You Don’t Have to Do It Alone
Let me get real for a moment. For the last two weeks, we’ve been surrounded by news and social media about the Coronavirus. We’ve self-quarantined and social distanced. Yesterday, I needed a break, so I took my son for a drive to a drive-through Starbucks. It was the first time I’d left the house in five days (minus walks around the block) and I cried. I cried, because it was a Friday at 4 PM and there was very little rush hour traffic. I cried, because the restaurants were empty. And I cried, because the stress of it all was getting to me.
I’ve been wanting to write an article on building community for a while, but now it’s taken on a different meaning. There’s a different intensity in the air. As we’re all being told to stay away from each other, it highlights why community is so important.
But let’s ignore all that for a moment. Let’s just talk about community as if the world were not turned upside down. What is community? Well, there are two definitions:
a. A group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common (such as a neighborhood, religion, etc.)
b. A feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals
(Oxford Dictionary)
You’re probably thinking, “Okay, that’s obvious. What’s so important about community?” Let me tell you.
Ever since I started focusing my coaching on working moms (and become a working mom myself), I’ve become aware of the burden of the feeling like you need to do it all. There’s been a lot of focus on breaking the myth of working moms needing to have it all, but not enough focus on just how much moms are actually doing. Working, full-time or part-time, still doing most of the childcare and housework (although men are picking up more of their share here than in the past), trying to find time for wellness, friends, cooking, planning birthday parties, holidays, family vacations, etc. And ultimately, feeling like a failure or getting completely burnt out when they realize it’s impossible to do everything for everyone.
Let me be really clear about this - no one person can possibly do all this, and honestly, no one person was ever meant to do all of this.
What we’re missing here is COMMUNITY. If you look back in time, humans have been people of tribes and communities. While a long read, the article “The Nuclear Family was a Mistake” by David Brooks of The Atlantic sheds a lot of light on how the nuclear family ended up isolated in the way we are today. (Well, the “normal” today, not the “shelter in place/coronavirus” today.) I highly recommend taking the time to read it, and you’re most likely self-quarantined for a while, so what else are you going to do?
If like others, you’re like TL:DR, here’s a quick summary… For most of human history, we’ve lived in small groups of people where life was lived together. Communities hunted together, farmed together, cared for children and the elderly together, and cooked together. The load for surviving was shared by a group of people. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, a focus on the nuclear family emerged. Extended families stopped living together and the suburbs spread. Suddenly, mom and dad were responsible for shouldering the whole load – now, that’s a lot of pressure and responsibility.
No wonder parents are burnt out! Unfortunately, I don’t have a magical fix for this, but I am hoping the awareness that you are not meant to do it all brings a bit of solace. Take peace in knowing you are not a failure – you are living in a societal structure that has set you up to fail. It is 100% okay to feel overwhelmed and like you can’t do it all, because, let’s get real, you cannot do it all on your own.
Now having said that, there is something you can do. You can begin building your community and share the load.
Build relationships with your neighbors. I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but honestly, this one is really hard for me, because my husband and I are introverts and stopping to chat with our neighbors is not super high on our priority list. But, if there’s an emergency, and I need someone to have a spare key and check on the house, or water the plants, or feed the dog, it’s nice to have that trust and relationship already cemented. I hope they’d feel the same about me.
Move closer to family. Not always possible and families can be very complicated, but family can be a super strong community.
Delegate! Know you don’t have to do everything. If you have the financial means, outsource! Laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping, etc.
Learn what you can drop and know it’s okay. One of the best metaphors I ever heard around this is juggling – you’re juggling a lot of balls. Some are glass and some are rubber. If you drop a glass ball, you’ll never get it back. Dance recitals, birthday parties, huge work projects – glass balls. Things like laundry, having a home-cooked meal, and cleaning, rubber balls. They’ll bounce back and you can juggle them later.
Ask for help. The world is full of helpers, but you’ll never know unless you ask.
Now, let’s go back to the beginning of this article. I mentioned how this seems even more important with Coronavirus. Why? Because this huge load we’re all carrying also includes the mental load of stress and worry. That’s what made me break down on Friday. The feeling that we are all carrying the stress and anxiety alone.
What if my kids’ school closes?
How am I supposed to work and home-school my child?
What if I lose my job?
What if I/my child/my parents/etc. get sick?
What if I’m sick and my kid is sick? Who will care for all of us?
We need to lean on community more than ever right now to share the physical load and the mental load – even when we’re not supposed to be within 6 feet of someone else.
For me, it’s been hugely uplifting to be a part of neighborhood Facebook groups where the young and healthy are offering to go grocery shopping for the elderly or those who are immunocompromised. I’ve joined Zoom calls and Facetime chats for virtual play dates and happy hours. Teachers are providing live-streamed lessons and music classes. People everywhere are looking for opportunities to help and share the load. This is an amazing opportunity to both call on your community and offer to support it right back.
Community is everywhere, if we look for it and offer it to others. Share the load. Pick up someone else’s load if you have capacity. In fact, I think this is the greatest gift of community. By helping others, you will feel your spirit lighten. You will feel closer to humanity and a part of something bigger than yourself.
The only way we get through this thing called life is together. Now, more than ever. As long as you’ve washed your hands and are 6 feet away.