Sample question that comes all too easily to the members in a family who are not responsible for managing or running the kitchen:
“What’s for lunch today?”
We all know whose responsibility this is. Often, the one who this is meant for, finds herself weighed down by this burden of having to remember so many things before a single decision could be made around planning a meal.
For instance, the daughter could be on a vegan diet, the son wants an all protein-no carb combo, the husband is a low-sugar, high fibre plan and an elderly parent might need a bland, soft, low- protein one. How does one address them all…?? Just the thought of planning in itself drives her crazy.
Then of course, the question that often slips her mind and one she often forgets to ask is about her own preference.
She goes with the flow. Whatever is easy to manage on a given day.
The question of what to cook is often a loaded one. Most women who carry it, find it the most challenging of the rest of the other challenges that they have to deal with on a given day—this, mind you, runs alongside her professional and personal priorities. It’s very tough remembering and working around everyone else’s preferences before the planning even starts. Usually, even before grocery shopping is planned.
Not just one day. It’s for every single day. Menu planning is tough. And usually, the only way to tackle it right is advance planning, which again needs investment of time and energy, and effort, of course!
Even for those who’ve got a way to effortlessly (or so it seems to others!) deal with this, it feels never ending. It is this invisible load that women carry within them, day after day, for years and decades, in ways that exhausts them, mentally drains them and takes a silent toll on their health that even they aren’t able to fathom most of the time.
Actually, this ‘invisible family load’ of remembering, anticipating and caring for other people’s needs has been termed by psychologists as a ‘cognitive load.’ While one person constantly carries this responsibility, the rest of the household go about their everyday tasks, without having to invest their time and effort in it. In most families, it is the same story.
Many women, particularly, homemakers are often asked —”How do you spend your time? What do you do all day?”
Imagine, that the entire mental load that women carry, not just about planning and caring for what the family eats, but about everything else that involves running a home seamlessly, day after day, year after year, is not even considered as ‘work’, by many? Because, it happens so unconsciously that once it becomes part of a woman’s routine, nobody sees it as ‘work’.
That weight should never have been hers alone to carry, in the first place, right? The one that should have been a shared one, but never did happen that way—how does one even begin to question that?
And why, for gods sake do people ask – “how do you juggle so many things alone?”. The question, should instead be – “ WHY do you juggle so many things ALONE?”
Nobody realises at what point caring for others becomes too much for one person to bear it alone, and how, over a period of time they forget themselves, their deepest wishes and their cherished dreams or even what they’d want in life, all because they have remembered, taken care of and somehow became the one to enable the others to live out their dreams?
The fatigue of having to juggle so many things all alone does become too much to bear unless a supporting partner comes along, who shares her load and helps her find the way past the long line of duties and responsibilities that fall on her shoulders, over time.
For every woman who has a supporting partner that shares her workload, there are possibly ten who don’t. The numbers are abysmal. It’s sheer luck or destiny or whatever you call it. No amount of discussion or delegation helps. You either have that support or you don’t. Period.
For a woman, whose quest to devote her time to writing, art and travel goes well beyond the responsibilities of not just running a home, taking care of the family and leading a conference that is now growing bigger and more impactful, the thought of occasionally running off to a faraway island with her stash of books isn’t just an idea—it’s a whole new way of figuring out how to extricate oneself from this sticky routine, find some respite and realign oneself to the things that really matter in life…to still care for the family, without being the sole crusader or the martyr!