March: Maternal Wellness News + Spring Healing
Dear friends,
The year anniversary of the pandemic is hitting hard. A year ago on March, 12, 2020, I sent an email to my staff that read, "the next two weeks are about to get weird." As it turns out, I was off by many, many weeks and counting. We have been feeling the impatience and frustration right alongside you and noticing the past few weeks feeling markedly harder with the thrum of grief and angst manifesting in more obvious ways. Anniversaries can be challenging, and this one is unique in that we are marking a year without our losses being fully in the past. We are still reckoning with our current reality while trying to heal from the losses of the last year.
I've been watching with a worried and wary eye at the landscape of pandemic recovery for women. Emotionally, financially and physically, it has taken a toll. We've seen women leave the workforce for childcare demands at rates 4 times higher than their male counterparts. Some have been able to keep working, but also while trying to manage childcare and virtual learning demands. To put it simply, women and families are exhausted. Exhaustion pervades every sense of the person, psychically, emotionally, intellectually, socially, and physically. The New York Times ran a story about this at the end of 2020, and it's compelling:
"'We’ve never seen this before,' said Betsey Stevenson, a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan and the mother of a second grader and a sixth grader. Recessions usually start by gutting the manufacturing and construction industries, where men hold most of the jobs, she said.
The impact on the economic and social landscape is both immediate and enduring. The triple punch is not just pushing women out of jobs they held, but also preventing many from seeking new ones. For an individual, it could limit prospects and earnings over a lifetime. Across a nation, it could stunt growth, robbing the economy of educated, experienced and dedicated workers.
[...] 'And the impact could stretch over generations, paring women’s retirement savings, and reducing future earnings of children now in low-income households. We are creating inequality 20 years down the line that is even greater than we have today,' said Ms. Stevenson, who was a member of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. 'This is how inequality begets inequality.'"
"How are these women going to heal?" Betsey Stevenson goes on to ask. I wonder that with her. There are obviously no easy answers, and the realities of how terribly systems and structures fail women and families is even more obvious now. These are the times when I personally feel grieved for the collective of families, and I channel that into this small corner of the world where I can make an impact.
We are adding two more flexible, clinical jobs here at the center which is a small, yet satisfying effort. My staff and I, who deeply love this work, are here for you wherever you may find yourself after this long and tenuous year. We, too, have been eyebrows deep in this, but we have the supports we need. It helps to be helpful, and we are so humbled when you choose us to walk alongside you in your healing journey.
As we wait for spring, let's do so with a hope for reviving and restoring. I am going to keep using these last days of winter immersed in some of the feminist writing that I never got around to. I am enjoying the words of Adrienne Rich (and others...) who speak timelessly to the experience of being a woman in American society:
“Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you...it means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger. It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind. It means being able to say, with Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre: 'I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.'"
Let us name, and heal, and nourish the "inward treasure" as we await the sun, vaccines, and being reunited with each other in the ways we're longing for.
Warmly,
Kellie Wicklund, LPC, PMH-C
Owner + Director
