Resisting the Urge to be Superwoman

I’m currently reading The Fourth Trimester: A Postpartum Guide to Healing Your Body, Balancing Your Emotions, and Restoring Your Vitality, and the author, Kimberly Ann Johnson, puts forth the radical idea that the best way to heal from childbirth is… to rest.

Not to hit the gym, not to get back into your skinny jeans asap, not to push yourself to exhaustion trying to prove that you don’t need help, not to keep an immaculate house…

To rest.

Unfortunately, I am a solid 4.5 months postpartum with Grace Girl, and only just now reading this book.

I really could have used this information after my first baby was born and I headed back to grad school 2.5 weeks later. Or after Grace Girl was born and I inadvertently fooled everyone into thinking I was doing fine by going about fully dressed with brushed hair when in fact I was really struggling and crying about random stuff everyday.

While I’ve considered the radical idea of taking a break before collapsing from exhaustion before and considered that just because I can push through to do more doesn’t always mean I should….the lure/pressure to perform, to accomplish, to be put together and perfect all the time is immense. And I find it hard to resist.

This social pressure is ever-present for women in the dominant culture in the United States, in which a person’s worth=their accomplishments, and a woman’s worth=her accomplishments+the way she looks while accomplishing. This pressure is put on women postpartum, during pregnancy, and you know, just all the time.

While this pressure is just an inherent part of our cultural script, I know where the worst of it comes from for me:

Me.

But who makes the culture but the people in it, right? (Okay, and the media, and the people in power, but I digress). Nevertheless, we are all part of it.

What if I resisted the urge to be supermom, to be everything to everyone, to do it all and all at once, with perfect hair and perfect abs?

What if I worked, played, and rested in rhythm with my body and in rhythm with the needs of my children, putting aside cultural scripts and expectations?

What if I dared to believe my worth is inherent and inviolable, that Who I Really Am cannot be improved by accomplishments, cannot be diminished by what I do or what I experience?

What if I gave myself permission in each moment to be as I am, to feel as I do, to do what I can?

What if you did?

What if we all did together?