Vivant Coaching

“91% of the adults surveyed – aged anywhere from 50-79 – had not proactively researched the care they may need as they grew older. Over a third – 34% – had not even thought about their future care needs.”

Seniors Want to Age in Place, But They Still May Not Know What That Means While home-based care is a space booming with opportunities and potential tailwinds, much of it remains theoretical for the time being. Yes,

Over the last week and a half I was sick with what was presumably COVID. I lost my sense of taste and smell, I was very sick and nauseous and not as extremely productive as I usually am. Therefore, the house isn’t as beautiful or organized. The kids have been steamrolling me a little bit. I am behind.

I would like to now point out that I raise our three children, clean our house, feed everyone, manage our bills, educate our children on a Digital platform, landscape, and plan holiday parties for the grand total cost of free. Or at the very least, at cost.

I have watched women complain about their productivity while staying home “well then I just put stuff in the crockpot and start tidying up and boom! My day is over” Well sister-friend, that is work.

Feeding and cleaning is WORK.

I started staying home with my children when they were two and three it was the most difficult transition of my life. I gained 40 lbs and screamed and cried constantly. I never felt like I was doing anything because I didn’t see the unpaid labor that’s expected of me as work. I didn’t see the work that no one gives us credit for as work either. Thus I felt like a failure, I wasn’t present with my children, and I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t productive enough.

There is a phenomenon that occurs when you are overwhelmed and I don’t know if it has a name but I call it reactivity. When I am overwhelmed and overstimulated, I am not longer introspective but reactive. I don’t think before I act, I don’t facilitate life lessons, I can’t access empathy because I’m literally reacting thoughtlessly to stimuli. When we continue to pile work on women in say..a pandemic… yanking them out of the workforce to do unpaid labor and then throw Christmas on top, you are going to see some reactivity. And the answer isn’t, throw your hopes and dreams away so you can be less stressed, it’s delegate some of these unpaid labors to your spouse and children.

That is where I’m stuck. I know I need a chore chart and higher expectations of those around me. One crux of our argument was that we needed to hire help for cleaning and online school. This is legitimate but being sick already, and facing the fear that my children could get the coronavirus, I don’t really want to relive that experience until a vaccine comes out.

Am I a stubborn mule? Absolutely. Am I a cautious one? Yes.

So although this is clearly a frustrated rant of an entrepreneurial housewife, I want to say to my other mothers:
Everything you do is work. Everything. The dishes, the diapers, the meetings on zoom. All of it. Even the most menial dusting off the shelves is work and effort and labor. So when you don’t check 6 things off of your full, one-page to-do list, please remember every pause to teach your child something important about their behavior and their life, every shirt and sock picked up off the floor, it matters and it counts. You are raising human beings and you are facilitating their life, that is a TASK. Thank you for doing it, and thank you for making it look beautiful. You all deserve a raise.

With love,
Alissa