Yep, Marianna, you're so right. "Me days" or "mental health days" are definitely important for most of us and not enough people realize or do that. I've found that just taking one day off from being myself totally recharges me and changes my attitude, the way I see things. But I too rarely do that, and I normally have to get away from my home in order to step outside my routine little self.
I've been really sick for the last 3 days, sick enough to make me feel miserable from head to toe, but not too sick to take care of some stubborn technical issues that cropped up unexpectedly the past 2 days. Things that needed to be fixed right away and with no one else who could do it. This morning I finally decided to see the doctor to make sure I don't have strep (I don't), and was wondering, "why did I do this to myself?" The answer in my head was I needed a "valid" excuse to spend a few days unplugged and curled up with a book or two. So apparently on some level even sickness isn't enough of a rationalization for me to allow myself to unplug.
And though not a corporate worker anymore, but a creative who takes care of all things ‘household’, I find myself without ‘me days’.
I think part of the mindset comes from upbringing, our being taught to be responsible adults. You were maybe raised right at the edge of this line of thinking: Only woman are the caregivers, responsible for taking care of others, pleasing others… it's our place in life (I've seen change in this attitude over my lifetime, I know a few "Mr. Moms"). "Unsalaried workers" operate under different expectations by society. What women do for the home and family is as valuable as whoever is bringing home the bacon and we need to realize we deserve to treat ourselves well. I was raised with "men can work from sun to sun, but a woman's work is never done" drilled into my head. I grew up in the Betty Crocker/Father Knows Best/Easy Bake Oven/Barbie generation. While I do enjoy cooking and being useful to others, I have been also growing into the idea over the past couple of decades that there's more to me than that. And you're also so right that the world won't fall apart if we disconnect for a few hours, a day, or a couple of weeks. Or longer. If people would just stop and think about that, it would make so much sense that it could give them the freedom to unplug now and then. The hospital comment was perfect: something like such an unexpected situation teaches us that the world will not fall apart if we need to be absent for a while. Yet it shouldn't take an emergency to give ourselves permission to take care of ourselves.
In the past couple of years I've taken off for Europe for a couple of weeks to travel alone, against everyone else's better judgment, and it opened up a whole new world to me. And I've learned some things I never knew about myself. I feel so alive when I'm traveling, so in the moment. Because I have to be — trying to find how to get to places, reading maps, figuring out how mass transportation works (something fairly new for me), standing up for myself, being very aware of my surroundings, dealing with airline problems. That all causes a super heightened state of awareness of the present. I don't think other people in our lives always appreciate this self-care and personal growth, I think they fear we will we step out of our roles and upset the apple cart. But I've found the biggest protesters eventually calm down and then think, "Actually, I wish I could do stuff like that. Well if she can do it, why can't I?" So I end up going from being some daring and irresponsible person to an inspiration.
Thanks for the tip on the new show, it's definitely something I will check it out tonight.
One of the movies that most changed my way of looking at life as a woman and "me" time was Shirley Valentine. Also a British comedy, it's unique and full of the issue of honoring our own needs as much as we do others. Shirley got an unexpected chance for "me" time in Greece with a friend who won a trip, and then she decided to stay. It has a very nice ending too with a promise of compromise and changes and maybe a deeper connection in her relationship with her husband. That probably would not have happened if she didn't honor and trust her impulses.