I grew up in a house hold where a good work ethic was very important. There were no sick days in my home, not that I did not attempt Oscar winning performances on test days! I held thermometers up to light bulbs, painted dark eye shadow under my eyes for the dramatic walking zombie effect, and of course coughed up a lung, even though under normal circumstances I never had coughing fits. My parents motto was, you will feel no better at home and probably worse. They believed if you stop to think about being sick than you would surely succumb to that illness. So I went to school through fevers, headaches, and sore throats. I have to wonder these days if this motto was related more to a lack of ability to take off work themselves, or if they really believed it! Here I am decades later and I still can not call off sick. I have been really and truly sick for over two weeks now. Every day I get up and go to work. I feel absolutely terrible spreading germs this way. Several nights I work a second job as well. Here is the really funny part. I have the ability to work from home as much as 75% of the time if needed. I feel better and more accomplished if I go work in my office. I could stay home in warm comfy PJ's with a comforter and tea and still get the majority of my work done, but I don't! Why do we torture ourselves this way? I know I am not the only one. I know there are more of you out there who repeat lessons we learned as a child well into adult hood even though they make absolutely no sense at all! Now I know many are not so lucky. I know there are millions of people out there who really can not take off work when they are sick. This extends beyond that.
There are other odd things we learned as children and continue to repeat as adults. My personal favorite for a few years was "wait till your father gets home" ! Now, I am a strong willed mother of a strong willed daughter so why would I teach her that her father or men in general hold more power? The statement is very demoralizing to mothers every where. As a now single mom I usually resort to the banshee scream when I have reached my wits end. When she does occasionally see her father to this day he barely has to raise his voice to make an impact. I created that! Society has created this myth that the father holds more power. In actuality as children become teens no one has power but a mothers ability to snoop makes for great black mail material and that my friends is power!
I look back and realize that I am really not that different as I was as a child. What is amazing is the vast amount of transformations and changes I made to get here. I searched for years to figure out who I was going to be, and although with a different road taken here or there I may live in a different city and have a different career, I think I would still be the same person I am now. Lessons my now teenage daughter is still learning. Purple hair punk-ish clothes, and "mom you cant even begin to understand my life"... I think I still have that journal! Someday she will see this and know, mom really did understand.
BTW - thanks mom!
