Superwomen’s Anonymous for Tired Overachievers : Telling Women They Don’t Want It All

Carol Orsborn has become the caped crusader of modern wonder women who want to achieve less.

With the slogan, “Enough Is Enough,” Orsborn has attracted more than 500 members to her San Francisco-based organization, Superwomen’s Anonymous. Its basic premise is that not only can you not have it all, but you don’t want it all.

Letters from overachievers seeking downward mobility are daily pouring into the Orsborn Group offices, where Orsborn formerly worked 50-hour weeks as president of the nation’s 76th-largest independent public relations agency. She’s since cut those hours to 30 and is going into seclusion at her “down-scaled” home in Mill Valley to finish a book appropriately titled, “Enough Is Enough.”

‘Unbelievable’ Responses

“The volume and quality of the responses has been unbelievable,” said Orsborn, a mother of two whose newsletter explores guilt-free unpopularity and promises no fund-raisers or monthly meetings. “I felt like I was shining a lantern into the night. I had no idea there was anybody out there aside from my group of friends who would agree with me.”

A 41-year-old professional woman from Durham, S.C., sent a $12 membership check with the words, “At last--someone understands!” A Vermont working mother asked for more information and signed the letter, “Going crazy.”

A man from Bayonne, N.J. wrote: “Bully for you. Glad to see that I can slow down instead of trying to play catch up with (women). Now maybe we can all smell the roses.” From Crosby, Minn., a woman said, “Please send me information quickly--this superwoman act is killing me!”

Orsborn, 37, said society’s pressures on women to be overachievers at work and at home has sent thousands into therapy, most of them with depressed feelings that they alone are failing to live up to expectations.

Impossible Ideal

“A lot of it is that the ideal that has been presented in the predominant mass media is impossible for 99.9999% of the women to achieve,” Orsborn said. “I’d like to meet the .0001% who do.”

The outpouring of support for Superwomen’s Anonymous, said Orsborn, is “a collective sigh of relief. I’m getting letters from mothers of women, bosses, husbands, children, children enrolling their mothers. It’s a huge, international, collective sigh of relief.”

“It’s a sigh of relief that someone finally had the nerve to stand up and say, ‘Hey, I’m miserable. There’s something wrong here and maybe it’s not just me,’ ” she said.

Orsborn said she and her husband, Daniel, began scaling down their Marin County life style after the birth of their first child, Grant, six years ago. They moved to a smaller home that was “half of everything”--including the commute into San Francisco. They also sold a home computer that nobody used and she took up rowing in the bay to relax.

Although still busy, Orsborn said her emphasis has shifted from trying to do everything toward creative projects and artistic self-expression. Starting the Superwomen’s organization and putting out the newsletter, she said, was a way of injecting humor into what was a very serious subject.

Stress-Related Problems

A growing number of women, she said, are being treated for alcohol, drugs and psychiatric problems related to stress. Children, too, she said are showing more and more ailments that are considered stress-related.

“I’m dealing with the tip of the iceberg,” Orsborn said. “It’s a problem of monumental proportions. I think I’m here in just the nick of time.”

A $12 fee for joining Orsborn’s group obligates members to absolutely nothing. A membership card is sent to enrollees along with a quarterly newsletter guaranteed not to teach women to manage or to cope. The organization’s motto, “Enough Is Enough,” should be posted prominently and consulted prior to saying yes to any new obligation, assignment or commitment.

Orsborn plans to spend the next three months at home writing her book from the material she’s gathered and hopefully to find some time for relaxing by the hearth.

“I’m a recovering Superwoman,” she admitted.