Successful Women?

I picked it up and looked at it.  I wanted to put it back down but I didn’t.  I dread reading them but I seem drawn to them like a moth to a flame.   Whether it is that type of article in Austin Woman or the sections of the New York Times or Austin American Statesman where they have interviews or identify persons who have been “promoted” in the business world, the articles evoke unpleasant emotions for me.  I am referring to articles about successful women.  

You know you’ve read them. They go something like this:  “Nancy Smith was recently promoted to Head of Marketing in this multinational corporation. These articles are followed with a glowing biography or glorified resume chocked full of amazing credentials.  There is a photo and then an interview or announcement or both.  Nancy says something like, ““I started out as a file clerk and now I am President of this large corporation.” 

I would like to say I celebrate the success of these women but if I am honest I don’t.  Mostly I just feel inadequate.  I compare where I am in my career with where they are in theirs and I definitely have failed.  Why do I let others’ success make me feel inferior?  Some of it is cultural I think.  We are bombarded with stories of “success” and we glorify the materially successful.  They get the accolades and respect in the news and community.

Sometimes I convince myself that they have made sacrifices I wouldn’t make.  I wouldn’t want to work all those hours I say.  But putting aside the standard excuses why I didn’t achieve that level of success, how do I come to terms with where I am now?  I don’t really think I am less smart or less energetic.  I maybe –no I am definitely- less ambitious.  I’d love the money and prestige but I wouldn’t want to do the work it takes to get there or to maintain that standing.  It takes a lot of intense energy and sacrifice to accomplish and maintain all of that, I think.

 I know that, without consciously doing it, I set professional goals for myself when I was young.  Being more conscious of my choices would have helped me to be more satisfied with where I am now. (If I were a younger woman in a career I would make that a priority.) I saw my career as a way to support my family – nothing more. And as I look back I can say that I accomplished exactly what I set out to do – nothing more, nothing less. So perhaps I should have been more careful in setting my goals or revisited my goals as time went on.  I didn’t. I stuck to my original goal and now I am unhappy that I achieved what I set out to do.  Along the way I missed out on more professional opportunities.   I didn’t make them a priority.  Part of it may be my generation.  It was OK for us women to work outside the home to support a family but nothing more.

 I am never going to achieve those heights in the business world or maybe anywhere and I will work on coming to terms with that fact.  I’ll let you know how that goes. In the meantime I am going to celebrate the success of others. That is a good place to start, I think.  I am going to set some new goals in this field or maybe another.  I am also going to celebrate my own “successes” even though they look very different from the successes of the women in the magazines and newspapers. Sounds trite but I really believe it comes down to your individual definition of “success.”  To be sure, there  will be more to follow on this subject. 

QUERY:  Do you compare yourself to every successful women you read about?  Do you denigrate the successful woman's accomplishments in order to make yourself feel better about where you are in your career?  Does doing that really make you feel better about where you are?  What are some positive ways you could foster acceptance and enjoyment regarding where you are right now?  How do you define "success"?

Post Halloween Dilemma - Kids and candy UGH!

“Can I have some of my Halloween candy for dessert?” Samuel asked after we had finished dinner. I froze.  Before I could respond he and his younger sister, Ellen, had both gone to their bedrooms to fetch their candy.

“YOU STOLE MY CANDY!” my son screamed as he came racing out of his room.  I heard the angry voice and footsteps before I saw him.  He was about 7 years old at the time.  “Yeah YOU STOLE MINE TOO”, Ellen added.

"Oh Lord”, I said under my breath.   By this time both my son and daughter were standing right in front of me with a look of disgust and rage on their faces.   My daughter had her hand on her hip like she does when she is angry.  My son was holding the pillowcase, which was his bag of candy, in front of my face.  “This pillowcase was ¾ full last night and now it is only about ¼ full”, Samuel shouted.

“Oh my gosh Mom”, my daughter Ellen said.  “I remember that so well!”  We both started laughing hysterically.  My daughter, Ellen, and I were reminiscing about past Halloweens.   We both remember it well because it was repeated for a few years even though more than 20 years had passed since then.  It is funny now but it wasn’t back then.

Funny how your children can accuse you of doing things in ways that no one else can or maybe I should say they can strike a nerve like no one else can.  Perhaps it is the hypocrite factor that makes the difference.

“I don’t know what you are talking about and please do not speak to me like that”, I shouted back to Samuel and Ellen.  “Let me see the pillowcases”, I said.  (They had taken to using pillowcases to carry candy as it held more and was easier to carry around.)  I looked inside each of the two pillowcases.  “The candy just settled like cereal and other things do in boxes after they are in there for a while”, I said trying to be calm and dignified.   But I knew the guilt was written all over my face.  I was busted by my two kids.

“Mom you’re lying”, Samuel said with disgust.  He threw the pillowcase on the ground and stormed back to his room.  Ellen followed him.  Samuel never ate any more of his Halloween candy.

 As Ellen and I laughed I realized what a coward I was at that time. Even though it is a very funny story in retrospect, it aptly illustrates my lack of parenting skills at that time in my life.  You see my children, especially Samuel, would eat candy until he got sick.  I took the candy away so he wouldn’t eat so much of it and yes I ate a few pieces myself – maybe more than a few.   That part is OK but I lied to him about it rather than face a confrontation with Samuel.  Samuel was the king of temper tantrums.  They could last days.  I should have just been honest.  Trying to avoid the conflict only made matters worse.  It took me many years before I had the courage to be and learned to be honest with my children. 

Honesty, appropriate for the age, really is the best policy as I learned.   I would have to put up with a temper tantrum but then it would be over.  I didn’t have to be a hypocrite in the eyes of my children by preaching honesty and then acting dishonestly.  That course of action had far more lasting effects as they learned not to trust or respect me.  I have apologized for this and many, many other parenting deficiencies.  We can laugh about most of them now as Ellen and I did with our post Halloween trauma.  But, before we could do that, I had to “fess up” to my own mistakes and lies. That wasn’t an easy thing to do at least in the beginning. It was one of the most important things I did.  By admitting my own mistakes, it freed my children to admit their own faults and mistakes to me.   The honesty has helped us to form good and strong relationships.

QUERY:  Have you made mistakes or are there times when you have not acted in conformity with how you tell your children to act?   Is now the right time to “confess” that to your children?

Marriage and sometimes even a love story (Part Four)

 “I like you a lot,” one of the regular customers at the health food store where I worked in high school said to me one day.  I didn’t know quite what to say. Richard had graduated from an Ivy League school and was working in my hometown.  He seemed much too old at the time – 5 years older than I.   I really can’t recall how it was that we starting dating.  Over the next four years we spent a lot of time together.    We broke up after he moved away.    He came by my parents’ house several years later to hear from my Sister that I was married and having a baby.  I only appreciate now, almost 30 years later, what a great guy he was.  You see I wanted to fall in love like Jennifer Jones and William Holden did in “Love is a Many Splendored Thing.”     I wanted some adventure or something different from my middle class upbringing. As to the latter, I got my wish!

I wasn’t “in love” with Richard as I understood that phrase with all of my 19 year old wisdom.  I didn’t have that burning feeling in the pit of my stomach that told me he was the right person for me.   When he wasn’t around I didn’t feel agitated and anxious like something was missing.   I had that feeling for David so I had to be “in love”.

Why am I lately so filled with regrets over lost loves?   Have I really missed opportunities for love or am I just experiencing some middle age pangs of regret for my youthful choices?    It is one of the principal ironies of life that we make the most important decisions of our life when we have absolutely no idea what we are doing – like choosing a spouse and a career.  I found myself continually daydreaming along the lines of”What if?”  What if I had married Richard was a question that was haunting me.  

Do I really believe that certain relationships are meant to be or conversely not be?    Do I believe in fate?   Did I make the right decision or a grievous mistake?  It was so long ago who really cares and why does it matter?   As I passed the halfway point in my life I seem haunted by a need to find answers to those questions or somehow to put the inquiries to rest- permanently.   That question was pressing in on me as I had just ended another marriage – my third.  How did I end up here I wondered.   I have experienced so much adversity and my life has been such a struggle.   How do I make sense of it all?  Sifting through my past relationships seemed like as good a starting point as any. 

QUERY:  Can you recall an early love?  Is there a lesson or any wisdom to be gleaned from looking back over that first love?  Have we glorified it in our mind to an unhealthy level?  Is it interfering with our satisfaction in our present relationship? 

Loneliness (Part Three)

I spent three days in that desert town on this business trip.  So much had changed sometimes it was easy to forget where I was.   At times I was overcome by a constant barrage of “what ifs”.    What if ……???  How different would my life have been if I hadn’t married Brian?  I would probably still live here.  I wouldn’t have those memories that drove me away.

  What happened to the connections I thought I had forged there?   When I moved there I thought I would put down roots and that this would be my new “hometown”.  For a time it seemed like that had happened and then with the death of Brian it all abruptly ended.   Perhaps our connections to places are only as good as our connections to the people who live there.  The connections to our memories, our personal history and the culture and identity of the place can evaporate slowly or they can quickly dissolve as they did with me. 

Perhaps connections with people are best left untested by the trials of life. If Brian had not gotten sick I am sure I would be visiting and reminiscing with Eloise on that business trip.   Perhaps I am just too hard and unforgiving when it comes to others.  Maybe I should have spoken to Eloise in the restaurant that day.   I couldn’t at that time. The wound was much too raw.   Maybe Eloise would have told me why she acted like she did – why she stopped being my friend when I needed her friendship the most.   Would any explanation have been able to change us back from strangers to friends again?

I have come to understand, although it has taken much time, that there are many different types of friendships.   A therapist once told me I had an adolescent notion of friendship because I expected too much from people. In retrospect I think she was right. As we mature we have so many competing demands for our time – careers, spouses, and children that there is much less energy and time for friendships.   Could I have relegated Eloise to a casual friend?   I have learned to enjoy casual friendships but I don’t think I could accept a casual friendship from someone who was once so close to me.   I think it is OK to expect close friends to be there during the crises in life if not physically at least with some emotional support.  No it was better not to talk to Eloise in the restaurant that day. There was nothing to gain.  As it is now I have good memories of our close friendship.  It is better left that way.   I don’t need to travel down the road of “what if” I had rekindled my friendship with Eloise.   This trip to the desert has made it possible for me to stop making that journey. That is a relief!

 Unfortunately everyone acted like Eloise during the time Brian was ill and dying.  I lost all my friends.  Everyone abandoned us.  I was bitter about that for many, many years.  I made no effort to form any close friendships.  Should I trust again?  We have no idea how our friends, spouse or children will act in difficult times.  We have to have faith they will rise to the occasion and support us.    Everything in life is a risk especially relationships.  I can’t hide from that forever.   I was too lonely. I was going to have to trust again. 

   I hoped to make better choices in friends this time around or maybe just to lower - maybe that is too harsh a word - change my expectations for others and for myself.  Still I am haunted by the question whether it is asking too much of friends to show compassion and stick by you in difficult times?
QUERY:  Have we lost the ability to forge those type of connections? ( I hope not.)   Is it something that can only be formed when we are young or is it possible to find or develop those connections later in life? Did I simply chose wrongly when it comes to friends?  Did I expect too much of them?   Is what I see as the loss of "community" in our modern world a death knell for the close bonds of friendship?  How do we forge such close and enduring connections? I do know that, as with any relationship, it takes time and commitment.   Are we willing to make the effort and take the time to forge such friendships? Does our busy modern life prevent us from having the time and personal interaction needed to form such close bonds?  Maybe this just isn't a priority for us anymore.  Do you have close and deep friendships in your life?  If not do you want them? I know I do. Are you the type of person who sticks by her friends through very difficult times?

Raising Children the Best We Can (Part Two)

“Hello,” I would shout as I came in the door after arriving home about 6:30 or 7:00 pm. from work.  Usually the three children were at the front door to greet me and they would be jostling each other to try to get my attention.  “Mom I need help with my homework,” Jessica would say.  “Mom Samuel hit me,” Ellen would complain.  “Mom the sitter was mean to me today,” Samuel would say woefully.  They would all end up shouting at me as each of them tried to get my attention.   I would squeeze past them giving each a perfunctory hello and a hug before I rushed to the kitchen to prepare dinner.  I know they each wanted some one on one time with me but it would have to wait until after dinner.   They were all overwrought with hunger by the time I arrived home.   All three of them would continue to talk to me at the same time as I prepared dinner.   I would try to get them to take turns but it was pretty impossible. 

 Sometimes I could find a sitter who was affordable, reliable and cooked dinner but that was the exception.   Sitters came and went on a regular basis.  I couldn’t afford daycare for three children.  My children were not the easiest to take care of.   Samuel and Ellen weren’t keen on following rules. 

“Mom, Ellen is crying again,” Jessica told me.  It wasn’t like I didn’t know.  I had just walked in the door from the office. It was about 6:30 pm.  I saw Ellen sitting in the hallway that connected the main part of the small house to the bedrooms.  She was hugging her stuffed animal and sobbing.  I stroked her head and said, “I love you.  Everything will be OK.   Come have some dinner now.”   Ellen continued to cry for the rest of the evening.  I finally coaxed her into my bed about 8:30 p.m.  She was exhausted.   This same scene was replayed every night for months.   As soon as I walked through the door she would start to cry.   I was desperate to get her to stop. I know I was not always patient and kind when she cried. I was overwhelmed at that time in my life to put it mildly.  I wanted some peace and quiet in the evenings.  At the time I had no idea why she was crying.  As I look back on it I think it was her way of grieving over the divorce and the loss of her father.  For Ellen that was a significant loss. But I didn't have any clue about all of that at the time this was going on.
One night I sat down next to Ellen in the hallway and pretended to cry.  The funny thing is that real tears came down my cheeks.   We cried together for several nights.   After that Ellen just stopped sitting in the hallway and crying.  If only I had thought to do that sooner!
In all our effort to manage the day to day "necessities" of life sometimes we forget to or simply don't have the energy to make time for the emotional needs of our children.  This was Ellen's way of getting my attention.  How many times did I ignore her pleas for attention and maybe help?   I tried not to berate myself too much for my failures and instead vowed to do a better job in the future.  Somehow the pressing demands of life continued to push the emotional well being  or emotional needs of my children and myself down to the bottom of the "to do" list. I would pay a price for that later but I would also learn to make it a priority.  As a single mom or a busy mom or person, how do we remind ourselves to take the time out of our crazy, busy lives to listen to and give love to our children and others in our lives?  Isn't there only so much of "us" to go around.  Is it an ongoing challenge for you as it is for me?

Death and Love Together (Part Four)

Brian’s walk became increasingly unsteady as ALS continued to ravage his body.  He would teeter and totter when he walked and I was terrified he would fall down.  He started using a cane to steady himself.  He couldn’t use that for very long because he couldn’t hold it when he lost the use of his right arm.  I bought a wheelchair and put it in the family room hoping he would use it.  It sat there empty for quite a while.  Brian was having difficulty standing for any extended period of time.  He was becoming fatigued very easily.  One night we had a few of his high school friends over.  He grabbed the wheelchair and sat in it.  He was able to move around to talk to everyone that way.  It still sat there empty for a while after that.   

 “Do you want to rent a wheelchair for the day?”  I asked Brian.  He just ignored me and my request.  I didn’t say anything else because I knew it was useless to do so.  We started walking through the zoo.  Brian started to get very tired.  He found a bench to sit down.  Without asking him I went back to the entrance and rented a wheelchair for the day.  I arrived back at the bench with the wheelchair.  Brian didn’t say anything.  He just got into the wheelchair.  He looked haggard and defeated.  Brian refused to look at me for the remainder of our day at the zoo.  He seemed to feel a little better when Gary asked to ride on his lap.  At two years old Gary thought it was great fun.

The phone rang.  I picked it up.  “This is Officer Smith of the Police Department.  We would like you to come to the police station tomorrow at 10am to talk to us about your son, Samuel.”  “OK” I responded.  I hung up the phone.  “Who is it?” Brian asked.”  I lied.  “It was nothing important,” I said.  Brian accepted that answer.  If he weren’t sick he would have known I was lying.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Brian said.  He wasn’t able to physically shake me at this point in time.  “OK,” I said.  “Just give me a minute to wake up,” I replied.   “I have to go right now!” Brian said desperately.  Patience was never one of Brian’s virtues but, in his defense, who knows for how long he had been trying to wake me.  His voice was not very strong at this point in time.  I walked to his side of the bed.  I wrapped my arms around his waist and hoisted him to his feet.  He steadied himself for a minute.  “OK” he said to me.  We started to walk very slowly to the bathroom.  Brian held onto my arm as he shuffled his feet.  I lowered him onto the toilet seat.  After he was done I leaned him against my body as I reached around to wipe him.  I pulled his bottoms back up. (We had actually done this in an airplane bathroom on several occasions).  We proceeded slowly back to the bed.  Just before we reached the bed Brian lost his balance and fell to the floor with a thundering thud.

“Help, help,” Brian was pleading.  I was frantically pulling and tugging to try to get him on his feet.  It was the middle of the night.  Last time this happened my Father had been around to help.  He wasn’t here now.  “I’m going to have to wake up Samuel,” I said to Brian. “”Please don’t,” he pleaded.  “I have to. I can’t get you off the floor,” I said.  I rolled Brian over onto his back and put a pillow under his head.  I went to get Samuel. Samuel and I managed to pull Brian off the floor in increments using a vanity stool and to get him back into the bed.  Brian would fall a few more times before he finally agreed to use the wheelchair all the time.

I would need a break from the physical demands of caring for Brian.  I knew he didn't want anyone but me to care for him.  I knew I couldn't last much longer.  It would take maybe more strength than I thought I had to face Brian's anger and my guilt when I finally decided to get some help.  (To Be continued) 

Raising Children the Best We Can

“I’ll be over to pick up the kids to take them to a movie,” David, my soon to be ex-husband, said over the phone.   In my naiveté I told the children that their father would be over tomorrow around 11 am to pick them up and take them to a movie.    The two younger ones, Samuel and Ellen, were very excited.  They were 3 1/2 and 5 years old.  They got dressed early Saturday morning and waited patiently.   They were talking about what they were going to do with him and what movie they wanted to see.   At least as much as kids that age can discuss those matters.  I knew they were excited and quite frankly I was looking forward to a little time to myself.  I was going to sleep.  “When will Daddy be here?” Samuel asked.   “We are going to miss the movie,” he later complained when the time came and went for his father’s arrival.   “He will be here.  Something must have come up that caused a delay,” I said.  

After an hour passed with no phone call and no knock at the door I realized he wasn’t coming. I should have said something to the children.  I was a coward.    Eventually Samuel just found something else to do besides wait for him.  He went to his room and played with his matchbox cars.  Ellen, who was three at the time, cried and carried on. I tried to get them interested in going out with me to a movie but they didn’t want to. Their hurt was palpable. 

“How could you just not show up,” I shrieked into the phone when David finally did call.  I was surprised at myself because I had given up on fighting with him over how he treated me but apparently I still had the energy and grit to fight with him over how he treated the children.    “You are crazy.  I never told you that I was going to pick the kids up and take them to a movie,” he responded.    “Did I misunderstand him?”  I asked myself.  

I had just about gone crazy the last few months David and I lived together.   We would talk, make plans or make a decision and then when things didn’t go as planned he would tell me he never said that.  Now I started to doubt myself again.  It was actually stronger than that.  I felt totally disoriented again – a feeling I had all the time the last months of living with David.    Was I going crazy? Was the stress affecting me that much? Why did I even bother to say anything to him?  I knew that nothing was ever going to change with him.  He would never admit he made a mistake or did anything wrong.   But what about the children I wondered.

 Most of the time when David did show up he would take only one or two of them.  “I simply can’t handle all three of them or I simply can’t afford to take all of them to the movie,” he would say.  One very radiant child would leave with him while the other would crumple up in a ball on the floor and cry.  I was left with a shattered child whose pieces I tried to put back together.  (Jessica, the oldest never really wanted to go with her father.) That is how I came to view my children.  They were shattered into pieces at a very young age and the rest of their lives have been about putting those pieces back together.   The pieces never fit back together perfectly but at least, now, all the pieces are back and in some kind of reasonable order. 

“We don’t want to take a bath.  We want to go live with our Dad!  We want to go live with our Dad!” Ellen and Samuel were chanting.    I was somewhat accustomed to hearing this by now.  It had been several months since their father, David, had moved out. This chant accompanied just about every request I made of the younger two to do something they didn’t want to do.   I gave them a bath silently, dried them off and got them into bed.

 It wasn’t hard to be a better parent than their father, David.  I have often wondered if that is one of the reasons, unconsciously, that I chose him.   Eventually he just went away altogether. That is what I had hoped for but not until after he had made our life a living hell for quite a long time.