What Have you Done for Me Lately?
Photo by Jake Ingle on Unsplash
While I was cleaning my bathroom during my lunch hour, I noticed I was humming the Janet Jackson Song “What have you done for me lately?” Like most moms, I am spent on every level of my being, and for the past couple years, the toll the world has been under, moms and dads all over are burned out. And the world isn’t here to save us. Although by some younger people, I have seen this complaint that millennials need to stop complaining about their kids because we decided on having them and it’s horrible to complain about them. And they couldn’t be more contradicting. Moms and Dads in the United States have been put under a stress in a time that employers and people around them have had less options and less of a village around them. And we are wondering after all of our hard work, lack of pay, broken promises of how to obtain success and mental health issues, what the world has done for us lately?
The fact is, Gen X, Millennials, we were raised a completely different way. And that’s not a good thing or a bad thing, it just is. And today, with the shifts of how much people are getting screwed over by the way employers just lay off no matter the amount of time you spent building a career in their companies, with no pension options or huge cuts in them, we weren’t prepared for this.
We were raised to work hard, go to school, get the degree and sacrifice for our families with the jobs we don’t like but a job that pays the bills.
Happiness wasn’t supposed to be a daily expectation, it’s supposed to bring us happiness because we can pay our bills and maintain our families.
And what really happened was the opposite. The opportunities weren’t there and when they did come around, the pay wasn’t nearly what it should be to actually pay our bills. Instead, it was enough to survive without benefits or 401k’s. And we were told from kindergarten there would be no social security left for us.
Photo by Juliane Liebermann on Unsplash
Instead of giving up, we whined but kept on going and many of us had children in the process because it was our dreams to have that family, or it just happened, and we went for the ride. Others decided there was no way they could afford it and they went with option B. No kids, and travel when there was time off.
In between all of that time, Millennials who found their way through life via social media as it began to boom as we became young adults/ adults, found our villages online. Why? Because we didn’t have that option in person anymore, the employers we sacrificed our lives for, let us go and side jobs weren’t exactly known to be an option just yet. Well they were but not to us. Because we didn’t know it was possible to make that kind of money without having a 9-5 job.
Stuck in between the world that was and the world that became and the limbo sucked the life out of us all. But instead of hearing us, the universe gave us 2020. The bad became worse and the whining got louder because our mental health isn’t great.
We have all in our own ways been asking the world…” What have you done for me lately?”
This isn’t a generational only issue because life isn’t easy for anyone no matter what age you are. But being a parent right now is more difficult than parents get credit for and holding it together as people Is more difficult that we are giving each other credit for.
While we transition back to the new normal, compassion is needed from us all.
What have you done for other’s lately?
