I Get Shit Done

And my epiphany about why that stinks

(Disclaimer: If you know me personally, you birthed me or I birthed you, or if it just makes you uncomfortable to see me write the word shit forty three times (I counted) in one post, skip this piece of perimenopausal writing that just escaped raw from my fingertips. It may seem out of character, but it’s true. And like all truth, sometimes it’s messy… and stinks.)

I get shit done. It’s what I do. It’s who I am. Other women admire me and ask me how I do it. In the past men have loved all the free shit I have contributed to their patriarchal systems. But getting shit done is not a badge of honor. It’s just a manifestation of how broken I am.

I am just one example in a world full of women made to feel like their value is only measured by all the shit they can get done. And literally I turned it into a career. I clean up shit. I measure shit. I judge shit. I report on shit. I give people medications and treatments so they can shit. And I love it.

Like I said: I get shit done.

I grew up with a single mom. I started cleaning houses after school at the age of 14. I also played basketball and ran track and stayed on the honor roll. I loved to go into a messy, dirty house, clean every nook and cranny and vacuum my way out of each room in perfectly aligned rows. I loved seeing the difference I made. One house. One day at a time. Cleaning up other people’s shit for years. It paid for college.

And then I got married and had kids. I put every other educational and occupational desire I ever had for myself aside to be a mother. I knew it would be hard shit. But I was not averse to hard shit. I learned to cook from scratch. I baked bread. I gardened. I canned. I tried to decorate and do crafts but failed miserably in that area. When my kids became school age, I homeschooled them. I wanted them to be educated critical thinkers. I spent all my time and energy being the busiest mother I could. And six kids later, I was an expert at wiping butts and organizing and maintaining other people’s shit.

Throughout married life I served in many leadership callings in my church. I seemed to always have a time-consuming calling. Probably because my Priesthood leaders clearly saw me as a woman who had her shit together. I taught early morning seminary through morning sickness. I served with a newborn latched to my breast. I served when my husband was in Bishoprics. I served when I was taking care of my dying Grandma. I served with 13 staples holding my scalp together after removing an aneurysm and blood clot from my left temple (the Primary kids loved that btw). I served when I was grieving. I served when I was exhausted. I served God. I served Him good. And I got His shit done.

And then one day I realized that getting all that shit done, only made me feel like shit.

The irony.

One day I woke up a middle-aged woman with no career, no real hobbies, and a whole resume of all the shit I got done. I served on non-profit boards. I officiated sports. I ran parent boards. I organized large events. I won volunteer of the year awards. I had leadership callings at church galore. I raised six educated and productive members of society. I had lots of evidence that I got shit done. But I had no idea where my identity was under this huge pile of shit that the world used to measure my value and worth.

I’d thought about becoming a doctor when I was a teenager. I had the grades. I had the drive and the scholarship. But I was told that careers always came second to marriage and children for women. When I married at 19, my major was quickly changed from pre-med to English, so that I could become a teacher. It seemed like a sensible fallback career in the event my husband couldn’t support us. My professors warned me I was wasting my brain. They tried to convince me not to become a stay-at-home mom. But their advice couldn’t trump God’s.

In my mid-forties, I went to nursing school and started a new career. I had a lot of trepidation about going to nursing school. Could I handle the rigor? I got a 4.0 and was valedictorian, so yes. The other thing that bothered me was that nursing is a stereotypical female job. It’s a caregiving job, much like being a mom. I knew I could become so many other things, but I was drawn to nursing. And sometimes I felt like I sold myself short by getting into nursing. I felt divided by my blossoming feminist beliefs and my choice of career in an underpaid, and underappreciated profession. But it’s also a career dominated by women who get shit done. And I felt right at home with them. I still do and I have no regrets.

My whole life has been spent keeping my shit together while doing shit for other people. And I think it is fine to get shit done, if you truly want to get that shit done. The problem is when you spend a lifetime getting shit done because other people and social systems (aka patriarchy) expect you to get shit done. They may even assign you to get certain shit done and then claim it’s your God given duty. And when you get so much of their shit done over so many years that you feel like you just can’t take it anymore, you have a problem. When you feel guilty for saying no to shit because your body is wracked with stress and anxiety, you have a problem. It took my hair to gray and my body to sag before I learned that the shit I was doing, why I was doing it, when I was doing it, and who I was doing it for mattered… alot.

I learned that I didn’t want to lose myself in someone else’s pile of shit. I have already spent a lifetime doing that. If perimenopause has taught me one lesson, it’s been that I get to pick my own shit.

And I am ok if people think I’m lazy or selfish because I say no and make them handle their own shit. I am ok if people think I am neglecting my family by working full-time and focusing on my own shit. And I am also ok if people think Satan is leading me headfirst into a steaming pile of shit. I mean I did write shit forty-three times in this post…

I guess what I am trying to say is that at this point in my life, I don’t want to be known as the woman who gets shit done.

I want to be known as the woman that gets HER shit done.

Because most of that other shit can wait.

But I can’t.

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