# Letting Go of the Guilt ##### Care tasks are not a measure of worth  --- %%[[staring at the crack]]%% Lying in bed, I stare at the crack on the ceiling. The sun creeps in from behind the curtains. The sound of my boys chatting away to each other in the next room. Playing. Happy. I have to feed them. Get Dexter to school. Tidy the house. Sort the washing. Tasks that are normally completed on autopilot. And yet, I can't move. A darkness suffocates me. Deep. Twisted. Hollow. Numb. My autopilot is broken. --- It's been 7 years since that time. But I remember it vividly. Especially the crack on the ceiling. How could I possibly look after two children when I couldn't even look after myself? The house was a mess. The washing was building up. I had forgotten how to shower. Was I irresponsible? Lazy? A bad person? Yes, yes and yes. At least that's what I told myself. Even now, even without the depression, the feeling can creep back in. When I haven't hoovered for a while. When the pots build up. When the fridge is still empty, or I realise I haven't changed the bed sheets for weeks. %%[[KC Davis]]%% After listening to [KC Davis' TED Talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1O_MjMRkPg), I started to see things differently. Davis said: > The truth is: it’s not about morality. It’s about functionality. That was it. When we struggle to look after our house, ourselves or others, it's not because we are bad. Or because we are broken. Or because we are not good enough. Sometimes we just have so much shit going on that we don't have the time (or the energy) to do what needs to be done. As women, we do the majority of the unpaid work. The caring. The cleaning. The cooking. The tidying up. The laundry. Add that to working on our own careers. Improving our health. Staying connected with family and friends. Doing all the shit that we feel we 'should' be doing. And so many tasks that we really don't need to be. We are spinning a million different plates. And we feel like a failure when we drop even a single one. Sometimes, the housework, the cooking, the cleaning, and the laundry get put on the back burner simply because we don't have systems in place to help when things get busy. %% link to [[Owning the Busy]] %% Hence, we probably have a functional problem. And we likely have a [[Owning the Busy|triage problem]] (and in my case, a *big sad* problem). But what we don't have is a moral one. %%[[care tasks are not about morality, they're about functionality]]%% So if you're feeling like a failure today because you have pots in the sink or your laundry basket is growing, do me a favour... - Take some pressure off yourself. - Listen to [the TED Talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1O_MjMRkPg). - Let go of what doesn't need doing. - Ask for help where you can. But more than anything – embrace the idea that tasks like these are *morally neutral.* They do not make you more worthy if you do them. Just as they do not make you less worthy if you don't. And as P!nk says, *"Don't you ever, ever feel, like you're less than fuckin' perfect"*.