go far, far away and leave me alone.

However, then I want them to come back!

I also secretly want my own apartment down the street.

But I still want to live here with my husband and kids!

This is all completely normal. Taking breaks and even "vacations" from motherhood - or wanting to - is a completely healthy response to the everyday challenges of raising kids.

Nothing chaps my hide more than when a mom expresses that she's overwhelmed with some or all aspects of parenting and someone responds, even jokingly, with, "Maybe you shouldn't have had kids then."

Are you kidding me? That's like a passionate and hard-working professional putting in a vacation request and the Human Resources department saying, "If you want vacation time so badly, maybe you shouldn't have a job then."

Too much of a good thing is pretty much always a bad thing, and that goes for motherhood too. No matter how much we love our kids and like our "jobs" as mothers, if we don't take time to rest and rejuvenate, to visit with friends or read a book, or heck, to stare out the window for a nice half hour, then we're not doing anyone any good, especially our kids. We get cranky and resentful, even depressed and unhappy.

Do you simultaneously love being a mom and want to be alone? What do you do about it?

Written by Sheri Reed for CafeMom's Healthy Living Buzz