The Wisdom of Readers: Self-care is an act of resistance.

Today’s world wants more from us, and quicker. The immediacy of modern communication means we’re required to be available at the drop of a hat, at any time day or night. Whether professionally or personally, we can feel a sense of failure if we are not on standby for whoever needs us next.

At the heart of this need to constantly be ‘on’ is fear. We are afraid that if we don’t take work home, then it won’t get done, and this will look bad, and perhaps we’ll get a bad reputation, or even lose our job. We’re worried that if our friends, or kids, or parents need something, and we fail to provide it, we’ll be blamed and labelled as unreliable or selfish or careless.

We just want to be good right? We want people to think of us as good people. ‘Just be a good human’ is the modern mantra isn’t it?

The trouble is, striving to be good for everyone else can come at the cost of being good to ourselves. How many of us push through exhaustion? Or feel unable to take a break?

If you feel like this you are absolutely not alone. Almost everyone in today’s world feels this pressure. It is a widely discussed topic in reading sessions. Ideas of self-care often emerge for people with a feeling of discomfort. It seems we’ve been conditioned to believe that looking after ourselves equates to self-indulgence, and we believe that if we’re caught meeting our own needs, then people will think badly of us.

Kate Chopin’s famous story A Pair of Silk Stockings and Kylie Tennant’s lesser-known gem Lady Weare and the Bodhisattva both revolve around the trials of exasperated women in need of a break. In Chopin’s story it’s a break from the relentless drudgery of homemaking and in Tenant’s it’s the predicament of the career woman who feels unable to slow down.

Both stories speak in different ways to a culture that disallows taking time for oneself. The protagonist in Chopin’s story is ‘Little Mrs Sommers’, who by a stroke of luck, finds herself in possession of an unaccounted for $15 (this was 1899 and $15 counted for a lot more). After realizing her fortune, she begins to luxuriate in her imagination about what she will spend the money on. Her ruminations involve new items of haberdashery with which she can extend the life of some of the tatted clothes her family are wearing, and some new things to make her children ‘sparkle’. The joy Mrs Sommers feels at these thoughts are testament to her role as caretaker of the family. Many women relate to the sense of pride that is derived from the family looking good. As one group member put it.

“You do feel that you get a lot of your own sense of worth from the family looking good and being well."

There is of course, nothing wrong with pride at one’s children being neatly turned out, and Mrs Sommers garners sympathy from group members for her judicious planning for the money.

When, however, she goes shopping in that state of exhaustion common to people with many responsibilities, rests her hands for a moment in a basket containing some silk stockings, her priorities begin to shift. This is where a split can occur in groups. The stockings are a doorway into a forgotten or repressed part of herself that longs for luxury and finery. She wants elegant clothes and good food, and to participate in a cultural world from which she has been excluded. And as Mrs Sommers begins to feel herself worthy of such things, she forgets about the plans she has made for the family. The future recedes and she starts to revel in the sensuousness of the present moment.

Group participants are caught between willing her on, championing her burgeoning independence and self-discovery, and worrying about what will become of her if she abandons herself to the moment:

“I just worry that she is in some kind of dream and imagine all that regret when she goes back to her family.”

Regret that she has not spent the money how she has been conditioned to spend it. Regret that she was not safer, or more appropriate. Of course this is the beautiful tension in Chopin’s story and one that she wants us to be crucified by.

And as with all great literature we are not only afraid for Mrs Sommers, but afraid for ourselves too. How we feel about Mrs Sommers, is how we feel about ourselves. Our secret wish that she forgets her family, forgets her role and forgets everyone around her for a time is our secret wish to do the same. It is our longing to do something completely for ourselves, guiltlessly.

Why does it take such courage to meet our own needs once in a while?

One group member said: “I’m right behind her, go on live it up” before going on to describe her sense of freedom when not with her children.

It is difficult in our culture to express the difficulties of raising children. We are supposed to always be grateful, say that they’re a blessing and talk about how they’ve enriched our lives. We’re not permitted to dwell on the sacrifices parenthood demands, or the loss of self in the pursuit of raising our kids. We’re not given space to reflect on who we are without children, to focus on ourselves as whole beings with dreams, desires, feeling and opinions.

We’re scared that we will be characterised as heartless, or uncaring. To be truly self-caring is to become deaf to those voices inside us that tell us we mustn’t or we can’t. Mrs Sommers is presented as being in a kind of reverie, or trance. She is hyper-focused on her self, on what she is seeing and particularly on what she is feeling. She is, in a sense, full of herself. She is not self-negating like a ‘good mother’. She challenges us to search within ourselves for those shades of feeling that will enable us to resist doing what we are told, so that we can do what we need.

It’s amazing how often a reading of this particular story ends with an affirmation of self care. After a reading, one group member said in a very defiant tone “I’m definitely going to have a bath tonight rather than find something to busy myself with.” I reflected on this after, and wondered if Kate Chopin would be happy that her story was being used to empower people to slow down and resist their cultural conditioning.

Perhaps a slow deliberate bath is the first step in a revolution in self-care. A step we can all take right now.

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