Play & Book Excerpts
Lessons from the Prairie
(Hatchette Books)
© 2017 Melissa Francis
Taken from Chapter 4: Sit Down and Take a Load Off
I confess all this to help debunk the Myth of the Superwoman, a fantasy that has way too many of us lying awake at night, browbeating ourselves as if we were the target of an FBI investigation. There’s a real danger in holding ourselves to an impossible standard. Whether it’s Caroline Ingalls or Kelly Ripa. How could any viewer not feel less than by comparison?
When we constantly thirst for what we don’t have and vow to achieve what we haven’t conquered, we fail to enjoy what’s right in front of us: the joy of our children, the love of our families, the pleasures of today (eating chocolate). We make ourselves - and everyone who lives with us - miserable, neurotic messes.
That’s why, when I listen to any of today’s Superwomen telling ladies everywhere we can have it all if we just try a little harder, if we just “lean in,” I let out a long, deep sigh. I want to hand the other women who are listening - and now covered in nervous hives - a nice glass of boxed wine and say, “Here’s my advice: Don’t lean in. In fact, sit down and take a load off.”
I want to sing and chant that hive-relieving mantra from the rooftops and take out a full-page ad in every paper. I’m going to have my new catchphrase printed on T-shirts. My sons tell me everyone has to have a catchphrase now. It’s the thing. I’m calling dibs on this one. I will stamp it on coffee mugs and drink cozies. I’m not even kidding. And I’m going to sell all this merch online, with T-shirts in every shape and size. (Go look right now. I’m selling all this stuff. The proceeds will go to buy fed-up women cases of Mommy’s Time Out Pinot Grigio, which is awesome, by the way.)
My mother always told me I could be anything I wanted. “You could keep acting, or you could be the first woman president of the United States,” she’d say. “Or a doctor! Or an astronaut! Anything you want.” So as a girl, I pictured myself in the White House with my husband and children, with a stethoscope around my neck, so I could continue to see patients when I wasn’t too busy running the country and winning wars. And then I’d juggle my schedule here and there, so I could pop out of Washington and guest star on an episode of Knots Landing.
Some dreams die hard. And some merely evaporate when they bump up against reality. Even if they would have let me take the nuclear launch codes with me to the set of Knots Landing, I hadn’t budgeted any time to ever do school pickup. I had zero idea about what we now annoyingly like to call work-life balance.
I confess all this to help debunk the Myth of the Superwoman, a fantasy that has way too many of us lying awake at night, browbeating ourselves as if we were the target of an FBI investigation. There’s a real danger in holding ourselves to an impossible standard. Whether it’s Caroline Ingalls or Kelly Ripa. How could any viewer not feel less than by comparison?
When we constantly thirst for what we don’t have and vow to achieve what we haven’t conquered, we fail to enjoy what’s right in front of us: the joy of our children, the love of our families, the pleasures of today (eating chocolate). We make ourselves - and everyone who lives with us - miserable, neurotic messes.
That’s why, when I listen to any of today’s Superwomen telling ladies everywhere we can have it all if we just try a little harder, if we just “lean in,” I let out a long, deep sigh. I want to hand the other women who are listening - and now covered in nervous hives - a nice glass of boxed wine and say, “Here’s my advice: Don’t lean in. In fact, sit down and take a load off.”
I want to sing and chant that hive-relieving mantra from the rooftops and take out a full-page ad in every paper. I’m going to have my new catchphrase printed on T-shirts. My sons tell me everyone has to have a catchphrase now. It’s the thing. I’m calling dibs on this one. I will stamp it on coffee mugs and drink cozies. I’m not even kidding. And I’m going to sell all this merch online, with T-shirts in every shape and size. (Go look right now. I’m selling all this stuff. The proceeds will go to buy fed-up women cases of Mommy’s Time Out Pinot Grigio, which is awesome, by the way.)
My mother always told me I could be anything I wanted. “You could keep acting, or you could be the first woman president of the United States,” she’d say. “Or a doctor! Or an astronaut! Anything you want.” So as a girl, I pictured myself in the White House with my husband and children, with a stethoscope around my neck, so I could continue to see patients when I wasn’t too busy running the country and winning wars. And then I’d juggle my schedule here and there, so I could pop out of Washington and guest star on an episode of Knots Landing.
Some dreams die hard. And some merely evaporate when they bump up against reality. Even if they would have let me take the nuclear launch codes with me to the set of Knots Landing, I hadn’t budgeted any time to ever do school pickup. I had zero idea about what we now annoyingly like to call work-life balance.
Photo Credit: David Hurley
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Melissa Francis is a broadcast journalist and author of the acclaimed memoir Diary of a Stage Mother’s Daughter. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Harvard University and is an anchor on Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network, where she is a regular contributor discussing financial, economic, and political issues on shows such as The Five, Outnumbered, Happening Now, and America’s Newsroom, among others.
As an actress, she appeared in numerous motion pictures, television series, and television commercials. She is best known for her role as Michael Landon’s daughter Cassandra Cooper Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie (a popular TV series that ran from September 1974 to March 1983). Melissa lives in Manhattan with her husband and their three children. |
