What THIS woman wants

It’s tough being a woman these days.

You are EXPECTED to want a career. Not to want a career is to vehemently deny the sisterhood. But, as a woman, you are also EXPECTED to want children… and as any empowered woman knows, you HAVE to want a partner.

The pressure to be the perfect loving partner; the trail-blazing career woman and the perfect mother (all while maintaining a size 6) is undeniable.

It’s also bloody exhausting.

Let’s be clear about this:

• my cooking is ordinary
• my house keeping is pretty good (usually)
• I’m in the middle of a divorce
• I have two kids, and
• I’ve never been a size 6.

I have a career because it was all the media talked about at the time I was growing up. Now that we were ‘entitled’ to a career, it was our duty to want one.

What we wanted was choice. What we fought for was the right to have a say in our own destiny and to have our contribution valued.

Alas, what we’ve got is somewhat more menacing. We’ve created the myth of a superwoman that doesn’t exist. Everywhere we look we see celebrities who look svelte weeks after giving birth, immaculate inner-city apartments inhabited by high-flying professional business women in stilettos and power-mini suits hosting delectable dinner parties for their sophisticate friends. They cater themselves and strut about delivering line after line of witty repartee; topping up the Dom Pérignon while the nanny attends the children. We’re confusing pop-art with reality TV.

The reality is closer to Kath & Kim than Cashmere Mafia. The kids are picked up from after school care around 6pm. You’ve had a full and hectic day at work. They are stroppy from a long day. You’re already crippled with ‘mother guilt’ because your kids are the last ones at the centre, or you missed a performance that day, or forgot it was a casual clothes day. They are hungry as soon as you walk in the door. You don’t feel like cooking, but do anyway. You can’t remember Year 9 maths, but manage to struggle to help with their homework before grabbing 15 minutes in between loads of washing to referee fisticuffs with the kids and pay your bills online. Somewhere in there you do the dishes and ask your partner about their day.  

At the end of the night, you collapse into bed. Physically exhausted, emotionally depleted and financially stressed, just grabbing enough time to self-flagellate over not having made it to the gym, mopped the kitchen floor or remembered to phone your mother and email the local council. Never mind hosting the damned dinner party. You were supposed to be so much more together and sophisticated by now.

STOP!  You are doing fine just as you are. Remember that you don’t have the same finances and support mechanisms that celebrities do… and besides, looking at some of them; they don’t always get it so very right even with a chef, nanny, stylist and personal trainer.  

We’re all battling to make the most of it. You don’t have to fight to have it all. Choose the top five things that you need to achieve for you to feel fulfilled in life. Work towards that. Small steps, each day; towards what is important for you. Not everything, all at once.

There is no perfect life.  So, take the time to enjoy yours; in all its glorious imperfection.