A friend and I were talking about how difficult it is to juggle so many different roles in your life. Whether it be as an employee, a friend, a girlfriend, a mother; you never feel like you can devote enough attention to any of the roles you play to truly say you’ve nailed them.
And
then there’s the total kick in the tits.
Guilt.
A bloody big helping of guilt
to underpin the fact that you try to cram so much into your life that you don’t
feel like anything you do meets the unrealistic expectations you set for
yourself. That it’s just finishing one thing and tearing blindly into the next.
Women
are the masters of guilt. My personal favourite is the ‘mum guilts’. That
niggling feeling that I’m not spending enough time enjoying my children, and
then when I am playing with them, that I should also be doing a million other
things that have dropped down the list.
My
friend and I wondered if life was easier for our mums and grandmas. Whether it
was more straightforward, less guilt-ridden, or whether they faced the same
challenges, just packaged in a different way?
And so
came Three Generations of Women- in the first instance, a website where women
could submit stories and experiences, responding to a variety of prompts ranging
from the best piece of advice your mother ever gave you, to the family secret
that’s never been revealed.
The
response was overwhelming.
Within
a month we had over 1000 stories submitted. Stories of bravery, loss, love and
courage. Women who had had to hide pregnancies, who fought for their families
against oppression, grandmothers who went into higher education well into their
70s, daughters who gave up everything to devote their lives to caring for their
parents.
We
visited women in Brighton, London and Leeds to speak to them about what was important
to them as women, and how they thought their experiences of growing up as a
woman in Britain compared to that of their mothers and grandmothers.
And
then we wrote a play about it.
For me
the project has been punctuated with guilt. Guilt that I won’t do justice to
the amazing stories women have shared with us. Guilt that I’m not spending enough
time writing, and then guilt that I’m spending too much time writing instead of
getting to know my new baby son.
He was
born early on in the process. In fact I had a Skype meeting with my co-writer
after my waters had broken. I’ve been lucky so far. He’s been the most forgiving baby, but I’m
sure that will come and bite me on the ass when he’s older.
If this
project has taught me anything, it’s that women are really hard on themselves. Women
of all ages. We rarely recognise our successes, just focus on the things we’re
not doing so well.
But if
we don’t say how bloody brilliant we are, then who will? And what are we
teaching our daughters if our default setting is thinking we’re mediocre?
So let’s
change that.
Let’s celebrate brilliant women.
And if you’re reading this, start with yourself.
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