Growing up in the eighties, I vividly remember a perfume commercial with a gorgeous gal clad in a chic suit prancing home from work in sky-high heels to assemble a gourmet dinner for her adoring family. The catchy tune playing in the background “I can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan…,” became the mantra of a generation of women trying to do it all. Just being a stay-at-home mom lost its glamour and allure as women flocked into the corporate world.
This pseudo super-woman was beautiful and fit (despite feasting on bacon), a doting mother, sexual tiger to her man, room mom, CEO and host of a weekly wine group. Mattel even made Dr. Barbie in a white coat and gave the doll a more professional ensemble to match her new identity. Barbie pushed her twins in a double-stroller and then drove to work in her pink corvette smiling and waving at the nanny.
And a whole generation of young women bought into the lie we could be all things and do all things well, forgetting the natural limitations of energy and balance and sanity.
Clearly the song forgot to mention how super-woman started having heart palpitations and chronic fatigue before she hit forty. It failed to acknowledge super-woman’s love/hate relationship with her job, the guilt of constantly dumping car-pool on her neighbor, and the anxiety of slipping out of work early every Thursday to watch her son play t-ball. The song didn’t address sleepless nights with baby, shouting curses at her husband over who would get up for the four a.m. feeding, playing dead from sheer exhaustion when her husband begs for sex, and stapling badges on her little girl scouts sash in a last minute desperation because she hasn’t a clue where a needle and thread might be hiding.
The song left out all the unspoken but necessary intangibles that go along with a real life of balancing work and children and hubby. When I recently saw the movie, “How Does She do it all?” I laughed bitterly. Not only could I have written the script –my life was even more hectic with three kids, a full-time job and a freelance career on the side. But something in me identified with this compulsion to master motherhood and family despite the toll it was taking on my body. I wasn’t ready to give up anything, choosing instead to scurry and race along on an endless hamster wheel of busyness, always on the edge of hurtling off into the abyss and a nervous breakdown.
I really thought I could pull it off. I was the exception. Sure, my eating habits were getting a little processed and I exercised less often than more; but I was holding up and playing the martyr mommy role with gusto until my heart literally stopped me.
The details are a little fuzzy, but I recall running on a scorching hot Sunday morning with my baby daughter tucked in her bright orange jogging stroller. Overly ambitious, thanks to a Venti Americano buzz from Starbucks, I rashly determined to sprint up a monstrous hill near my home at top speed and go for the burn. I arrived home winded and panting, and headed straight for a hot shower with the baby in my arms. I lathered up, rinsed and then bent over to pick up my adorable daughter. As I started to raise her in the air, a slippery soft cherub covered in bubbles, a white light ricocheted through my skull and blackness enveloped me.
I don’t know how long I lost consciousness that morning. I awoke slumped in a heap on the shower floor over my howling and terrified baby with icy cold streams of water prickling my back. There were hospitals and endless tests and then the results I never expected to hear.
At the tender age of thirty-nine –under order of a cardiologist, I was forced to pick between juggling two jobs or find myself with a pacemaker within six months. As a mother of three beloved children, the decision wasn’t too tough. It was time to kill super-woman.
My kids and I put Dr. Barbie into a boat and we launched her with glee into the ocean as an act of surrender and a celebration of the beginning of a new season. (I thought burning Dr. Barbie might be a tad too traumatic for the two-year-old)
Then I changed every facet of my life starting with work and moving outward circle by circle. Now when I take a jog, it’s not to fit into a bikini, it’s to keep my ticker going strong for my kids. Things like nap-time and nutrition have reemerged and rest has taken on a whole new meaning since caffeine isn’t my go-to pick-me-up anymore.
But the biggest lifestyle modification was changing my broken thinking. I started to accept I can’t do it all and I certainly can’t do it all well. Super-woman is a myth which has deceived us all. Working mothers carry tremendous guilt and stay-at-home mothers struggle with their identity thanks to her. No one tells a young woman she might someday have to choose between a big family and a successful career –because the personal compromise she will make to do both might eventually destroy either her health or sanity.
Fortunately, I recognized I was getting a second chance to pick what is most important and move towards that which resonates in my soul and gives me life –relationships, family, writing, and a story lived well. Surprisingly, my list of non-negotiable items was much shorter than I anticipated after I cut off all the good I was doing to make room for the best.
Is it time you killed super-woman?
Photo Source: 500px.com via Alexandria on Pinterest
