I have some Type A traits, but I wouldn’t call myself 100 percent Type A. But the to-do lists, the keeping busy, the many irons in the fire, the packed schedule — check, check, check and check!
I read this article with interest because I felt that in some respects, Mary Laura Philpott was writing to me. But she didn’t address one important aspect: What can a woman do to relieve this pressure she puts upon herself?
Philpott seems to be saying, “I hear ya, girl. Go get ’em.” Basically, keep on keeping on. This passage, in particular, saddened me:
You see yourself the way you think the world sees you, so you value yourself only when you are accomplishing and producing and finishing and succeeding. If you can’t value yourself, then there’s no reason to get up every morning, and if there’s no reason to get up, then … what? You feel untethered, as if someone has turned off gravity and you’ve been spun into infinite space, a black hole that demands, “What’s the point of you?”
I see this a lot in the young women I work with at the university, I see it on social media, I see it in the women I know — women who do not love and value themselves first. Women who look to the outside world for validation. Stay busy, gather public accolades, check off accomplishment after accomplishment, all for outside validation.
Philpott ends with:
You nailed it — all of it.
I know how much you need to hear this.
I can never hear it enough.
Yes, it’s nice to get kudos. I’m not going to turn them down! But yoga has helped me get strong within myself. When the outside validation doesn’t come, I’m OK with that. As a writer, the outside validation rarely comes so you have to do it for yourself. I was rejected for a big grant last year, and in the last week I got two other big rejections. If it were only the outside world’s opinion that mattered, then that opinion is that I suck. But I know I did the best I could do, and that’s the “point of me.” I think Philpott missed an opportunity to encourage women to love themselves first.
