Hope for Women, Workers, Wives & Moms during COVID-19
I recently came across sobering side-effect of COVID, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 865,000 women left the labor force from August to September while 216,000 men left. 865,000 women that’s FOUR TIMES the number of men! My mind was flooded with questions concern and frustration:
Why is this so disproportionate?Are women okay?
Is this by choice?
Are job descriptions out of balance?
Are the parenting and care-taking of the home out of balance?
Where do we even start?
Searching for hope during COVID
My own fight to find hope during COVID has been maddening. Providing on call tech support for my three children and starting my own business that largely depends on face to face meetings has been an utter failure some days. I find myself so confused, not just by all the demands for snacks, laundry, and google classroom assistance, but how to find the mental space to plan and move my business forward? Not only that, I still fall into patriarchal tendencies by calling my part-time job a “side-hustle”, unable to value myself and my work in an appropriate way.
I find that I am quick to sacrifice myself, to let myself disappear. I tell myself that I need to absorb the stress for my children, because they are kids and their world has fallen apart. I fool myself into thinking that if I work hard enough, I can somehow compensate for their losses. I support my husband because his income is larger than mine, justifying another stress I will absorb. I let myself, spiritually, physically and vocationally slowly slip away.
Work is good for us, and good work matters.
So what happens when a pandemic hits and the essential supports counted on by many moms are taken away? Suddenly we face unreliable child care, unreliable schooling, unreliable marriages. These are things that keep my friends and clients up at night. How can we possibly hold space for our vocation against the tidal wave of our responsibilities? Every woman understands why almost 650,000 more women than men had their jobs swept away in the flood waters of COVID-19.
Where’s the hope?
You might have been ignoring it, gently shushing it, or telling it now is not the time? But the mystery of hope is still in you, urging you to see yourself, to hear yourself and to value yourself. Hope is nudging us to recreate. Not blow up our lives, but find the areas to share the burden. To do this we have to be willing to not only see our own limitations, but also admit them to those who love us and can take on some of the burden that has been wearing us down. I’m asking my parents and friends for help, and my husband and I are going to re-slice this pie of responsibility in a way that is sustainable for us both. Hope needs space and time to catch its breath and strengthen its voice.
I can’t buffer my kids from everything that is hard in life, somehow creating a childhood that is abundantly filled with love, learning, friendship, and stability. That is my ego, my pride, my privilege and my own woundedness desiring those things for them. Can I instead trust that they will experience all kinds of disappointments and hardships with resilience? Can I trust my own strength to stand beside them when their hearts hurt and keep them company while they take the time they need to learn and heal? Can I let go of trying to be the perfect wife, the one who somehow juggles all the required things of each individual in the family, who absorbs it all?
My hope, it’s also asking me to let go of some things, whispering that some things needed to die.
Finally, my hope also asks me to see, to see what is and what is yet to be. It shines the light and calls for my attention so that I can see my own value. It quiets the fears that I’m not worth my own effort, or that I don’t actually know enough. My hope also crafts a vision of the future, of the beauty and the growth for myself and this world that I need to step into, not anticipatory hope, but participatory hope.
My hope is
asking me to let go of some things, whispering that some things needed to die.
How we fight for hope, well that is up to each of us! I will build a ladder one rung at a time, knowing that children are right behind me, using the same steps rather than wasting their time and energy building new ones, and that once they reach the end of mine, they can begin their own construction from a much better elevation.
Written By Sisters, Small Business Owners, Mothers, Wives, Humans:
Rachel Lockman, Life Coach, Rachel Lockman Consulting,
Gracile Dawes, LPC Alpharetta Counseling
Here’s what gives Rachel and Gracile anticipatory hope:
We find it hopeful that there are movements and organizations that are fighting for equality for women in the work place in tangible and practical ways. Not just white women, but ALL women. Movements like the Womanism Movement “committed to the survival and health of ALL people” according to Alice Walker, the author of The Color Purple. Nationwide movements like the NAACP and Black Lives Matter are shining lights on the systems that have failed minorities. It feels good to our souls to align with movements that champion the voice of ALL people and want the system healed so that everyone will be included and cared for.
According to Loretta Ross, academic and black feminist:
“When many people think a lot of different thoughts but move in one direction that is a movement. But when people think one thought and move in a direction, that is a cult.”
Being a part of the solution does not mean we have to align with everything within a movement. But the fight for equality in the work place, equity in our schools, and a dismantling of patriarchy are ideas we can get behind. How each of us fight, well that is up to us.