I can’t be a wife right now! A guide to women on how NOT to manage it all.

In Marvellous Mrs. Maisel, an Amazon original, the protagonist puts it bluntly what most women shy away from speaking. ‘I can’t be a wife right now’. She raises quite a few eyebrows on having the luxury to even make this choice as she jumps onto a self-discovery wagon, leaving her kids and a failed marriage behind.

But most women, specially in the kind of social circus we live in, are always daughters, sisters, wives and mothers first. Not entitled to this luxury to say no to wife or mother duties, it’s funny how we are customed to put our family first, before our careers and even before ourselves. We have seen our grandmothers preaching this, we have seen our mothers practicing this.

Representative image: Pinterest

The Funny Series

It’s funny how we always have to be the perfect home-maker, how we can’t fail at daily chores like doing crisp laundry or making the best Paneer Butter Masala, which your husband and children can rave about later. Women are often put on a pedestal with an expectation to manage their family and now also their careers (because hey, its 2020) with equal perfection while all husbands do is ‘sometimes help’ us with ‘some’ household chores.

Its funny how we all are taught in the same co-education scenarios where when we ask a boy what he wants to become when he grows up, he says a doctor. When we ask a girl the same, she beamingly says an astronaut, and we all feel proud. Finally, we feel gender neutrality has begun to sow its seeds in India. But often we don’t realise that the same girl has to marry in another family, procreate and raise babies meanwhile still trying to become an astronaut while the same boy is already a doctor and mind you, with a family of his own. It’s funny how at school we don’t come up with manuals like- A guide to woman on how to balance it all.

Family Girl and Career Girl. Shouldn’t it be part of girls’ syllabus?

It definitely sounds funny!

Honestly, we can’t manage it all. Sure, there are few examples of women who have aced professionally but at what cost? Most of them are either single, divorced, rich or empty nesters. This is in no means to decrease our morale, but do you ever realise the pressure it puts on the younger generation to follow? In the year 2020, women are encouraged to pursue their careers actively while also expecting them to take full charge of the family responsibilities because, gender roles you know!

Representative image: Pinterest

Anne Slaughter, who left her high-ranking government job with Hilary Clinton to take care of her two teenagers, puts it in the best way possible:

Have feminists sold us a fiction?

Fiction or no fiction there will always be a large set of women who plan to combine work and family in some way. Women who will look for less competitive careers, simply because they want to be home for their loved ones.

To all these amazing women who want to feel whole, who don’t want to airbrush their reality and want to simply enjoy being a female, all we want to say is, YOU GO GIRL!

To the women who wants to work in a certain way that allows them to be more at home and to the women who have lovingly turned into homemakers, here’s a little advice:

You don’t have to manage it all. It’s okay. You are doing great.

Representative Image: Pinterest

Here are few tips to get you by and help you create the life of your dreams, whatever it might be.

· Have a control of your schedule: A work schedule which allows you to be more flexible so you can be with your family and children because let’s admit it: there is this inherent guilt that drives every working mother crazy.

· Choose the right partner: Have someone who wants to do more than just ‘help’ and actively take responsibility off your shoulders. Dear husbands, it’s time to share the load and move over gender roles.

· Prioritise, Prioritise, Prioritise: A meeting you cannot miss or once in a lifetime moment where your child goes on the stage for the first time. You define what’s more important and try to live with your decision guilt-free.

· Indulge in Me-time: The importance of taking time out for yourself has been stressed enough. Think of this: Can you pour from an empty cup? No, you simply can’t.

Representative gif: Giphy

Women are the constant jugglers in the circus called life. We are the forever multi-taskers and we are also the gender with things more than a vagina, something called resilience. With this spirit, we can be the CEOs of our families as well as our companies. And we simply can’t have it all because of who we are: We are selfless, we are kind and we are patient. So, why not let’s try NOT to manage it all and rather enjoy the gift of being a woman;

truly and wholly.

#meditation #wellness #mindfulness