Years ago, when my three children were still at home, I complained to a professional social worker colleague that it was hard to get my family to understand that I needed help sometimes. “Everybody just expects me to do it all, even when I’m not feeling well.”
She invited me to take a look at how this expectation might have gotten set up. “You are a victim of your super-woman branding and years of well-documented behavioral advertising about your strength,” she told me. And of course, there are the expectations I have always had of myself. Since my recent emergency surgery involved repairing an intestinal issue I was likely born with, some of the places I went to, as I was in and out of regular consciousness, were very young and scary. My grown up self got to see how brave and protective I had been of my mother and my other caregivers. I didn’t cry out. I locked the pain inside.
My friend Rose used to say of herself, “I don’t much believe in sick. I’m a ‘take-two-aspirin-and-keep-on-going,’ kind of gal, ” and I saw myself, (and my father) in that description. Family roles can be played out for generations and we can be assigned or volunteer to be the one who cares for others or the one who gets taken care of. But the truth is, for an individual, a family and a community to function well, each of us needs to break out of this typecasting and develop the flexibility to fulfill both roles.
Being the eldest in a family of six children always meant for me a sense of responsibility for younger siblings, and their seeing me as the “Assistant Mom.” Just the other day when I was recently out of surgery I got a phone call from one of my sisters. She began telling me a story that related to a recent crisis situation with her diabetes. I was having trouble tracking all the details she was putting forth and from a deep place of exhaustion in me I remember asking, “Does this story have a good outcome? She said yes. I apologized for not understanding what she was saying and later told my husband I hadn’t done well with the conversation.
A week later, I learned from another sister that she hadn’t called me because the first sister told her that when she tried to call me back my husband wouldn’t let her talk to me. I’m sorry this caused hurt feelings but I’m glad my husband got the message that I needed some protection at that point from my “Assistant Mom” role, for my own healing.
Close in friends knew what would help when they sent homemade soup and easy to digest homemade tuna salad. Far away women friends, when they heard about my situation, knew just what to do from where they lived. I got fun and funny greeting cards full of encouragement and one couple sent an amazing gift – a long distance shipment of soup and cookies called, “A Spoonful of Comfort.” The company had been started to honor the owner’s mother who gave her the idea when she was far away when her mother first became ill.
“Go the speed of the body,” we tell each other in InterPlay. “You have to dance with the body you have today, not the one you had yesterday, nor the one you’re hoping for tomorrow.” Recovery demands that I convince myself of these truths and convince others that “not lifting more than 10 lbs” or “taking naps” or “not straining certain muscles” means I’ll be needing encouragement and uncharacteristic help for quite awhile. And thank you for helping me be receptive to being helped.
Sheila
