No rest for the wicked
Why are women so rubbish at resting
Recently, I was stunned out of a doom-scrolling coma by this post by Nicola Jane Hobbs, aka The Relaxed Woman,
Before this, I’d never heard of Nicola. She’s an integrative counsellor and lifestyle consultant, who left her job as a psychologist in a high-pressure environment to create a space for women to rest, play and relax.
Before this post appeared on my screen, I’d never thought about how bizarre it is that women in our society don’t prioritise rest. Growing up, my own mam wouldn’t even take her coat off for at least an hour after coming in the house, because she simply had too much to do.
She was so busy, in fact, that my nephew, who lived with us at the time, would toddle about telling everyone he had “lots of jobs to do” .. what jobs they actually were was never quite clear.
Even now, Craig and I often joke about the common maternal gripe: “I’ve just sat down.” It’s the idea that, as a mother, someone always wants a piece of you. And the potential for jobs is endless.
Being a mother in 2023 is on par with painting the Tyne Bridge. You get to the end and have to start all over again.
Coming back to Hobbs's notion of never having seen a relaxed woman, this had alarm bells ringing for me. As a mother of a one-year-old girl, I never want her to see me as some sort of workhorse. This is something that my own mam was absolutely terrible at, and I know she would admit this herself if she was still around. She simply could. not. relax.
I do wonder if I’m not alone in this. Think about family barbeques or parties from when you were younger. If you grew up with a mam and dad, and perhaps grandparents… where were they? In my case, my mam and gran would be in the kitchen, chatting and preparing the food. The men in the family, however, would probably be at the barbie, while enjoying a beer in the garden. I can guarantee one thing about these get-togethers: my mam would be the last to eat.
She painstakingly prepared the food, and yet she would be the last to tuck into it? Make it make sense.
This was so normal that I never questioned it until now.
This isn’t the fault of the men, either. It was a pattern of behaviour that probably dated back generations; this is how families like mine would operate.
Another example that comes to mind is that our grandfathers (and, in some cases fathers) often had/have their own armchairs. A chair that's dad's chair. Imagine that. Being so synonymous with rest that you have a fixed place to do it.
But what message did that send to the next generation?
Women are always busy. We are famously great at multi-tasking… but are we really? Or is that just a story we are told from a young age to establish the fact that we will be expected to juggle a million things every single day until we die?
A quick Google search shows that there really is no clear answer as to whether us women are better at multi-tasking than men, with studies proving both sides of the equation.
In recent years, as a society, we have become much more aware of how our words and behaviours may shape future generations - and how what we experienced has probably impacted us.
A relatively newly coined phrase that springs to mind here is “weaponised incompetence”, which refers to the attitude given to people (often men in heterosexual relationships) who express that their partners should just do the jobs because they “wouldn’t do it right anyway.”
This, in part, is why women of our mother’s and grandmother’s generations were never, ever relaxed. It’s not as simple as they didn’t have the time (although that’s a big part of it); it’s that they didn’t have the support to make the time.
In a world that markets meditation apps as a way to “calm your mind” - perhaps it’s not our minds that need calming; it’s our schedules.
The idea that my daughter could see me growing up never eating at the table because I’m busy in the kitchen (another one of my own mam’s greatest hits), or that she might not play in the garden with me because I’m busy doing the dishes, makes me feel positively sick.
I never want her to associate me with chores, and her dad with fun. I want her to see us both doing housework and enjoying play and rest in equal measure. Your future shouldn't be written in the stars because of your gender.
What does rest actually look like?
Rest is so alien to many of us that it's hard to imagine what it actually looks like, never mind how to implement it into our busy lives. One of the biggest struggles I've found in early motherhood is that my resting space has been taken over by all of the chaos that comes with having a child.
Previously, I’d enjoy laidback evenings with a book and a cuppa or a slow start on a weekend enjoying a coffee in bed. Now, my rest time is dominated by guilt and thoughts of endless chores.
I am very guilty of making rest a reward for completing all of my jobs. Once, I’ve done this, this and this, I will sit down and watch some trash telly. Interestingly, Craig does the opposite. He enjoys his hobby or plays his PS5 before he does the chores.
I have to admit, I can’t stand on a soapbox telling you all to prioritise rest when I am so, so bad at it myself. I recognise that rest shouldn’t be seen as a reward; it’s a right.
So, how do I reprogramme my brain?
Firstly, I have to recognise that I can’t change overnight. I am not going to wake up tomorrow morning and sip a coffee in bed while the baby cries in her cot, nor am I going to walk past a pile of laundry and not chuck it in the machine.
However, I do wonder… do I have to do everything right now?
This is where I am at the moment.
I am trying to drink my coffee before doing the dishes. Let the laundry pile up an extra day if needed. Chuck tea in the oven instead of making a fresh meal from scratch.
By taking these little shortcuts, I am hoping to create spaces for rest. Even if that means sitting in the car listening to my podcast, or eating my breakfast before starting the jobs.
How do you feel about rest? Is it something that comes easy to you? Or are you like me in that you see it as a reward for completing other activities? Let me know in the comments below!
The weather has been less than ideal for touching grass this week, but I’ve still managed a few rainy walks around the village with Potter and enjoyed plenty of little treats.
A few other thing’s I’ve enjoyed this week…
🎥 Watching Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness on Halloween - A perfect mix of hilarity and gore.
📚 Listening to Love From The Pink Palace by Jill Nalder - A memoir about love, loss and cabaret during the AIDS crisis. Jill inspired a character in Russell Davies’ amazing C4 show, It’s a Sin.
That’s all from me,
See you next week for more of the same,
Ellen x
Honestly, I've written about not being able to rest until we feel we've earned it (also with the same title, hehe, great minds think alike), but I'm only just realizing that there's a gendered view towards this too. And of course, there is, this world is full of double standards.
In my culture, most women do not "work" and that's shorthand for saying they're housewives (now called homemakers). But I've not known a single employed woman or a single homemaker rest properly. Most of the moms I know are constantly moving, doing something, picking up after someone. The dads? Well, they've done their day's work at the office and now need to *rest* but there's no such space for working/employed moms.
Things are changing in the urban spaces now, but it's still something that I grapple with too. Resting doesn't come easily to me at all, in fact it has to be forced by a physical issue more often than not. I hope that like you, I'll also learn to make space for rest without needing to "earn" it as my "reward."
I am awful at resting. I can’t do it. I always find something else to do. In a way I see something like writing as rest, but it isn’t the sit in front of the telly kind of rest I need some days. Finding the balance is hard. And tricking myself in to actually resting is harder.
I try to work outside of the house so I am not distracted by loads of washing and I have been trying to do more fun stuff, like drawing or walking somewhere, but there is always a to do list on my mind whether it’s the housework/ the mental load or whether its work I have created for myself it’s always there.