Caring Well

“As we stop monitoring others’ opinions, we connect with our heart’s wisdom.”

—Dan Millman

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Have you heard about the “We Do Not Care” (WDNC) club? It’s a social movement that went viral when a weary, but newly-enlightened influencer named Melani Sanders shared an Instagram post detailing what she no longer cared much about. Her list included wearing bras, looking pregnant, and matching clothes.

Followers responded with an avalanche of gratitude and support for her candor and vulnerability. When Sanders invited them to offer their own thoughts about what they no longer cared much about, the WDNC club was born. It now has more than two million followers, and Sanders recently released the We Do Not Care Club Handbook.

WDNC encourages women of all ages, but especially those in their 40s and beyond, to cast off, or at least reexamine, societal, familial, and other expectations about every aspect of their lives. Why? Because these expectations can leave women feeling exhausted and inadequate, especially when they are conveyed with a cultural authority akin to the biblical Ten Commandments.

So, whether it’s chipped nail polish, a holiday dinner on paper plates, or skipping a family gathering, WDNC is about authenticity and self-care. Cheekier “announcements,” as the social media updates are called, include “We do not care if the waiter has been grating parmesan cheese for three minutes; there’s enough cheese when I say there’s enough cheese.” Or “We do not care that we stripped the beds this morning to wash the sheets. It’s bedtime, we’re tired. Find a sleeping bag.”

Beyond cheeky, some announcements about, for example, bodily leakages and emissions that frequently accompany a midlife sneeze, are…let’s see, what word would Miss Manners use? Indelicate. They also are some of the most hilarious. But be prepared: the spontaneous belly laugh that such hilarity invokes may result in the same bodily leakage and/or emission as the midlife sneeze.

If you sense some defiance beneath WDNC’s growing renown, you wouldn’t be wrong. It’s motivated, however, by a courageous and often necessary rightsizing of influences that interfere with saying yes to what matters most by saying no to what doesn’t. It’s living and loving well with an edge. As Sanders said recently in a New York Times article entitled Chin Hair, Laundry, Your Opinion: Women in Menopause Don’t Care, “The idea isn’t to stop caring about everything. It’s more about taking the pressure off.”

WDNC club announcements are mostly lighthearted. However, there is a serious side, often borne of trauma, grief, or other suffering. For example, “We do not care if we can’t explain our pain. Some storms aren’t meant to be understood, just survived.” Others include:

“We do not care if we feel lost; being lost just means we have outgrown our map.”

“We do not care if we doubt ourselves. Every great awakening starts with confusion.”

“We do not care if our dreams feel far away. Time has a way of circling back around to what’s meant for us.”

“We do not care if sometimes we need our space. The world has taken so much from us that we have to protect our peace like it’s oxygen.”

Pondering the popularity of the WDNC Club led me to reflect on what I do not care about as much as I did before. I came up with three insights faster than Clark Gable said, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” to Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind:

I do not care if I weigh 15 lbs. more than I should. If I eat well, exercise, and get as much rest as possible my weight will be what it will be.

I do not care if the dishes do not get washed immediately after a meal. They can sit scraped, rinsed, and stacked in the sink while I enjoy more time with family or friends. Or someone else can do them.

I do not care that I was never a shoe person until I discovered a local consignment shop with a huge selection of affordable boots, pumps, sandals, and more. Now I can be a shoe person without breaking the bank, and it’s super fun.

Be that as it may, women have been awakening into some version of “I do not care” for a long time. The late Jane Goodall is a good example. Jane’s unorthodox methods of studying wild chimpanzees were out of step with what better educated, more experienced primatologists believed about animal behavior. Jane did not care. Her confidence, rooted in love for the earth and all its inhabitants, moved animal anthropology (sometimes called anthrozoology) to a new level worldwide.

So, cheers to Melani and WDNC! Cheers to Jane! Cheers to all women, and men, too, who examine the expectations driving their actions and attitudes and adjust them as needed with grace, flexibility, and purpose. Will doing so change the world? I do not care. It will change me, and maybe my little corner of the world, for the better. And that’s enough. I am enough. And so are you,

Questions:

1.      What, if anything, comes to mind when you consider what you no longer care about as much as you once did?

2.      Can we ever escape the expectations of others completely? Do we want to?

3. Can not caring go too far? Who decides?