Chronicles of a Single Mom #8 – The Superwoman Syndrome

Ladies we’re walking around with a syndrome and we don’t even realize it.
There are no symptoms or warnings. Often we don’t realize that we’ve reached our max until it has already happened.
I’m talking about having a case of chronic Superwoman Syndrome.
We work, attempt to keep the house clean, take care of the kids, cook and attend PTA meetings. We don’t realize that we’re running ourselves ragged in the process while taking on more projects.
We’re suffering from The Superwoman Syndrome, the need to be the greatest at what we do whatever we may be doing while adding tasks that we must complete in life, church, and whatever other organizations we may be associated with.
Every morning we make out our lengthy to-do list, put on our cape and start our day. Every evening we come back exhausted with ¾ of our list done, hang our cape up and vow to get the rest done tomorrow.
It’s a lot of pressure and we can burn out or begin to fizzle quickly.
The reality is that we will never cure ourselves of this syndrome. It’s just not going to happen. We’re female warriors at work, at home, at school, at church and everywhere we go. Our list will never get shorter; the tasks will just change on a daily or yearly basis.
And that’s okay.
What’s not okay is forgetting to take time to recuperate.
Every superhero needs a vacation or just a 30-minute break. Time to rejuvenate, recuperate and re-energize in order to be our best selves. What if Batman never let Alfred patch him up when needed? He wouldn’t have been able to continue protecting Gotham and its residents. What if Superman stayed around a batch of Kryptonite? It wouldn’t have been possible to lift buses, save planes, fly faster than a speeding bullet and pursue Mary Jane while holding down a full-time job at The Daily Planet.
Cape or not, I’m still trying to figure out how he changed in those small phone booths so fast and I have issues trying to change in the smaller dressing rooms at department stores.
Either way, the moral of the story is you can’t take care of others without first taking care of yourselves on a mental, spiritual, emotional and physical level. By any means necessary.
Meaning you may need to sacrifice 30-minutes of sleep for 30-minutes of peace. You could meditate or pray over a cup of hot tea or coffee. You could simply remind yourself that the mountain of laundry is truly not going anywhere and you can do it tomorrow.
We can do anything, this is true. But we must do everything to help ourselves achieve these tasks.
It’s hard being Wonder Woman but someone has to stick around to do it.
Why not you?
I’m Just Saying.