Wives, there are no medals for breaking your backs on Christmas Day
This festive season, rediscover self-care, self-love, and mental wellbeing.
What you need to know:
- If you have survived the thinly veiled threats, in the form of emails from our frenemy, the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), you deserve to chill.
- If your marriage is still intact, and you are enjoying a warm loving, healthy relationship with your spouse, you are amongst the less than 40 percent of happily married couples in Kenya, relax.
This is that time of the year when I remind wives that this festive season is for the hubby, his children, and his relatives. We are expected to don deras and roll chapatis, sweat out in the village, trim our nails, and wear headscarves. This is the season to prove your mettle as a wife material worthy of those three cows and five goats that they paid for your dowry.
But during this festive season, please do you. There are no medals for trying to break your back and no one will even notice it when you chip a nail or get a nasty blister from the hot oil splashing on your neck as you fry and grill. Most importantly though, there will be no one complimenting your sweaty efforts when you finally lay out the grand meals. Instead, you will slump back, bone tired.
Read: Gentlemen: When your woman goes silent, be very very afraid
This festive season, rediscover self-care, self-love, and mental wellbeing. And practice gratitude, like you have never done before.
If you have survived the thinly veiled threats, in the form of emails from our frenemy, the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) reminding you about some complicated tax computation that you should have done some yore years for your small business, and that you are due for a hefty fine, but you are still breathing, then you are alright.
You might want to consider a doctoral study in tax calculation if you are to ever get it right with your tax returns. Every time you log into their platform, you risk incurring a fine for clicking some button that enters you into a tax bracket that even their officers did not know existed.
If you are still sane after the Kenya shilling did that thing that the Biblical Moses did to Pharaoh’s team—though the shilling did it 10 times over—plaguing us with panic and uncertainty, and you are still here, sane then, go on, dance, and sing a carol. There is a lot to be grateful about.
If your marriage is still intact, and you are enjoying a warm loving, healthy relationship with your spouse, please go tithe. You are amongst the less than 40 percent of happily married couples in Kenya, a country whose divorce rate is growing faster than the Bamboo plant, with adultery and abuse ranking as the number one reason for marriage breakups.
Bamboo ranks as the world's fastest-growing plant, at a rate of four centimeters per second. Either your marriage is growing or dwindling at this rate.
Read: Wife Speak: Where would man be without woman?
While we are on this topic, please be among those emotionally mature couples who, in the next year will invest in growing and sustaining their relationship. After all, the basic unit of a nation is the family.
When families break down, crime hits the roof, our prisons get overcrowded and moral and economic corruption skyrockets. And taxation increases. Please work on your marriage. We cannot get into more taxes because of you.
Dear ladies, over this season, discard the dera, make your nails, hire someone to roll the chapatis and put your feet up, sip something cold or hot, and enjoy a break. You have earned it, you deserve it. There is nothing wrong with rest, with breathing, with watching the clouds.
Let the children learn how to dice and bake. They can clean the house better than you and the house assistant combined. Those corners that are unreachable are meant for the children to find. House chores build their confidence and instil in them a sense of responsibility and pride.
On a more personal note, this year came at me from all corners. I think it was planning to murder me. I quit many things and focused on surviving. Life is beautiful and we are meant to thrive.
The year taught me that you can quit when something is slowly killing you so that you can step into something that will give you life. There is a healthy side to quitting. It takes courage to quit an abusive marriage or a toxic job.
It means shelving all your dreams and ideals and building new ones. Quitting bad habits, self-limiting beliefs and bad relationships is what Santa might deliver to you as well. Do not be afraid. Quit. Thrive.
Karimi is a wife and a mother who believes marriage is worth it.
