Hello!
There has been a bit of a bug going around Melbourne and lots of people are very sick with a pretty nasty flu. As I have seen plenty of women and men come down with this, I am struck by the way in which our male counterparts handle their illness. They go down like a tonne of bricks, they are unable to move at all and we as the care givers, we look after them. We on the other hand suck it up and get on with it, sure we are sick but things still need to get done don' they?
I know we laugh and often poke fun at the case of the "man flu" and how we as women think that men seem to overreact; however isn't rest, re cooperation and a lot of lying down exactly what our bodies are asking from us? We get sick because our bodies need rest. It's the last sign that we have been pushing ourselves too hard and it's time to slow down.
As women we keep on going, as if the responsibilities of generations go by still rests on our shoulders. We don't stop very often. We pick our selves up and push right on through, maybe resting for one day rather than a week, " because there is simply too much to do".
I think we should learn something from these "man flu" cases. Is it more that we "under react" to illness rather than men over reacting? Men have no problems putting their needs first, making sure that they are looked after and healthy. They know that if they take the required time it takes to get sick and do it properly, that they will be healthier and stronger to continue to " hunt". They know that if they go out everyday with very little fuel in the tank, then they will have nothing to give.
In order to give anything we must first have it. If we do not even give ourselves the time and love to rest and recover when we are suffering physically or emotionally then how on earth do we have it to give to others.
So this got me to thinking about love; about self love and how it's something that is often considered as arrogant or even something that we should be afraid of expressing.
Many different spiritual and religious practices state that self pride is something to be avoided. That we must give all of us all of the time.That loving yourself is greedy, self righteous and plain old selfish; and as these beliefs have permeated our society we still tend to believe that self love is something to be ashamed of.
As women, we have been told for generations to keep quiet, speak only when spoken to, to stay in the background and support our men, our family but never ourselves. We have been bred to nurture and love everyone else around us irrelevant of how we are.
Have you ever been sick yourself when a loved one is sick and yet their needs seem to come first, always? We look after others first because we love them right? We want to show them how much we care and how much value they hold in our lives.
So what are we saying when we don't look after ourselves? No caring, no value, no love.
Look after yourselves ladies, in all areas of your life. You are valuable, you deserve love and care and the way to generate more of it is to first give it to yourself.
So this weekend, how will you show yourself that you love you? I'd love to hear how you went and what kind of things you have done to show that love to yourself as I'm sure all the other readers would too, so leave a comment!
Happy loving! Katie B
For more of my thoughts check out this free media report.
2 comments:
I wish I could have "man flu" but I don't have enough time.
Great post katie. I suppose with anything there is a generalisation about people's perception and indeed beliefs and value systems that have been put onto us or accepted by us by others. My experience from the religion/ spirtuality perspective is a little different to yours. It has to be as we have been brought up differently and have had different life experiences.
I love how your posts push the envelope and get the thought process going.
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