Over The Whelm

I hold a Bachelor’s Degree in Early Childhood Education, so the following will be your English lesson for the day. Or for the year, whatever the case may be. I LOVE words. They make for great stories, which is why I have a blog about stories. But I digress. I did a short word study on 2 words, which led to 2 more words, which ended in a very deep, but also very interesting, rabbit hole.

The 2 words I looked at first were, along with their definitions, the following:

Whelm: (can be both a noun & a verb, if you care about parts of speech…as you should); engulf, submerge, or bury; also, an act of heaping up abundantly, a surge

Overwhelm: (primarily a verb); to bury beneath a large mass, inundate, to defeat someone or something totally with great force or mass

If you are a woman living in 2024, then you surely resonate with some of those definitions. Maybe men do, as well, but not being a man, nor seeing evidence of such suffering in the male demographic, I really don’t think they do. Anyway, how, ladies, have we moved from your basic mundane engulfment of bygone days to feeling totally defeated….especially in an era of unprecedented technological advances designed to simplify our life & minimize our work?! We have our own (well not me…I’m an old rebel) digital babysitter/supervisor/alarm clock called “Alexa”, commercial sized washers & dryers (yes, me….I love mine) to speed our laundry production, “Roombas” (not me…sent mine back as she was a slacker & could not follow directions), & the like. We have our portable life-support-systems that fit in our purses/pockets/palms that we lovingly refer to as “cell phones”, that SHOULD help a girl out in this age of pressure. From where I sit, these things are all for naught. They may acutally be the villains of our stories.

For what it is worth, I AM OVER THE WHELM. I wanna cash in the superlative & spend that wad on real life. Coffee. Playing with my grandkids. Sitting on my dear friend’s porch (you know who you are). Creating something. Baking bread. Walking. Reading. Enjoying adventures with my man. It isn’t that these things are missing in my current stage of life…I acutally do all of them with at least sporadic frequency. Well…except for the walking part. But I DO have intentions to walk, especially if I had the TIME to do so.

So what is defeating us? What is the “surge” in your life that is threatening your mental health? Never before have we been so wired, so connected. We can know something from a village in Uganda in a split second…unless you have AT&T, in which case it may take a bit longer. We do not even have to wait for the 10 p.m. news or the latest issue of Vogue to know what is going on in our world. The information is instantaneous & it has mass…enough to turn ya boat over, girl. Social media is a 24/7 powerhouse that yells at us to buy more, declutter, do all the things, simplify, cook from scratch, bounce back after that baby (whatever the *bleep* that means), raise feral kids, raise Montessori kids, grow your faith, deconstruct your faith, work outside the home, be a stay-at-home-mom…what a modern mess. “You-do-you” is a cultural LIE. The messages of social media (pick any platform) are like the iceberg that took down the Titanic…we think we are safe, but what lies beneath is deadly.

What to do? Parent yourself. Full stop. You have screen limits for your kids, am I right? Do the same for yourself. You regulate how many extra curriculars your children can do in any given season. (for the love of all that is holy tell me you do!) You have regular naptimes & bedtimes for said children, provide nourishment, regular wellness visits, all the things. For crying right out loud…ladies, do the same for yourself!

You must learn from me. I am 59 years old & have been around long enough that I can tell you way too many things from experience. The margin you crave, the energy & well-being you desperately need, will not come from “me-time”. What the actual heck…that is a new concept in the history of womanhood. The occasional “mom’s night out”, or pedi/mani, or trip to the beach are all good & blissfully wonderful, but they are uber-temporary. Also, I hear you, momma of 132 littles…where will you get the time to make the time?

I am going to run headlong into the wind of culture right here & right now: stop scrolling, pare down that family calendar…in case somebody else has not told you, YOUR CHILD IS NOT GOING TO BE A PROFFESIONAL SPORTS PERSON. Sorry, not sorry. Go to bed even 30 minutes earlier & see what happens. Eat more protein. Go for a walk with your spawn. Binge watching anything is no better than binge eating/drinking/spending: it ain’t healthy…& it eats up hours of your life that you can never get back. Pick up a book with actual paper pages. Take a long bath (or shower, if you are opposed to soaking in your own body of water). If you suffer from anxiety at night, jot that crap down in a journal.

Please notice I did not advise that you join a support group, hire a housekeeper, start a spreadsheet, or take a course, to be able to parent yourself. None of those things are wrong or bad. I am saying, love on yourself the way you love on those you brought into this world & just SEE if the stress backs up…even a little. May take some time, because behavior patterns (read that: habits), are ridiculously hard to change. I know I am not alone in this. Women need women. I am cheering you on. As I told a woman I met in the grocery store last night (after a most precious conversation), “I don’t even know you, yet I love you”. I love you, dear ones. Till next time…