Is this for me?

Who is this for? Maybe it's not me

The Things We Were Told Series of mini-blogs is about all the things ‘we’ were told were good for us that actually turned out to be not so great for me (like eating three meals a day, for example), as well as the things we were told were bad for us that turned out to be really good (like working with the TV on in the background). I’d love to hear your versions of these! To turn all these ‘shoulds’ on their head and consider what we actually need, not what we or other people define as best for us.

One of the questions I’ve had through the process of unmasking, in getting to know what I actually want and need as opposed to what I thought I wanted and needed is just to ask myself:

Is this for me?

There are so many examples of things that I thought were for me, or should be for me, or that I should squeeze myself into applying to me that were just, quite simply, not meant for me.

Or maybe I wasn’t meant for them.

Either way, I’m not sure where this question came from - my own mind or something I’ve seen - but I love it. It applies to all situations from the tiny to the massive. It takes away any sense of judgement, or blame, which has the potential to take away shame and self-criticism too.

Of course there are many, many things that just are not for us. And we don’t question them, because we don’t feel that they should be for us. If I wear size 5 boots (which I do) and I see a pair of boots in a size 12, I just know they’re not for me. I’m not annoyed with myself, I don’t blame the bootmaker, I just think this particular pair of boots was not made for me.

But it’s not always as easy as that, is it? Generally we don’t place much value on foot size. But when we, or those around us, or society in general places value on something, then we bring a value judgement to it. And that’s where things can get complicated.

I’m pretty short, so if I were a size 12 boot and I couldn’t find a pair in my size I might be annoyed with myself, or with the bootmaker - because in our society for some reason value is placed on a proportionate foot/body size ratio and anything out of the ordinary tends to be judged negatively.

If it were an item of clothing I was looking for and I couldn’t find my size, it’s even more likely I would be annoyed with myself, or the clothing maker - because in our society huge value is placed on body shape and size.

And this is where shoulds come in. We have millions upon trillions of shoulds that we internalise based on the messages we receive throughout our lives. These are defined by so many factors: who we are, what body we are born into, where we are born and who with, the services and groups around us, the time we live in, the society around us, the state of the world, the health of the Earth.

There is an implicit, sometimes explicit, message to conform to those shoulds. To fit into expected standards. To reach expected milestones. To aspire to the same things as everyone else. And if you don’t, then that’s unusual. And that’s where the value judgement comes in. As in, if you don’t conform, you are of less value and more likely to be judged.

Maybe this isn’t for Me

And, even if you do - fit the standards, reach the milestones, aspire to the things - you are part of a really small group of people. The middle point on the bell curve. Who probably don’t feel that they are fitting the standards either.

Photo by Joes Valentine on Unsplash

When you are part of a marginalised group in any way, being on the margins means that you tend to exist at the outer most points of the bell curve, or might have some aspects of your self and life firmly in the middle, and others on the edges. Maybe you’re not even on the bell curve at all. If you’re neurodivergent, your bell curve is probably more like a star. Or maybe a Kandinsky drawing, the Bouba/Kiki effect or the vibration of a stringed instrument that has just been played.

If the bell curve doesn’t apply to you, then you can start to wonder if it - this ‘should’ - is for you at all. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it doesn’t fit, for you.

And if the value judgement also doesn’t fit for you - because those values aren’t for you - then maybe it’s even best that it’s not for you.

Some examples of things that are not for me right now that I thought were for me at different parts of my life will follow in other posts but, quickfire round:

• Multi step skin care routines

• Being an actor

• Working within an existing system

• Keeping up with trends

• Teaching and training

• Things with a time constraint

• Baths

• Volunteering for group activities

• Being a ‘high achiever’

• Clear Routines

• Most activities requiring consistency

• Aspirational lifestyles

• Cushions

When we start to question whether something is for us, and find that maybe it just isn’t, that allows a little space to open up where we can then ask….

What, then, is for me?

Or, if you’re like me and have a gleeful cheerleader alongside this journey in your brain something more like

Brilliant! If those things aren’t for me, what else of this huge, incredible, beautiful universe and all the life within it can I bring into my own wonderful little existence?

(Obviously, sometimes that cheerleader isn’t there, and that sounds more like a really grumpy depressed gnome who says things a bit more like ‘Well maybe nothing is for you, you dipshit’ but I’ve decided he’s not for me either so he can fuck right off)

Do we then get to explore life outside of the bell curve? Removing the value judgement on normal/normative distribution of something and where we fit on it, and instead placing value on something else?

If we do, if we can find value in life outside the tiny patch that is ‘normal’, what does that mean for us and for those in our lives? What does it mean for what we can do as a community?

If not for me - who is it for?

If we want to, and of course we don’t have to, as we figure out what is for you/us and what is not, we can also wonder about where those ‘shoulds’ come from. Who defined those expectations, who decided those aspirations. This can be fun, and thought provoking (and brilliant for a bit of spare autistic focus looking for something to hone in on). Often there aren’t simple answers, and you end up with many more questions, but at least this highlights how many things are not, really, built for everyone. Maybe not built for anyone.

Let’s say we take the example of maternal instinct which has always come up a lot in my work and which I talk about in more depth in Parenting For Humans. The idea that, as mothers, parenting should come easily to us, because apparently it’s natural. And because we have that biological propensity to nurture a child, it is inevitable that we will do more of the physical and emotional tasks of parenting. Even if we’re also trying to live as part of a modern society which has us do all the things and even if we’re physiologically exhausted by the demands of mothering and humanning all at once, and even if we’re living in an age of intensive parenting plus lack of social support plus collective stress and trauma and general malaise. We should mother with joy, because it’s our instinct, isn’t it? So then I speak to mothers who feel they are constantly overwhelmed and failing.

But then perhaps we read about how all parents and caregivers who are primarily responsible for care show changes in their brains and bodies thanks to researchers such as Pilyoung Kim and colleagues, and writers such as Jodi Pawluski and Chelsea Conaboy, and maybe then we read about the many other cultures that don’t have a concept of maternal instinct and may even focus on paternal nurture such as the Aka people of Central Africa, and then perhaps we locate Darwin’s work, where maternal instinct originated from, back to the values of Victorian England thanks to Lucy Cooke and then we remember reading Sarah Blaffer Hrdy and the role of groups in raising children and the inherent sexism in many evolutionary perspectives.

So who is the idea of maternal instinct for? If not for me? If not for us? Well maybe then it’s for people who benefit from mothers doing more labour. Men who labour less, children in some cultures who see their mothers as servers of needs, not whole people - also bosses, also the government who depend on all that unpaid labour.

Then perhaps we think about what else falls on to mother’s shoulders, and swing back to modern motherhood and how tired women are and wonder why that is where we’ve landed after all these years, and then perhaps we go down a new rabbit hole of how the myth of maternal instinct often leads to invisible household labour and we look at the social and economical impact of this, alongside people like Emma, Gemma Hartley, Eve Rodsky and Sara Peterson and Laura Danger and Crystal Britt and also Matt Fray and Michael Vaughn and Zachary Watson because we don’t want to forget about the men who are trying to change the status quo and challenge the idea that parenting means mothering. And that confirms that maybe it’s still those same groups of people who benefit from this inequity, but maybe not men as a whole as many men are aware that, in keeping the status quo, they are missing out on exploring their own nurturing capacity and having more connected relationships.

And where do we go next? We could look into #notallmen and see how we feel about that? We could go into wondering why all those people I’ve just mentioned are White and why we haven’t come across many Black, Brown and People of Colour talking about this, and whether that’s because we haven’t looked hard enough (likely) or whether the current conversation on mental load is exclusionary (also likely). Or we could think about gender role socialisation more widely and think about the costs and benefits to men and women, in power and gatekeeping and how we seek identity and worth. Or we could look into how inequity impacts children, which could well lead us down many many new paths.

Or we could conclude there, with a more general belief that the idea of maternal instinct doesn’t really serve many people at all and maybe it’s time we threw it away. Certainly not include it in our own values and judgements.

And then we can think about what happens if lots of people do that, and maybe get a little hopeful about what that could mean about the future.

And maybe then we can consider how we feel at the end of that exploration, and understand that we might have found something else that is for us.

Exploring, with no expectation of finding a clear answer, but enjoying the process.