“All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.”
I remember lines to books and movies like I should be memorizing scripture. I don’t know why, but simple phrases heard or read once are forever etched on my brain — rattling around from day to day, intermittently convicting me in silent moments.
My most recent moment of clarity came after punching my right leg through the kitchen ceiling. In the milliseconds before I crashed through the sheetrock, my brain modified the quote, “all work and no play make Payton a dead girl.”
“This will be funny later,” I thought as I leaped forward and spread my arms and legs like a flying squirrel attempting to catch some attic 2×4’s.
“As long as this doesn’t kill me.”
It took my husband some time to see the humor.
It was the week after Christmas, a week I had taken off from work to recharge my batteries. I had planned to watch movies, sleep late and play with the kids. Instead, I woke up each day driven to complete a household project. There were closets to be cleaned out and trash to burn. The pantry was full of leftover Christmas trash snacks which we no longer felt obligated to consume. The desk was piled high with mail correspondence from the past year. All this excess was screaming at me to tame it. So, I made a large pot of coffee and went to work.
Several weeks earlier, my husband had wrist surgery. He was relaxing on the couch. As I scampered from room to room, Pat grew suspect.
“Are you ok? What, exactly, did you put in your coffee?”
“Nothing,” I quipped. “I’m simply completing some projects that need to be done.”
Confident that a crash and burn was imminent, Pat chuckled and continued watching his movie.
The cleaning frenzy continued for four days, and when I finished with the downstairs, I moved to the attic. On shaky, dehydrated legs, I shimmied back and forth across a 2×6. It was a shortcut to the most offensive part of the overstuffed attic. Although my body ached from the previous three days of hard labor, I was determined to tame the hoarded beast.
I’m not clear on what happened next, but as I made my final pass down the narrow board, my load shifted. I increased my speed to try to catch my balance, but my house shoes did not move as quickly as the rest of my body. I surveyed the space in front of me for something to break my fall. The shiny silver ductwork was my only choice. “Too expensive,” I thought. And so, I flung what was left of my childhood into the air and hoped for the best.
Down below, Pat sat at the island in the kitchen. He heard a rumbling and then my slipper landed on the bar in front of him. It was not my best moment.
The rest of my family came running to see the damage. A can light had broken my fall and kept the rest of my body from coming through the ceiling. Miraculously, aside from a sizable black bruise on my inner thigh, my pride was the only thing damaged. Well, that and the kitchen ceiling.
Dylan delivered the clarity.
“Mama. Lordy. You’ve been cleaning like a maniac for days. This was the Lord slapping you in the back of the head saying, ‘I said relax!’”
All work and no play… it was time to take a break. But for a workaholic relaxing is harder than it looks. I guess I’m addicted to the high I receive when completing a project. Giving myself permission to not be productive feels scandalous. It’s something I want, but I’m out of practice.
One would think that a near-death experience would have slowed me down — creating the necessary pause to the daily grind. One would think, but I had other plans. I dusted myself off and continued checking tasks off my list. It was then that my girl child’s throat started hurting. Nothing can hit the pause button quite like a positive COVID test.
I can remember at the onset of the pandemic being utterly disgusted when hearing the phrase “new normal.” The annoyance of being required to reschedule an approaching 10-day block of time forced my inner 2-year-old to pout. As I lowered my eyebrows at the now empty week ahead, I felt a chill shiver up my spine. It was the Lord tapping on my shoulder again, “If you won’t rest, I’ll make you.” He always gets the final word.
In the past two years, the only time I have effectively rested is during quarantine. Fever and body aches call for sleep. NyQuil makes it possible. After each COVID time out, I have been able to return to work rested and ready to tackle the challenges of the week ahead. But I wonder why it takes extreme measures for me to justify giving my body and mind the rest it needs? It’s as if I have a checklist of items that I must meet before allowing myself necessary health-sustaining respite. Apparently, contracting a life-threatening disease is my only qualifying event.
I can remember several years back posting a status of “mama down” on social media. In retrospect, I think I was requesting reinforcement for my decision to lay on the couch and recover from the flu. One of my friends responded back with “that’s an oxymoron.” And she’s right. If mamas quit, the world will fall apart. We believe this fact, and so our list of excuses to rest vaporizes alongside our hope of ever being able to go to the bathroom alone again.
I know that I’m not alone in feeling the need for permission to stop and take a breather. On several occasions, after several glasses of wine, among different groups of women, the joke has been shared about this mama exhaustion.
“I wouldn’t mind getting in a small wreck. Nothing big, just enough to require a brief hospital stay where I could sleep late and have my dinner prepared by someone.”
More than one person out of each group laughs in agreement. We know each other’s pain. We laugh, but it’s not funny. Burnout of any kind is not good. Mama burnout is dangerous. It’s time we started paying attention and addressing it.
Searching for an answer, I went to my husband. I inquired if he ever felt guilty about sitting down to relax. I hadn’t finished asking the question before he answered with a definitive “no.” He blinked back at me in confusion. “Why would I feel guilty about that?” I returned his bewildered look. Neither of us understood the other person’s viewpoint. Pat changed the subject. I became envious of what he knew that eluded me.
What do men know about self-care that women don’t? I can sleep late on a Saturday but wake up feeling exhausted. I can have a weekend filled with family fun but arrive to work on Monday feeling emotionally heavier than when I left the office on Friday. I had to know what I was doing wrong. So, I posed the question to my female social media friends.
“Mamas, talk to me about rest. Do you allow yourself time for it? Why or why not? If so, how?”
Several of the responses were from people who are as confused and tired as I am.
“Rest? Can you use it in a sentence please,” joked one young mom.
Another added, “There are mamas out there that rest????!! I just stay tired!”
My friend Angela had this to say, “With a husband who works three jobs and a little who is very attached to her momma, “rest” doesn’t come often.”
It seems that these women, like me, were waiting for a qualifying event to achieve the rest they so desired. But then, there was another group. Those who actively pursue it.
DeAnn shared, “I used to feel SO GUILTY about taking naps on the weekends, and now I don’t. I just know it’s my body’s way of telling me to slow down.”
The tired mama problem is not new as my 93-year-old grandmother had this to add, “I became a ‘night person’ because I needed a little time by myself and with four children, I had to find that time after they went to bed.” To this day, she still stays up late.
But I think my friend Kelly best captured the answer for which I was looking. And I think it’s the same thought process men naturally have, “You cannot take care of your family if you don’t take care of yourself. Rest doesn’t have to mean ‘naps.’ Rest, in my opinion, includes much more than that. Rest means time away, time to yourself, time to disconnect and let your mind relax. As an almost 50-year-old, I can tell you how important it is for you, for your family, and for your sanity!”
As counterintuitive as it sounds, rest requires planning. Rest has to become a priority if we want to maintain a healthy lifestyle. I’m guessing that a man’s natural tendency toward self-gratification is the secret ingredient to making rest a non-negotiable in their lives. Now, how in the world are we gonna achieve that? It sounds like it’ll involve a late-night planning party with a bottle of wine, my family calendar, and a permanent marker. If the world falls apart, I guess we’ll know what happened. Godspeed mamas. Your emancipation awaits.