Monday, March 2, 2015

Current Trend I'm Liking

Well, I'm loving the spring fashion trend of wide leg slacks. I'm all about wide legs. The wider the better. Because they look good on tall girls. But, this is not the trend I was thinking of.

I'm loving the trend that I'm seeing in my female peers-the trend of getting help.

Mommy wars and feminism have equated our worth as women, wives and mothers with what we can accomplish. We took a giant step backwards (or maybe a couple giants steps backwards). We became the do all to end all.

We've started fighting back against those unreasonable expectations. We've realized there is no way on God's green earth to do everything. There are no's for every yes.

But, now we are taking it a step farther. We're not just focusing on what we can't or aren't doing. We are getting on board with Newton's Third Law: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It's about balance and symmetry.

We have a need. We are getting help.

We are having someone clean, babysit, cook, do laundry, or home-school. Or do any number of other tasks that need doing. Some of us are paying for help. Some of us have people helping gratuitously. Payment is not the point. Getting help is.

And it is good. It is helping the economy. It is helping our sanity. It is helping relationships.

I think we have hesitated to get help because we are often focused on people judging us. So and so will think I am not enough to keep my junk in order. Sometimes these so and so's are a vague idea and sometimes they are actual people in our lives. Peers. Parents. But, we need to remember that this last century was one of the only centuries where communities and families weren't helping each other as much. We became more mobil and more global and we got isolated.

We hesitated because of guilt. Often we aren't battling what we think others think. We are battling our own thoughts. We are our own worst critic. Our heaviest burdens come from our own ideas of what we should be doing, but aren't doing. We are staggering under the burden of our own unrealistic expectations. Or we ourselves are judging someone else about their choices and thus we don't have freedom to get help. Sounds pretty ugly when typed out.

We hesitated because we felt help was a luxury-one we couldn't afford. We can afford smart phones, cable television and eating out, but we can't afford help. I'd say that we are beginning to realize that we can't afford not to get help.


We hesitated to get help because we lacked the courage to be the only one. Yet, someone stood up and said they'd had enough. And someone else. And someone else. And their courage inspired the rest of us. It's a brave thing to say you can't do everything. It's a even more brave thing to do something about it.

I have a babysitter who comes in weekly so I can do She Plans Dinner business. I am contemplating hiring a cleaning service to deep clean every two weeks or so. I have my kids help me with lots of chores around the house. That's the help I'm getting.

What help are you getting? If you aren't getting any help, what help could you use? Is there anything you could give up in order to have that babysitter, tutor, cleaning service, etc?