I once read a book named 'How Full is Your Bucket?' by Donald Clifton. It talks about your need to fill your bucket in order to give away a part of yourself (your time, your energy, your love) to the ones in your family and in your influence.
It made so much sense to me, as a working mother, that as our bucket 'empties' we are unable to love our families and our children the way that we need to. It is a matter of priorities. We take the love that others have shown us to fill the bucket of our lives so that we can love others. Sometimes we are giving away love and receiving none back in the process.
It is a constant struggle as a parent, how do you keep the bucket full when it seems that we continually give away more than we receive. I think the definition of motherhood is 'give away more love than you can ever possibly receive in return'.
The bucket can be filled by friends, family, or God, and needs to be replentished often. There are phases of our life where replentishing the bucket is much harder than others. It is at those times that we must fortify ourselves for the long marathon of parenthood and marriage.
Figure out a way to fill your bucket. Find a way to fill the bucket that will enable you to spread love on all those around you. Sometimes I fail at this miserably. Here's hoping that you do a better job of this than I often do.