Superwoman Isn’t Dead. She’s Just Using Her Super Powers to Say, “No More.”
Women are no longer complying with the myth.
Lately, I’ve noticed an enormous uptick in the number of women turning in their capes. “What cape?” you may ask. The cape that society in the United States led us to believe would legitimize our very beings, our “wholeness” despite how deeply into the hole it dug us daily. Regardless, we continued to struggle because “measuring up” meant “keeping up” with every other woman that was drowning in silence too…and taking their families with them.
Termed “Superwoman,” the compliment intended by this descriptive as women strived to remain woke forced so many women into a suffering not readily admitted to oneself nevertheless to others. So we became super good at hiding our pain; super good at masking our inadequacy; and super good at playing the role of Superwoman yet knowing that the lie that we were living was making us utter messes inside. And you wonder why so many of us began initmite affairs with Robert Mondavi and Carlo Rossi.
It seems, however, that plenty of women today are no longer content with the wokeness of yesterday, tired of feeling completely inadequate and exhausted. So they are trading it in for a completely different type of wokeness, one that allows them to speak up about how impossible it is to be Superwoman to younger versions of themselves and everyone else caught in that fatal net. And yes, I say “fatal” because sides of us have died in our efforts to remain in there.
The strength that caused us to hold tight is now the same strength that we are using to “let go” and be honest about what it is like to be a woman “doing it all.” Over the last few weeks, plenty of accomplished women have come forward speaking their truth about the unachievable balance of raising kids and working full-time resulting in the complete “loss of themselves” in-between. And in many cases, their marriages too. I applaud them. Take, for instance, the words of one female powerhouse and single mom below:
“I’m going to say something that is against what working mothers have been told.
We can’t do it all.
As working mothers, many of us have a belief that we can and should do it all.
Then we realize that we can’t and we feel like failures.
As a mother of three daughters, a CEO of a public relations firm, news anchor and author I’m here to tell you that work/life balance doesn’t exist.….” — Alison Maloni
That lady is far from the only one who realizes the disillusionment that comes with the naivety and denial of yesterday’s thinking. Personally, having been forced to “walk that walk” by circumstance (the very early death of my husband) in my own way, I wouldn’t recommend undertaking the juggle to any woman who isn’t forced by perculiar realities to do so. My two biggest reasons for this are, “the short period of time that is childhood” and “the belief that life is so much more than work.”
We’ve lived in a society that is completely toxic to women, including where we place our value when it comes to our own lives. No longer content, however, with being told what to do (for reasons that span “fed up” to “actually truly having become Superwomen”), yesterday’s unquestionable compliance is plummeting fast. The veil is being lifted by the very people who tried to wear it while doing everything else alongside.
Replacing her? The courageous, honest, remarkable woman who isn’t afraid to be herself and tell the world what it is like. She’s finally realized how ENOUGH she actually is without need of detrimental titles that shorten her life and diminish her freedom! Bravo.
