You're listening to That's Not Very Ladylike, the show where every week we start with one rule, ladies don't, and then we do it anyway. You're listening to That's Not Very Ladylike, the show where every week we start with one rule, ladies don't, and then we do it anyway. Welcome back. I'm That Hormone Girl, Tracy Willingham, and today's rule is one you might be living so completely, you can't even see it. So ladies don't crave being alone.
Tracey:They love to be available 20 fourseven. And that's the rule. You're the one with the answers, the text, the mom, the hey, do you have a sec? The group chat, the front desk of your entire family, friends, and community. And if someone asked, you'd say, I love it.
Tracey:I'm a people person. I love feeling needed. Meanwhile, the happiest ten minutes of your week is the drive home from the grocery store alone, in the quiet, and sometimes you're like, I might need to take the long way. And today we're going to talk about that long way home. So it's time for the story.
Tracey:Gather around my friends. Let me paint you a picture from my working life before that hormone girl days. Every single vacation I took, and I mean every single one, you could ask my husband because he's got a whole feeling and probably a podcast episode about this, my boss would find me. A little quick question. Sorry to bother you.
Tracey:Hey, do you have a sec? Well, I'm supposed to be off. And it wasn't just the boss. Other teams outside of my team, right? My team was respectful.
Tracey:Other teams, they learned my schedule as well. They knew when I was out and that was exactly when they'd come for my team because they figured, well nobody's here watching the gate. Let's get them. So there I am on the trip I saved for and planned and 100% believe me I needed with my spouse or my friends right in front of me and my head is constantly being pulled back to the office putting out fires that I didn't even light. I could not be where I was.
Tracey:I could not, for one single week, stop thinking about everybody else's needs. And that is when I started joking that PTO does not stand for paid time off. For women like me, for women like you, you know what we need to start telling people PTO means? Prepare the others. Prepare the others.
Tracey:Because you spend the days before you leave making sure the whole world can survive without you, and then you spend the days you're gone proving they couldn't. And all I wanted all I wanted was to be left alone with my people to not carry anyone for a few days. And turns out that wasn't too much to ask. It just felt like it because I had been trained and expected to always be reachable. And you all I know a lot of you are like, girl, I feel that so deep.
Tracey:And you know what? We're gonna go straight into the cost because it has one. So here's the thing running you down, and it's probably not what's on your to do list. It's what sociologists call the mental load or cognitive labor. It's not actually doing of the tasks.
Tracey:It's the being in charge of all of it. Noticing you're low on toilet paper, remembering the dentist, tracking who needs what shoes, what form, what gift, who has that appointment. One researcher who studies this found that in about eighty percent of different sex couples, the woman is carrying the bulk of that invisible work. And the two things that make it brutal are these. It's invisible, so nobody sees it, and there are no boundaries, meaning it never clocks out.
Tracey:There is no whistle. There is no time card. You are an always open twenty fourseven front desk for everybody else's disasters, questions, and needs. So then when you crave being alone understand what you're actually craving. You're not even necessarily antisocial and it's not even that you don't love your people.
Tracey:What you're craving is ten straight minutes where not one living thing needs a decision from you. And this is a body that has not been fully off in years, if ever, just asking for a fifteen minute smoke break. Right? I mean, listen, I understand the smoke breaks now. I'm not a smoker, but I get it.
Tracey:It's fifteen minutes outside, mostly left alone and doing breath work. Like, I get it. So and here's the hormone and nervous system piece because it always stacks. So a system that never gets to downshift stays a little revved up all the time. You add in a little dash of hormone shifts of perimenopause or any hormonal shifts like even menstrual cycles, even after a sudden hysterectomy on top of a nervous system that never clocks out, and all you get is a woman who's wired tired and touched out.
Tracey:And the alone time it's not a luxury. Right? Like bubble baths everybody thinks those are luxury. They're not. It's how your system finally exhales.
Tracey:What should be a luxury is just trying to breathe and sustain. So let's look at the history and how deep it goes. So we're gonna go back because this rule has a name and a face. So over a hundred years ago, there was a wildly popular poem called The Angel in the House, and it held up the ideal woman as devoted, selfless, endlessly tending to everyone else. And decades later, the writer Virginia Woolf took that phrase and did something with it.
Tracey:She described this angel, the phantom of the perfect woman that haunted her like this. She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She sacrificed herself daily.
Tracey:If there was a chicken, she took the leg. If there was a drought, she sat in it. And then the line that should stop you cold. She was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own. Good job, Virginia.
Tracey:That was a good one, right? Never had a wish of her own. That is the job description that you inherited. The ideal woman doesn't need anything. She's always available, accommodating, always the leg and never the good part of the chicken.
Tracey:And Wolf, who wanted to think and write and have a self, said she realized that she had to kill that angel. All right, we're going dark, right? Those are her words. She had to kill her or the angel would have killed everything real in her. Man, you feel that right?
Tracey:If you're driving, I feel like you need to pull over for a minute and just sit with that. I want to pause for like ten minutes, but you know, we got to get going. So when you crave an hour alone, I want you to hear that what that craving actually is. It's you reaching for the exact thing the angel the angel was built to erase. A mind of your own, a wish of your own.
Tracey:Ten minutes that belong just to you. And I want to tell you right now, that craving isn't selfish. It needs a new word. You know what that craving is? It's survival.
Tracey:And the whole setup, the always available, never needing woman protected everyone who got to relax because she never did. So if this could be said, it would sound like this: I'm allowed to want to be alone and still love my family. I'm allowed to not answer the second my phone buzzes. I'm allowed to have a wish of my own. I love this next one.
Tracey:I'm allowed to take the good part of the chicken. Never thought I'd have this in a podcast, but I'm loving that one. I'm allowed to take the good part of the chicken. I'm allowed to be off all the way off on purpose. And I am allowed to need solitude the way other people need sleep.
Tracey:So this should piss us off, friends. This should piss you off because you are running an invisible around the clock operation that keeps an entire damn household functioning and nobody takes a moment to see it and then you get treated like you're doing nothing when you finally sit down. You've been handed a roll with no shift change and no damn relief and then made to feel guilty for wanting five minutes to yourself. The craving for solitude, which is your system begging for basic recovery, got named as antisocial, cold, or checked out, or my favorite word, lazy. You were sold a version of a good woman who has no needs and then blamed when you actually have them.
Tracey:So how do you know if this is you? This might be you if you take the long way home just to be alone a little longer. And I'm not going to shame you for it. You keep taking that long way home. You feel a jolt of joy when plans get canceled.
Tracey:You're the one who remembers everything for everyone. Do you have a sec makes your shoulders climb and your heart race? You never say out loud that you want a night completely alone even though you do. And you can't remember the last time you were fully off with no one needing anything. If that's you, you are not cold, you are not selfish, you are not checked out, you are depleted, and you are allowed to refill.
Tracey:So the reflection and how I want you to take care of yourselves this week, it's this, take the alone time on purpose and do not apologize for it and use me as the excuse. Tracy said, that hormone girl said, I need time alone and I'm not sorry. And this is not a reward for finishing everything because you will never finish everything and that's the whole trap. We always tell ourselves, I'll rest when it's all done. It's never going to be done.
Tracey:So you have to take the rest. Take it because you're a person with a mind and a wish of your own. Lock the bathroom door. Take the long way home. Sit in the car one extra song.
Tracey:And if you're wired and tired in a way that rest alone isn't fixing, that's the nervous system and a hormone conversation. And you know that hormone girl has got your back. So take care of yourselves this week. And back to the chicken because I can't let this go. Take the leg only if you actually like the leg.
Tracey:Otherwise, take the whole damn chicken if you want. Because here's what we know now. Craving solitude doesn't make us cold. It makes us a person with self worth and self worth that we are protecting. The mental load is real.
Tracey:It is invisible. We need to stop waiting on society to recognize it, acknowledge it, or even adore it. And it never clocks out. So you are tired. You're allowed a wish of your own.
Tracey:You're allowed to be all the way off. You can put down the damn angel who never needed anything because she's not real and she definitely has never walked in your shoes. And a woman who takes the time alone without apology, who has a mind and a wish of her own, who finally gloriously takes the good part of the chicken. That's the most unladylike thing of all. Thanks for joining me today for That's Not Very Ladylike.
Tracey:If today's episode lit a fire, pushed your buttons, or called a little BS on the stories we've been sold, share it with another woman who's tired of being told to tone it down, smile more, or play nice, and help a girl out by making sure you subscribe, leave a quick review, and catch me on Instagram at That Hormone Girl. And until next time, keep getting loud, messy, and raising hell because being ladylike is overrated.