Reclamation Through Action
/“WOC are not taught to take “Me time” said Veronica.
We were discussing her challenges with returning to work in her new VP role after having birthed her first baby while trying to create space for her well-being. She was really struggling.
In addition to the fatigue from sleep deprivation, she was mentally fraught with guilt and negative thoughts about leaving her son, Jordan, to go to work. The stress made her breast milk production crash, turning every pumping session into frustration, sadness, and anger.
The feelings carried over into her work and showed up as anxiety about performing at a high level. She was promoted just before leaving the team for maternity leave, and felt a self-imposed pressure to prove herself as reliable, capable, competent, worthy of the promotion. She was even feeling guilty about “accepting” the promotion and then “ghosting her team.” To make up for it, she was going hard at work, very conscious of not wanting her colleagues to think motherhood made her any less of a stellar team member.
Veronica was killing it at work and then coming home and giving all that was left to Jordan.
The routine was killing her.
That’s how she ended up on a call with me.
“WOC are not taught to take “Me time,” she said with defensiveness and frustration in her voice.
That remark laid heavy on my heart.
The truth definitely hurts.
For Gen X and early Gen Y women of color, what many of us saw growing up were women like Clair Huxtable with ‘80s shoulder pads and briefcases steeped deeply in the performative, masculine energy of DOING…the thing and climbing the ladders.
I saw my mother model this and I was SO proud of her.
She was a sole woman on an all-male team in the government contracting world.
She was the bad bitch in the boardroom. (At least in my mind!)
However, just like on television, I never saw “Me Time” and self-care claimed and taken…much less lived out like a practice.
I also witnessed how examples of self-care were in service to the external world.
My big sister would wake up suuuuper early, take the bus across multiple cities for a 6am appointment to get her hair pressed and laid. All so she could be cute for roaming the mall and catching the attention of boys.
And can’t let that fly-from-the-beauty-salon look go to waste!
She’d barely sleep Saturday night. She was conscious not to move too much and mess up her hair!
It had to still look good for church on Sunday morning!
As a young girl living in the hippy-dippy village of Yellow Springs in the ‘80s, I saw inner self-care practices like meditation and yoga practiced only by weird white people wearing tie-dye shirts, Birkenstocks, and dreadlocks. (That’s a topic for a whole ‘nother newsletter)
The ‘80s and ‘90s exercise-craze and diet-culture were fueled by white folx likes Richard, Suzanne & Jane, and like hair care, also rooted in and motivated by attaining white standards of beauty. Billy Blanks’ Taebo movement definitely got Black folks moving (yay!), but even in those videos he stood as “the only” in a supporting cast of white fitness goers.
To unlearn the acculturation of a patriarchal, capitalistic system that makes a woman feel bad—shameful—for pausing…doing “nothing”…being…rather than DOing, one must:
Have awareness of the immense benefit that comes from taking time for thyself.
Then she must know she is worthy of the time, the benefits, the cost
And then she must act.
Reclamation through action.
Take the nap.
Go on the vacation.
Calendar the weekly massage.
Push back on externally-imposed unrealistic deadlines that eat into Me Time.
Let the children wait.
Schedule the daily meditation and movement time.
Go into nature.
If you’re ready to reclaim YOU. Here’s a couple ways I am here to support:
Join me LIVE on FB this Thursday, 5/26 at 1pm PT/4pm ET to talk about and get your questions answered on making space for Me Time. We’ll talk barriers, mindset, boundary setting, and more!
Book a Breakthrough Session to see if we’re a fit for 1:1 coaching
Now help someone else. Send this to another woman who needs to know she is worthy of Me Time.
Live well,
Gigi Gibbs