A Guilty Conscience.
JUNE 2, 2015
Boom! – as my sister would say, day 2 completed. The biggest challenge of today was trying to find a space on my living room floor for my yoga mat. It looked like a hurricane had passed through. A brightly coloured, crazed hurricane. Nell’s toys were everywhere! Now the problem I faced was my guilt. My guilt that I should be getting my house back in order whilst Nell napped. This is what usually stops me from doing my yoga practice as much as I would like to. The washing machine needs to be emptied, the bathroom needs cleaning, the breakfast dishes are still on the side….blah, blah, blah. Well not today… I chose “me time”.
Us women are experts with guilt.
There is one of my pregnancy yoga classes that has stayed with me and I think of it often. I would like to share it with you. Sophie, our instructor, always started each class with a question and on this particular night her question was “How are you coping with juggling your lives and being pregnant?” Now, just to fill you in quickly on my background. I stopped work at 20 weeks of pregnancy and I knew I was not returning. The guilt was killing me. I was extremely embarrassed by my circumstances. I believed that people would think I was lazy or rich and I am definitely neither. I was petrified of being judged for deciding to be a stay at home mum. I worried about this a lot and now I was sitting in front of a group of pregnant women and I was going to have to confess this terrible thing to them all!
Every single woman opened their mouths and to my amazement all different types of guilt came pouring out. It wasn’t just me. It was like a competition to see who was the worst woman of all time. Guilt for not working hard enough. Guilt for working too hard. Guilt for relaxing too much. Guilt for not relaxing enough. Then one brave woman changed it all. She calmly told us that she had told her boss the day before that she was leaving work with immediate effect and didn’t know when she would be coming back. Balancing work and pregnancy was just too much for her. She went on to tell us that she felt great about her decision and had spent the day playing with her two year old girl. What good would feeling guilty do? She had decided just to focus on enjoying the rest of her pregnancy.
It got me thinking. Is guilt a choice? If it is, why do so many women choose it so often? With her words she lifted my guilt. I decided to give myself a break and I hoped that the other women in the room would do the same for themselves.
We shouldn’t feel guilty for going to work. We shouldn’t feel guilty for staying at home. And we shouldn’t feel guilty if we want to change our minds. Whatever they are we should be proud of our choices.
So, I’ve made a choice. I’ve decided that I’m not going to feel guilty for taking my 20 minutes a day. Well, I’ll try. I am a woman after all.
Namaste!
Lots of love,
Laura x