How to be women and not die trying
This one of today is not an article to use, it is rather a letter from me to you, in which I tell you what comes to mind when remembering my past, and when feeling your present in which many women we are not finished being free. That present that women, my Coaching clients, my readers, and those of you who have shared an Exploratory or Strategic Session with me reflect on me. And we are all one in some sense.
Preparing the website and the weekly newsletter gave me extra work last year for several months, in which on many occasions I exceeded the number of reasonable hours of daily work. This brought back great memories of the years when my children were young, my job with a lot of responsibility and very demanding, and I also had to take care of my relationship, the children, the house… Surely the women who are reading this know What should I talk about.
I had to start working in the 'superwoman' era, we were among the first to have to be 'the best wives, the best mothers, the best workers and the best housewives'. And it is serious when I say that women had 'self-imposed' the obligation to be 'The Best in Everything', something that did not allow us to be completely free.
Of course I put 'self-imposed' in quotation marks, because that self-imposition was also of external origin, the result of the social pressure we had to endure when they accused us of 'leaving the family and house abandoned to go to work outside', to which we reacted proving that we were capable of doing everything, and very well.
The degree of stress that caused so much pressure, led us to become physically or psychically ill (anxiety, depression, etc.). It also caused more and more women to voluntarily decide to leave work to dedicate themselves to the family, or not to have children since too much was required, exhaustion and stress. But they were not decisions made from freedom, but from social pressure.
If you add to the stress the glass ceiling that I was talking about in my article 'Women's leadership vs. Maripili syndrome ', you will understand why so many women abandoned their professional careers, or gave up reaching higher for fear of not having time for their family life. Although today the number of women who resign is not so high, it continues to occur frequently, since the over-demand continues to be very strong.
Do you know your own balance to avoid feeling that you live saturated? To find out, I recommend that you analyze the major areas of your life: personal, spiritual, family, relationship, work, leisure, and add one if you feel it. Make an "over the top" calculation of how much time you spend in each area, and study what you could remove, and where you would like to put more time. It is a great exercise that will give you an overview of how your life is organized, and how you want it to be.
Being women is wonderful, I would not change it for anything. To fully enjoy our condition as women, it is necessary to delegate, both at work and at home. In addition, we must be aware of our glass ceiling. It is also necessary to stop being the sole responsible for the home and children, starting to share all the responsibilities with our partners, and to save spaces just for us. Only then can we be free.
"To liberate herself, women must feel free, not to rival men, but free in their abilities and personality." Indira Gandhi.
