Herself: Talks with Women Concerning ThemselvesLowry, E. B. (Edith Belle)
Science
Herself: Talks with Women Concerning Themselves
Lowry, E. B. (Edith Belle)
Sexual ethics; Women -- Health and hygiene
Many women need a hobby to take up their spare time and to occupy their
minds. If their minds are occupied and their bodies kept in good
condition by proper care, they soon will gain control of their nerves.
If you find yourself getting nervous, make up your mind to overcome it
by filling your life so full of work and play that you will have no time
to give way to the nerves. When you feel an attack coming on, get busy
and "work it off."
There is a class of women who possess comfortable homes, with a maid to
do the work, whose home duties are not confining and who find
themselves with a great deal of extra time on their hands. To these
women the days are long and they endeavor to pass away the time by doing
nerve racking fancy work or by "fussing" around the house. They are not
happy and contented, chiefly because their minds are being
neglected--are growing up to weeds like a neglected garden. For such a
woman club work is a boon. She should take up some especial kind of
work, and devote several hours a day to the study of it. At first this
will be hard, for a mind that has fallen into lazy ways is not easily
aroused to continual effort, the deeply rooted weeds are not easily
destroyed.
Many half contented women realize this need of mental food but hesitate.
As one woman said, "Why, my husband would leave me if I started to
work!" Some men take a peculiar attitude towards women. They would like
to treat them as a woman treats her pet dog. The dog is provided with a
comfortable home, plenty of food, someone to bathe it and carry it
around. The dog is contented with this. It loves to sleep and eat the
livelong day; it comes when its mistress calls, and goes when she is
tired of it. Unfortunately, perhaps, all women cannot be contented with
such a life. The woman was given a brain which refuses to be dormant. If
it is not required to be used in a useful way, it occupies itself with
bad thoughts--it worries and becomes fault finding or gossiping.
No woman should allow her mind to grow up to such weeds. If the
circumstances of her position, her education or her environment seem to
make it unwise that she take up any work that would bring a monetary
reward, she easily can find some charitable work that needs all the
energies she can devote to it. If such a woman would take up some
special branch of philanthropic work she would be amply rewarded, not
only by the consciousness of the good she had done, but by the
improvement in her own health and happiness.
There is another phase to this lack of nerve control shown in a nervous
tension, an inability to relax and enjoy life. Some people go through
the day on such a nervous tension that they are unable to take
cognizance of their surroundings. Eventually this tension will manifest
itself in some disorder, as headache, nervous indigestion or complete
nervous prostration. In the latter case the nerves have been so abused,
so strained that at last they are worn out. A rest is imperative!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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