What I really want to know is:
Are you happy?
I came upon two articles recently that got my attention. Maureen Dowd reported in her New York Times Op-Ed piece Blue Is the New Black that today’s women are unhappy. More so than men.
Ariana Huffington, in her blog post entitled “The Sad, Shocking Truth About How Women Are Feeling” writes:
“According to study after study, women are becoming more and more unhappy. This drop in happiness is found in women across the social and economic landscape. It doesn’t matter what their marital status is, how much money they make, whether or not they have children, their ethnic background, or the country they live in. Women around the world are in a funk.”
Is it true?
I’d love to know if you’re part of this trend line. Can you relate? If not, what is your secret to happiness? What are YOU doing differently that we should know about?
The subject of women “doing” – i.e. women doing too much, women having no space for themselves, women facing an empty nest, women forgetting what makes their heart sing, women yearning to connect more deeply (in ways they were designed to connect) – touches on many levels for me.
Let’s open this conversation, shall we?
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This is so true. I sometimes feel that I can’t remember what it’s like to just be ‘me’. Don’t get me wrong, I love my husband and the kids, but sometimes I’d like remember what it’s like to me. Can’t remember some days even what I used to like to do for fun. But this too shall pass.
The blues went away when I began to honor my long-postponed dream/desire/obsession with going back to school to finish an interrupted bachelor’s degree. Thirty some years later I enrolled in college [again], and simultaneously finished a two-year coaching program. Amongst the “doing” I came across ideas, concepts, traditions, and ground-breaking news in various fields that ignited my soul, spirit, and intellect…in other words, my entire being woke up. This ‘waking up’ was perceptual—the way I viewed everything transformed. Many wildly different things happened in those four years of school. Yet the actions and changes that describe my shift from “being blue” to being a truly happy person are few:
1. Creating and keeping a gratefulness practice;
2. Making mindfulness as vital as breathing (helped by becoming aware of the consequences of being mindless);
3. Embracing change and paradox, instead of fighting them;
4. Using mindfulness to watch my thoughts and words in order to improve the way I speak to others, and to myself;
5. Learning to truly listen;
6. Understanding that the blues don’t last long when I do something I love to do…from sitting in a chair watching a sunset, to writing a poem, to taking all the not-so-easy baby steps it took to drag myself back to school; and finally—
7. Choosing to connect with the world around me.
Separation and disconnection from one’s self, and our loved ones, our communities and the planet we call home, can cause the “blues.” Connection, in all of its many forms, proved to be a lifeline for me.
Thanks, Stephanie, for bringing this subject into the light. Nancy G.
I think that it’s a double edged sword stephanie. the more i recognize that i’m not myself and trying to make others happy in an attempt to make myself happy (?!) the more unhappy i become. then i have to recognize that i’m unhappy and do something about it, which may mean making someone else very unhappy. which makes me unhappy. and i still have to do it, which makes me temporarily unhappy, but ultimately affords the possibility that i’ll be happy and then moments of happiness occur. but it’s that awareness-acknowledgement-action of unhappiness that’s so hard to move through. and i think that a lot of people are unwilling to stay in the spot they’re in and not yet willing or not through the unhappy spot to get to the happy place.
I think feminism has made women expect too much from our selves. I know I bought into the lie that we are equal to men and express our masculine energy in achieving and “doing” more and more. It’s making our relationships unhappier – since there are now two masculine energy people – and making men feel emasculated. What we need is not equality, but equity. I have so many teachers who have helped me get back to what it really feels to be and act like a woman – and honestly, that’s all I have ever wanted to be.
I think our culture has changed in many ways – women generally do so much now, boundaries are more permeable and we can feel very over-extended. Efforts to do do do can be disappointing – in all this busyness, there can seem to be a disconnect from that which really nurtures. I think that is a product of our more materialistic society and it seems to have amplified in the past 20 years or so. I’m reminded of growing up hearing that that old song “I’m a Woman… I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, never let you forget you’re a man…” …the Modern Goddess we aspire to in one way or another. This is not to say women didn’t do a lot before; I was a “latch-key” kid twenty years before that phrase was coined. I think feeling blue and over-extended has always been with us, but changes are occurring in how we relate to it and while it may not be not comfortable to look at, there is something positive going on as light shines on this subject.
I think that this awareness of feeling blue or depressed is also a product of change in our culture, one that we are contributing to – of feeling safe to say you feel this way and not fearing negative consequences for saying so; and that you can acknowledge that there are these feelings out there in the soup we are all part of, and thus you’re not completely alone. We are learning to feel more safe to feel, without getting as lost in the feelings.
We are now learning new tools to facilitate relating to this information differently; to either seek treatment and learn the skill of creating healthy boundaries for oneself (and thus being a role model for others with the same patterns!) but also, cultivating the skill of acknowledging the feeling, without fear and aversion; finding something (perhaps) that you can learn from, and then allowing yourself to move on from those feelings; taking yourself out of the loop (or off the gerbil wheel as I find myself saying sometimes). We’re also cultivating more community that facilitates this new way of responding to this kind of stress and that is powerful. As we change how we relate to these feelings and experiences, with awareness and compassion, happiness has a way of simply emerging – its right there.
i’m usually happy … i’ve always been usually happy … i’m often surprised by my unhappiness when i feel it .. like, where did that come from …. i think some of my happiness is self awareness …. and some of my happiness is genetic … i have happy kids … i hope it’s genetic ….
i’ve been browsing your blog while my kids work on their homework … happy afternoon ….
i’m usually happy … i’ve always been usually happy … i’m often surprised by my unhappiness when i feel it .. like, where did that come from …. i think some of my happiness is self awareness …. and some of my happiness is genetic … i have happy kids … i hope it’s genetic ….
i’ve been browsing your blog while my kids work on their homework … happy afternoon ….