Balancing Being A Woman

The one thing people are most curious about of me, they really want to know particularly the women, and they want to know “how are you doing?” I mean, “how are you doing?” I’m like, “I know, I know”. They really want to know, how am I balancing this stuff? Balancing being a mother, a professional, a campaigner, a wife, a woman, right? And they want to know how have things changed for us over the course of this journey and now as First Lady.

What I tell them is that essentially, like many women, I’m doing a whole lot of juggling.

Juggling! We all do it. I’ve found that this period has been both challenging and thrilling at the same time for me. I’ve had to cut back on my hours at work. It’s ok. I love my job, but I can’t, I have to pick one. That has given me some more time. My focus has been trying to keep my kids sane. That is first and foremost for us, making sure Malia and Sasha stay in their routine as much as possible, for as long as possible.

Barack and I measure how well we are doing by saying, “how are the girls?” And they are just fine. They are going to ballet and gymnastics, they care about the next play date, the next pizza party, and then there is their school. I have to worry about, making sure we are on point academically, that we go to all the parent-teacher conferences, and Barack still goes to those. It is quite a scheduling feat, but we make it happen; presentations, school plays. You all know the drill.

I would not be able to do it without a support network. These are the women in my life, my mother, momma Kay, the girl’s godmothers, girlfriends of mine who help me shuttle and keep me held up. And, at the same time, I’m still trying to find time for myself, getting the hair done, let’s not pretend we don’t know that getting the hair and nails done is important, and getting a workout. That’s one of the things I always talk about, got to exercise, so I am still trying to do that. And to top it all off, I have the pleasure of doing it all in front of the watchful eyes of our friends.

My life now is not really that much different from many of yours. I wake up every morning wondering how on earth I am going to pull off that next minor miracle to get through the day. I know that everybody else is going through this. That is the dilemma women face today. Every woman that I know, regardless of race, education, income, background, political affiliation, is struggling to keep her head above water.

We try to convince ourselves that somehow doing it all is a badge of honor, but for many of us it is a necessity and we have to be very careful not to lose ourselves in the process. More often than not, we as women, are the primary caretakers in our households, scheduling babysitters, planning play dates, keeping up with regular doctor’s appointments; this was my week last week, supervising homework, handing our discipline. Usually we are the ones in charge of keeping the household together.

And, for those of us who work outside of the home as well, we have the additional challenge of coordinating these things with our job responsibilities. How many of us have had to be the ones, when a child gets sick, who is the one who stays home? Or, when a toilet overflows? This was a couple of months ago. I was scrambling around to reschedule being at a 9 o’clock meeting and Barack, love him to death, put on his clothes and he left!

To top it off we have the added social pressure of looking good, staying slim, don’t add pounds, got to look good with wardrobe pulled together, and we have to be in good spirits, right? Ready to be supportive of our significant others. But, again, these are not challenges that are unique to me. I say this all the time and people think I’m being modest. But, the truth is that my experiences tell me that we as women are facing what I call “the next level of challenges” in our journey, balancing work, family, ourselves differently than ever before. My mother says this all the time. She’s like “I don’t know how you do it” and she means it.

We made great strides with regards to equality at all levels of society and because of the struggles so many have fought. There is no ceiling. They can envision themselves anyway that they want, surgeons, Supreme Court justices, basketball stars, they have images that I never had growing up. But I wonder, what is the unspoken cost that having it all takes on us. If we’re scurrying to and from appointments and errands, we don’t have a lot of time to take care of our own mental and physical health and for many women, juggling, this adds another layer of stress. We see it in our health, women with increased heart attacks, diabetes, asthma, we’re up in the numbers, and this is no coincidence.

We have to really think through what the next “level of challenges” are for us. There just aren’t enough hours in the day so we do what we can. And, what is happening is that we do what we do what we can in spite of the fact that we’re not getting the needed kind of support from the government and society as a whole. The reality is that women and families are not getting the support that they need to thrive. We’ve spent the last decade talking a good game about family values but I haven’t seen much in my life that really shows us that we are a society that actually values families.

We have essentially ignored the plight of women and families. We’ve told them “you go figure it out”. Figure out how you’re going to support a family on minimum wage and no benefits. You go figure out who is going to watch your children while you are at work without access to adequate, affordable childcare. You figure out how to keep your family healthy without access to quality health care, figure out how you are going to ensure that your children get the best education possible. You figure out how you are going to live without access to affordable housing. So, essentially, we’ve told women dream big, but after that, you are on your own.