Me and my PWC
Maybe I played one too many games of The Oregon Trail in fourth grade computer lab. Or maybe I watched one too many Little House on the Prairie episodes as a kid. Perhaps it's because I'm descended from hearty Scandanavian/German/Irish stock who tilled Midwestern prairie fields in the nineteenth century. Whatever the reason, I have a rather obnoxious habit of comparing myself to pioneer women whenever I'm facing some difficulty or challenge. I call it my Pioneer Woman Complex (PWC).
I've also discovered that I'm not alone in this. Other women I've talked to have shared similar thoughts: "...but then I think about those pioneer women and how they managed it..." For some reason, this tends to be particularly associated with childbearing, childrearing, and balancing these tasks with other work. How on earth did those pioneer women churn the butter, bake the biscuits, tend the garden and bear um-teen children without modern medical care? How did they make it through those long, lonely winters on the plains without losing their minds (a la Giants in the Earth)?
I've had my fair share of such challenges in recent months: a miscarriage in June and my son's impending surgery tomorrow afternoon. In both situations, I've had to consider how to respond. With the miscarriage, I decided to plow on down the trail, pushing myself to keep working and carrying my normal responsibilities as much as possible. That's easy enough to do when it's my just own body that I have to manage. But with Micah's surgery, both for practical and emotional reasons, I'm trying to slow down, stop the wagon, and take care of my loved ones. It's not that I don't have places to get to: prelims are in mid-October in addition to my ongoing research assistantship and other personal writing projects. Taking a week away to focus on caregiving will doubtless affect my performance/productivity in these things, at least to a small degree. But I can't imagine making any other choice, even if I don't make it to "Oregon" at the front of the wagon train...