You're Allowed
Today I posted the above meme on my personal Facebook page - it got a lot of responses . .
Newsflash: ALL of the people that responded were WOMEN! Now, I just want to take a moment to say that I know everything in life isn’t a men vs women issue. OK, so don’t send me hate mail for that. Because I am simply pointing out the fact that today, I posted a meme about doing what’s best for you even if it upsets other people. And I want to take a closer look at it.
So the analytical part of me is dying to dissect this. First, why is it that only women responded to my post. Secondly, why didn’t any men respond to my post. And third, what does any of it mean for the UNSUBSCRIBED community.
Here goes nothing: I think that women responded to my post because they feel the need for permission to do anything. It has been so engrained into our psyches that we cannot do anything at all without permission from someone else: either a boss, a husband, a parent, a pastor or whatever, it just has to be from someone that we view as being in “authority” over us, therefore we need permission from them to do something for ourselves. Now this begs the question, why do we feel other people have authority over us? Well that’s a no-brainer. For me, personally it has been drummed into my head since birth. As a born and raised Catholic, I was taught that all authority came from outside of me and it was most likely a man. It was God, a priest, my dad, my husband, my father-in-law, my principal (from my teaching days) and superintendent…the list goes on. Basically every person in my life that I have viewed as having authority over me has been a man.
Where is inner authority? Where is the divine feminine? Where are the women in authority? Where is the Goddess in all of this? By and large, women have been stripped of their inner authority, the divine feminine has been snuffed out, women have been kept in lower positions in the workplace, and the Goddess has been completely erased from history. The books, the men, they all point to a male god. A male priest. A male boss.
So next we come to the part about men….why didn’t any men like my Facebook post? Because they’re confused by it. They’ve always had the ability to do what’s best for them even if it upsets other people. They’ve always had that permission. In the corporate world men are called assertive when they take charge, but women are called bitchy for the same thing. In a nutshell, men aren’t threatened at all at the idea of needing permission from anyone because they’ve always had that option.
Now, what does this mean for the UNSUBSCRIBED community? It means we are taking back our power. Little by little, day by day, post by post, we’re seeing and hearing the things that we must take back and we are doing it.
It could be a little thing like dinner. Let’s say Susanne and her husband Jed have 5 kids ages 16, 14, 13, 11, and 8. Susanne works at the local middle school as a paraprofessional, helping in the special needs room. Jed works at a factory where he assembles parts for an automotive company. At the end of the school day, Susanne gathers up all of the children and brings them home, takes them to sports practices, piano lessons, or gymnastics. Mother and children are running the roads in the minivan until 6 or 7pm every night until the time when they finally arrive home to dump all of the coats, bags, and shoes in the entryway for everyone to trip over. They arrive to the usual sight: Jed is sitting in the lazyboy sipping a beer, watching the nightly news. Susanne immediately goes into the kitchen to grab clean plates and silverware out of the dishwasher, while scooping out the contents of the crockpot she assembled at 6 that morning. Susanne and the kids stuff the hot food down and then everyone leaves Susanne in the kitchen to finish unloading last night’s dishes and now reload tonight’s dirty dishes. Oh, and she starts thinking about what tomorrow’s dinner is going to be too, so she checks the freezer and pantry for the necessary items. She changes the laundry twice, helps 2 of the kids with their homework, and then tidies up the entryway. Jed has not moved from the lazyboy and is on his 3rd beer now. Susanne finally sits down, cracks open a beer for herself and starts telling Jed about her day when he says, “Shhhh, I’m watching this! I had a shitty day today!”
Susanne has had it. She has lost her ever-living marbles now.
She tells him to go fucking watch TV in the mancave he so desperately needed 4 years ago but never uses. She tells him to take his crockpot dinner and stuff it up his ass. She tells him that she’s had a shitty day today too but that doesn’t mean she’s sitting on her ass all evening. She tells him she’d like to go to yoga sometime but nobody else in the house does a damn thing when she’s gone!
Jed looks at her like she is an alien from another planet.
Jed is witnessing the unsubscribing of a woman. She is unsubscribing from the ideas that her husband can tell her to shhhhh. She is unsubscribing from the idea that she’s the only person capable of thinking about and preparing dinner everyday. She is unsubscribing from the idea that her hands are the only ones able to pick up shoes, fold laundry, and scrub toilets. She is unsubscribing from the SUPERMOM mentality because she knows she’s not a supermom and she actually doesn’t want to be one anyway.
Susanne has just allowed herself the freedom to be a woman. Just Susanne. In this moment, she’s not thinking about being a wife or mom, or even an employee for that matter. Right now, she is a woman and she is fucking exhausted.
She gives herself permission to stop. Stop doing it all for the children. Stop the people-pleasing. Stop the performing. Stop allowing her husband to do nothing. Stop. Just stop.
Susanne feels lighter. Freer. Powerful.
