Please Don't Call me Super Woman

Let's give ourselves a break and ditch this over-used compliment

Even if I own the outfit, I’m no Super Woman…

It’s a phrase that we see adorning Mother’s Day cards and t-shirts, a phrase that’s handed out like a gold star. The Super Woman is the woman we are told to aspire to be, the do-it-all high achiever who maybe even looks OK in a Lycra bodysuit because as well as managing a career and social life and family she also finds time to go to the gym three times a week.

I know it’s meant as a compliment, but having both handed out and received the Super Woman accolade I think maybe it’s time we threw in the cape.

The thing about Super Woman is that she has supernatural powers. I do not. I’m just one human, trying my best to hold it all together, juggling probably too much like so many women do every single day.

When people praise other women for being super women it comes from a good place but I think perpetuates the idea that we can and should do it all.

I’m prone to self-criticism but even I can acknowledge that, on paper, what I have achieved over the past year has been impressive. I finished my maternity leave at six months to get back to editing my fourth book, which eventually entailed rewriting the whole thing. I have also got stuck into my fifth book, making good progress on meeting my deadline.

I’ve done all of that without any proper childcare, thanks to cost and a long waiting lists for oversubscribed local nurseries and childcare providers. My mum pops in when she can, which is a massive help, and for a few months we’ve employed someone to look after my son one morning a week. But the majority of my time I spend taking care of my energetic toddler on my own, cramming my writing into the evenings once he’s gone to sleep. And there’s also the food shopping, laundry mountains and general life admin that has to be fitted in around all that too.

Somehow, I’ve managed to mostly keep on top of it all (just don’t look too closely at the work surfaces I keep meaning to give a proper clean). The stuff that needed to get done has pretty much been done.

But let me tell you – I do not feel good. I am exhausted, my mental health frayed.

My life might look like I’ve got it together but I sometimes feel like wearing a badge that reads, ‘Don’t Try This at Home.’ I would certainly not recommend this kind of set up to anyone, of trying to do it all without really enough help. I definitely don’t feel super.

And that’s the thing – I think that most of the women who you’d call Super Women probably aren’t doing great either. What you see of their lives might seem organised and accomplished but behind the scenes is one knackered woman pedalling frantically, constantly feeling as though something might slip and the whole painstakingly-constructed thing might come toppling down.

Maybe instead of applauding women who are doing it all, we should question why they are having to do it all in the first place? So much of the emotional load of maintaining a functioning home and social life seems to fall on women, and then there’s the fact that childcare is so expensive and oversubscribed. In our household we’ve also found that while companies might talk about ‘flexible working’, actually finding somewhere that’s happy with part-time working for my husband has been a real challenge / impossible. To name a few things.

Thankfully, my son starts nursery a couple of days a week from September and it feels like the light at the end of the tunnel. I want to run towards that light but frankly I’m so tired that this last bit feels like the limp at the end of a marathon.

Now, when I see friends juggling an awe-inspiring number of things I want to try to bite my tongue and instead of saying, ‘Wow, you’re Super Woman,’ ask them gently, ‘But are you OK? Really?’ And maybe, ‘What can I do to help?’

It should be OK to ask for help when we need it, rather than feeling as though we have to summon supernatural strength in order to do it all. I want to try to get better at accepting my own limitations. At being OK with the house being a mess and sometimes having to say ‘no’ if something feels too much to manage.

I’m only human, after all.

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Things I’m loving…

• At the weekend I took what I called a ‘Libby Day’ - a well-needed day to myself where I left my son with my husband and headed to Bath for a day of pottering, totally alone. Bath has two of the loveliest bookshops around - Topping & Company and Mr B’s Emporium, so of course I had to pop into both! Browsing a bookshop is good for the soul.

• I recently finished reading Lost For Words by Stephanie Butland. I must admit that based on the cover I was expecting something lighter but this book hit hard with plenty of drama and emotion, all set around a secondhand bookshop in York.

• I’m now reading Night Music by Jojo Moyes and am completely hooked. It’s set in a rambling old house (I love books set in rambling old houses) and I am particularly enjoying it for how it covers the push and pull between motherhood and your passions in life (for the main character, this means playing the violin).