How Are All The Other Women Getting On?

Since last Friday, I have had FOMO. It’s a completely irrational Fear Of Missing Out because I have never had any interest whatsoever in the slopes. I don’t like to be cold. I am terrified of hurtling downhill at speed. I can’t be bothered with layering. I don’t want to exercise all day. Besides, I’ve heard that helicopters circle the mountains waiting to airlift those with life-changing injuries. But the schools are off next week and everybody and I mean everybody is going skiing including people who don’t like skiing. The middle-class suburbs will be decimated. It didn’t sound like a holiday, but I ran it past those I’d given birth to anyway. “Anyone fancy going skiing next February?” I asked on the Sloan Family WhatsApp. No one replied but then it isn’t unusual to be ignored in my own home. It was preying on my mind. I brought it up again over the Sunday roast. Ella said she was too old to learn a new skill because she’d be sixteen soon.

I blame my FOMO on agreeing to go out with a group of other women. I wouldn’t exactly say I was manhandled into a vehicle under cover of darkness and bundled out at the door of a restaurant, but the invite went something like this, “I know you don’t like crowds etc. but I am organising a girls’ night at….”.  And it’s true that I mainly enjoy my husband’s company and that ‘girls’ night’ sends a shiver down my spine and that I’m better at one to ones and prefer gatherings with a defined purpose like we’re here together to save your soul or fulfil your potential or get you treated fairly in this organisation and I have a bit of an ick about too many women in a room because then, the conversation will only revolve around women things and I quite like talking to men whose heads go nowhere near the domestic load and “is it the menopause?” and the best place to get a blow-dry and we’re never ever trying to discover what we have in common. But it was nice that my reticence and my etc. were welcome and so I tore the label off a new dress, sprayed myself with sociability and said a prayer. As we travelled across town, I tried to relax but the car window had to be opened because someone was having a hot flush. There were a lot of jokes about bottoms as the trio pressed against each other in the back seat struggled to fit their seatbelts under them and I learned that one friend was doing another friend’s washing. Her machine had broken down and I thought of disaster relief and how practical help is really psychological help and how this is the ultimate gift one person can give another and I was moved by what a beautiful outpouring of love this was. And when I sat down, my neighbour said it was lovely to see me. It had been a while. She was glad to be there. “It’s good to hear how all the other women are getting on,” she said.

And she was right. That’s why we were there because it’s important to know how all the other women are getting on and it’s always a comfort to know that we’re mainly just getting by, juggling a million balls, fighting inequality, drowning in laundry, worrying about our children, dealing with our guilt and our weight and our chapped lips and our chipped nails and that we’re still responsible for booking every single thing so that it happens on the right day at the right time. And I’ll always want to know what they’re doing with their hair, if leather jackets are still in, how they’re burning their calories, what meals they’re planning, whether their elderly parents are driving them mad and they’re longing to put them into care, who has taken up sea swimming, whether anyone else has a daughter with weird sleeping habits, if their marriages are still alive, what their coping mechanisms are, whether they’re drinking more than me, if they’re living under false pretences or the life they always wanted to live. And I only blinked back a small tear when I was asked if I was still blogging because that sounded like a hobby and it’s much more than that to me and I find it extra hard to prove myself now in circles of professional women without my career and with all this time on my hands to be a wife and remove stains.

Aimee Byrd¹ said that midlife sneaks up on you and it often coincides with some other crisis like a spouse who leaves you or a job that becomes unbearable. “Talk to your friends,” she said. “Check in with them. Really check in with them”.

“Look, a lot of the time we need to just get together, catch up on our news, and have some fun. But everyone is carrying baggage, sorting through garbage, and trying to find their own face in the midst of it all. And you can't find your own face by yourself. We just aren't made that way. We need to summon it out of each other. We need friends for this,” she said.

And I hoped that even though we were all carrying our own individual baggage and sorting through our garbage, that we could all find our own face in the midst of it, that we didn’t have counterfeit ones, that we were summoning it out of each other and that no one was afraid to say that they were exhausted, or angry, or apprehensive about the skiing and they were mainly doing it for the kids. And I could hear their laughter from the washrooms two floors above and I liked being with them because women are the only ones who know what it’s like to bring up other humans and wonder if you are getting any of it right.

I couldn’t sleep on Wednesday night. It was nothing to do with my digestive system or social anxiety or night sweats. I’d sent an email. It was at least three paragraphs of perfectly crafted feedback. “I think it’s cool that you’re calling it out,” said my husband. But it didn’t feel cool to me. It felt exhausting. I felt like a troublemaker. I felt that I should poke my nose back out again because it was the wrong place for feminism, and I was speaking up for others, not for me. And when it was acknowledged with a one-line response, and I was thanked for my perceptive insights, as always, it was the ‘as always’ that killed me. I knew I wasn’t meant to keep on having these opinions, that the issue and me were probably dead in the water, that it would go nowhere, and I felt defeated, and I couldn’t help wondering, “would you listen to me if I was a man?”. And then Katelyn Beaty² said this about the church needing to believe women and honour their experiences…

“I see this as a nearly impossible hurdle for the church, not least because women’s testimony has been contested and dismissed since the very start of Christianity. The women at the empty tomb would tell you as much”.

And if the church can’t set an example of loving and valuing women, then who can? And the next morning, eyes gritty with lack of sleep and with regrets rising, I said to my husband, “what have you ever done for womankind?”. Because I thought of those women on a Friday evening and all that they’re doing, and all the people who depend on them, and benefit from them and all the things that couldn’t happen without them and how little men do to make it easier for them. And I wondered who is speaking up for them and sometimes I don’t just have FOMO about skiing, I have FOMO for womankind.

“Could you write something more uplifting this week?” said someone last Friday. They would be tuning in to my blog, as always. Well, this my friends is it. If nothing else, I hope that if no one else will do it for us, that women can keep on having each other’s backs, can keep speaking up for each other and most importantly, can keep checking in on each other.

P.S. Have a great time if you are going skiing …

1. Aimee Byrd

2. Katelyn Beaty