Nothing, Nowhere, Not Now

Why We Can't Have It All - and Need to Stop Telling Ourselves We Can

“We can bring home the bacon; fry it up in a pan; and never let him forget he’s a man.” Enjoli.

Wow – so we can be the bread winner; and the homemaker; and the sex symbol – can we also throw in mom and head of the PTA for good measure?

We can do it all – be it all – have it all.  Amazing, right? 

How about exhausting?

Most women I know are exhausted.

Despite having more conveniences in life just the business of living seems harder than ever.

There is always one more should on our plate and the consequences of dropping the ball seem enormous.

You’ve heard the saying: We’re expected to work like we don’t have kids and raise our kids as if we aren’t working. 

When I was newly divorced and ready to begin contemplating the dating scene just the thought of getting dressed up and having to go out and “be on” was just too exhausting compared to the ease of staying at home in my PJ’s with a good book. 

Then it dawned on me – I didn’t really need a new husband I needed a wife.  Of course, I immediately berated myself for having a gender stereotypical and hetero normative thought.  Not to mention all I’d be doing is transferring my unbearable workload onto some other poor woman. 

What I really needed was a team.  I needed a cook and a cleaner, help with the kids, tutoring skills would most definitely be appreciated, a chauffeur would be a game changer, minor home repair skills would be a bonus and if they could contribute to the family finances as well that would be great.

At first, I thought I was suffering from single working mom woes but the more women I talk to the more I hear the same refrain: that we are expected to be on, performing, producing and caretaking from the moment our feet hit the floor in the morning to when we drop exhausted into bed.

Even if you don’t have kids the pressure is enormous.  At least in America, we’re expected to always be on call thanks to these little devices that allow us to always be connected.  Sure, it has its advantages.  I’ve taken business calls while on a beach in Hawaii with my kids and while out to a sushi dinner with my boyfriend.  We definitely have more freedom, but the downside is there is never an excuse to not always be available.

Anyone who will glibly give advice such as simply – learn to say no – prioritize – schedule “me time” just doesn’t get it.  Thank you, Katherine May for calling out the concept of toxic self-care. The pressure to perform at work is constant and there is always the knowledge that someone will be there to take your place if you can’t show up at all hours. 

The pressure on our kids is also enormous and it often feels like if we aren’t helping them overachieve then they are falling behind. We no longer really live in a meritocracy we live in a “who can afford to prop our kids up with enough test prep, activities, achievement – ocracy”.

Our kids know it.  Our kids are suffering but instead of trying to opt out we get swept into perpetuating the game.  The risk of stepping off the merry go round is just too high. We’re living in a social prisoner’s dilemma.

The road back to some semblance of sanity is to stop telling ourselves we can have it all – or perhaps realize we can have it all - just not everything, everywhere and all at once.  No one can for that matter.

My generation just didn’t get the memo.

Perhaps this is what my midlife ennui is about.

I have been trying to hobble together a life based on the delusion that not only could I have it all but that I was somehow letting down my gender - squandering my privilege - if I didn’t. I’ve been judging myself based on having fallen short instead of realizing I was playing a game I never could have won.

As a former ladder climber that’s what initially excited and motivated me.  I recently wrote about the struggles and limitations of my immigrant great grandmother.  I was seduced by the allure of being the first woman in my family to be able to pursue whatever I wanted – only limited, or so I thought, by my abilities and hard work.  I liked being a woman in a man’s world and succeeding in it.

It’s really astounding if you think about just how recently this wasn’t the case:

·       In the UK until 1975 a woman couldn’t open a bank account in her name and couldn’t apply for a loan without a signature from her father even if she earned more than him[1]

·       In the US it wasn’t until 1974 and the passing of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act that women in the US could have their own credit cards[2]

Both of these milestones shockingly happened after I was born.

It’s the essence of the obligation I felt to take advantage of all the opportunities I’d been afforded. In fact, I never once questioned the merits of ladder climbing until my so-called midlife crisis had me wondering if I’d lived my whole life for other people.

I am not suggesting that the choices and freedoms – basic rights, really – of my generation haven’t improved life for women.

Yet am I any happier than my ancestors?  I can’t ask my great grandmother if her lack of freedoms weighed on her.  Did she wake up as I do in the middle of the night stressed about her life choices?

“Interestingly more and more research shows that as counter intuitive as it may seem having fewer choices can actually promote happiness.  Not only is making choices exhausting but it turns out that the more options you have the more opportunities you have to regret the choice you’ve made.”[3]

That perhaps is the core of what I’m struggling with at this midpoint in my life. Echoing Mary Oliver, I’m questioning if I did enough with my one wild and precious life? Did I make the “right’ choices.

For me, the departure point was when I left my job in international banking. As I previously recounted, while I was walking the streets of Amsterdam confronting the challenge of how to balance being a mom and a businesswoman, I made a rather unconventional decision: I bought a hotel.

Looking back on it I’m amazed my adrenal glands survived having a newborn and a new 24x7x365 business to run. Was it a little crazy - yes - but by being my own boss I also had the freedom to bring together both motherhood and business without anyone telling me what I could or couldn’t do. This freedom was hard won and certainly not something for the faint of heart.

When you own your own business, you are never “not working.” There is always something you should or could be doing. Just the psychic weight of “this business is mine and all my life savings are wrapped up in its success or failure” made sleeping soundly or taking a vacation difficult. There were many days when not having taken a real vacation in years and working longer hours for lower pay, that I wondered what in the world I was thinking giving up an expense account, housing allowance, and six weeks of paid vacation afforded by a European corporate job. Yet even in those dark moments of doubt, my why was simple: I wanted to find a way to be a full-time mom, live in a beautiful place, and still have the mental stimulation, thrill and challenge of running my own business. In short, I wanted to full express all of who I am in the world.

While you are welcome to question my sanity for wanting a full-time gig as a business owner and “stay-at-work parent”, knowing my “Why” was my north star.

I got to be there for my kids’ first everything. They grew up at the business, and for better or worse, they were part of the experience. Kayla helped serve breakfast in the morning. Max loved gathering eggs from the chickens. Returning guests became an odd sort of extended family, often bringing gifts and watching the kids grow up over the years.

Don’t mistake my choice however for having cleverly figured out a way to beat the system and “have it all”. The parable of this story is that in fact I couldn’t and didn’t: My marriage failed; I am holding onto middle class by my fingernails and by most counts I haven’t made much of a difference in the world. It is perhaps that lack of significance that haunts me most at times.

When I was in software development the adage was: cheap, fast, good - pick two. You could have it fast and cheap, but it’d be full of bugs. You could have it fast and good, but it’d cost you or you could have it cheap and good, but it’d take forever to deliver. While I ran my own business and got to simultaneously be a full-time mom the things that I sacrificed weigh on me at times. I didn’t want to “pick two”. Like a greedy child I did want it all - wasn’t that what we were promised? Maybe I should have bought Enjoli before they discontinued it.

Everyone will eventually need to confront the limits of the time space continuum in their own way and please, please give me a call before you think of buying a hotel in a remote area. The important thing I believe is to stop telling ourselves we can have it all and to stop judging ourselves when we can’t. Perhaps that’s the core difference between me and my great grandmother - she understood her limitations so didn’t suffer the weight of expectation.

Susan Sontag said, “Time exists in order that everything doesn’t happen all at once… and space exists so it doesn’t all happen to you.”

We can be excellent bread winners and homemakers; lovers and mothers; artists and inventors just not to the nth degree all at once.  Something has to give, and that thing shouldn’t be us. Perhaps this is easier to accept if we start thinking of our lives as episodic … each perhaps having a theme and a priority that means it’s ok if other things slip a bit… or maybe a lot. 

The important thing is to stop telling ourselves we can have it all and to stop judging ourselves when we can’t.

This is easier said than done. I derived a sense of value and purpose from climbing a ladder.  There is likewise a lot of societal pressure to excel. I’ll admit it was uncomfortable going back to my twentieth business school reunion and seeing former classmates with much more significant career and financial accolades. In comparison my life seemed pretty lame.

I also had to confront the scary reality that once you get off the ladder or stop the frantic race to the top you might not be able to easily get back on.  Three times in my career I tried to go back to the corporate world only to be told that my resume was a bit too unconventional. There is no manual for how to craft a life with lots of “short ladders”.

More than anything I’d like to see us give not only ourselves a break but also to stop judging other women.  We can be our own worst enemies. 

Some of my worst bosses have been other women.  Instead of feeling mentored and encouraged to succeed I often felt like I was being treated as a threat.  Guys have “old boys’ networks” to help each other - why don’t women do the same?  Only recently did I begin to see this through the lens of our collective struggle to secure a place at the table.  It’s hard to help someone else make it up the ladder if your own position feels extremely tenuous. It’s exhausting feeling like we still need to prove ourselves – that we don’t inherently deserve our hard-won equality – that it isn’t truly secure.

How can we fix the systems that aren’t serving us if we’re competing amongst ourselves?

Even outside the work place we tend to judge and compete with each other.

Can we please stop mommy shaming each other? “Yes, I was the one who brought the store-bought cupcakes with peanuts and gluten and red dye number 40.” If you’re the one showing up with the homemade baked goods with hand ground ancient grains you grew in your own back yard - yes, you’re a rock star but please don’t look down on those of us that didn’t remember it was bake sale day till we were driving to school that morning.

Can we please take off the bumper stickers that say my kid is an honor student and replace them with ones that says my kid is kind and reasonably happy and knows she’s loved?

Small but radical acts of defiance against a system that says we’re not good enough unless we’re killing ourselves trying to do, be and have it all.

It’s good to have choices. Let’s fight like hell to keep them and to get back the ones we recently lost.

But perhaps the biggest choice of all and the one on which our sanity depends is to stop telling ourselves we can have everything, everywhere, all at once.

We can’t have it all - no one can and somedays the most empowering choice we can make is to choose nothing, nowhere, and please not now.

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[1] The 13 Most Surprising Things a Woman Couldn’t do 100 Years Ago. Mark Molloy and Jamie Johnson The Telegraph.co.uk 18 March 2022

[2] History of Women and Credit Cards: 1970 to Present Robin Saks Frankel Forbes.com

[3] https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/having-fewer-choices-can-promote-happiness