Tag: growing up

Susannah Says

Anyone who has lost touch with old friends and then circled back with them years later is often taken aback. Not necessarily at how they have aged but at how grown up and mature their kids have become.

This is a nod to Susannah (nee Margison) Everett. A fraternal twin to Gordon and born within a few weeks of my own son, Cameron in 1986. Her parents Jennifer and Douglas are longtime friends.

Lest I bury the lead (and pretty much already have), Susannah switched tracks after law school and decided not to pursue law as a lifetime career.

She opened her own business as a coach to other professional women advising them on how to manifest their dreams. I can think of no-one better suited to that calling.

I’m sharing this post that she recently published. I often do that when I come across someone else’s words that I wish I had written.

The words and sentiments Susannah shares are strong both in vulnerability and wisdom. Similar to Susannah, I left a law career “to do my own thing.” The parameters for women to ascend in the profession of law are tight and restrictive (especially for older women as I was when I was called to the bar).

To me, it meant the road ahead in law was fated to be nothing else if not dull and predictable and not terribly satisfying. The cachet and status of a law career often reads better on paper than it plays out in reality, except for a favored few.

Susannah left law awhile back and married a doctor. She is a beautiful and happy young woman doing her own thing.

And she is clearly wise beyond her years. As you will glean from her words below. Not a bad outcome for Doug and Jenny’s kid. 🙂 The same kid I last saw when she was wearing diapers and a onesie.

She done growed.

A few years ago, I felt rejected and that rejection felt MONUMENTAL.

I was wallowing in what I’d lost. The fun I would have had. The experience I would have gained. The lost financial upside.

Then someone said something to me that felt like the pick-me-up my heart (and ego) really needed. Want to know what it was?

“Susannah, this is the BEST thing that could have happened to you”.

You know what? That comment became like an omen. It lit up something in me that was determined to get over the pain of the rejection and capitalize on the opportunity it presented.

The reality was that (now lost) opportunity wasn’t all it was cracked up to be when I sat down and thought about it.

I was settling.

I had been “playing small”

Better things were not only out there, but attainable.

And the longer I was focused on the lost opportunity and tried to get it back, the less space I had for something better.

As soon as I started playing with the ideas that “rejection is just redirection” and “if it’s not this it’s something better” and that “life doesn’t happen TO you, it happens FOR you”, magic (it felt like magic) started happening.

The bigger, better, more perfectly suited opportunities started showing up.

While it’s important to honour the feelings that come with rejection, it’s also important to keep them and the situation into perspective.

What if being rejected was the best thing that could have happened? What would be possible?

You owe it to yourself to find out.

Wholehearted Agreement

This opinion piece was published in The New York Times a couple of days ago.

Writer David Brooks is riding a familiar hobby horse.

As much as “therapy culture,” has risen in recent decades, it has plenty of legitimate critics.

I’m one of them.

I particularly like the issue taken by Brooks with what qualifies as “traumatic.” Where it once referred to extreme abuses in war or profound psychological damage from assaults such as rape, the word trauma is now thrown around like rice at a wedding. Similarly benign “damage” and the insults of living life are too often labeled “traumatic,” as well.

I appreciated the caution in Christopher Lacsh’s 1979 book, The Culture of Narcissism. He warned the perils of endless introspection would result in the very culture we live in today.

Self-absorption among younger people “rules” and “rocks” and smears itself across the planet on all manner of social platforms. My concern is how many young people are chasing fame and fortune before they can legally drink in some states.

And for those who can’t or don’t make it in a big way, well … teenage suicide rates are off the historical chart. It is not a coincidence.

Putting the cart before the horse comes to mind. Healing is hard work. I write about healing because of some big, frequent ugly events that no little girl should have to live through. Not “mom was mean to me when I was little” variety but that was an issue, too.

I feel I “paid my dues” in the healing community. I employed a lot of personal searching, soul-searching, and healing modalities (yoga, meditation, talk therapy, anti-depressants, sobriety).

But make no mistake. Arriving at a healing destination where I can look back on the journey with a mixture of self-compassion, compassion for the perpetrators, self-forgiveness, and wry sense of humor took decades.

Through it all, I raised children, worked in the world, and I lived without a partner. My recent status as a married woman is a great cherry comfort on the cake of my life and healing. Not the catalyst.

That determination came from me and my own personal actions. Some days I fell apart. On other days, I felt little and worthless. But I always managed to cling to the mast. It was no cakewalk but it was worth it.

So in the therapy-soaked social environment of today, sometimes just knowing the psychological lingo qualifies you in your own mind for respect and special management.

That isn’t working and the piece below deftly explores why. The question is, can the social Titanic we are currently sailing avoid the iceberg in time?

The Birthday Box

Today is my birthday. A milestone, so that narrows it down some. But I am not going to share exactly how old I have become today. The reason is old-fashioned and likely a little vain. For my mother, it was a survival strategy. Especially in the workplace.

Mom used to talk about “the box people put you in.” Once people knew how old you were, she reasoned, they made assumptions. Often erroneous. Inevitably “limiting.” It is still the way it is “out there.” A 19-year-old singer on America’s Got Talent is viewed more favorably than a 27-year-old. Longer-term marketability, the younger they are.

In Mom’s case, she was a woman in a profession dominated by men. Truth be told in her generation, every professional field was dominated by men. There were a lot of truths about living in that reality, shared as sly witticisms that most women could relate to.

“To do as well as a man in the workplace, women have to be twice as good and work twice as hard as men do. Fortunately, that isn’t difficult.”

Or a more veiled reference: “It is hard to soar with eagles when I am surrounded by turkeys.” I remember a cartoon that circulated in Mom’s workplace. A down and dejected bald eagle is in the center of a group of blank-looking turkeys. The point hit home.

I knew the frustration of being expected to be a “hard news” reporter when that was the predominant role respected in our TV newsroom. If your strength was current affairs or my wheelhouse, human interest, you were clearly of less value than the ambulance chasers or political analysts.

Never mind that I actually enjoyed doing human interest pieces and that they were well-received. They were never going to grant me a shot at being a war correspondent or a bureau chief or heading up a newsroom.

Mom’s challenge was even harder in the 60s. There were distinct “ladies’ pages” in the newspaper business. And ladies, of course, were expected to “cover” issues of interest to other ladies. Teas, weddings, and significant births and deaths in the community. The social pages. Writing obituaries was clearly women’s work.

Mom fought for a “beat” like her male colleagues. After much cajoling and complaining she finally got her wish. She ended up covering the port of Saint John, New Brunswick with the comings and goings of major vessels and reports on the cargo they carried.

To my chagrin, she liked to announce to all and sundry when I was too young to see the humor that she had a job “working the waterfront.” The conjured image of my mother in fishnet stockings and too-high heels made me writhe in discomfort when she shared her little joke with my friends.

Today is more of a day of stock-taking for me. I look back on the other birthdays of other significant decades. I think about what I have and haven’t accomplished. Most poignant, of course, have been challenges that I did and those I did not overcome. Loss became a constant companion if not exactly a friend.

My dear friend Ursula Wawer, MD became a forensic psychiatrist. On a trip we once took, she seized upon a piece of art. It was a drawing of a maze of sorts with many paths but all leading ultimately to the same destination. She said at the time it was much like the healing path many of her patients took.

Not everyone comes to the same desirable destination of love, peace, and fulfillment via the same path. Ursula concluded it doesn’t matter how you get there. What does matter is that you keep putting one foot in front of the other. Do the work to eventually arrive where you want to be and not where others deem that you should be. That journey can take a lifetime.

And so it has been for me. Lots of learning along the way and many lessons I would rather have read about in a book instead of learning about them firsthand. Life isn’t fair and that is one of the biggest and most important learnings of all.

When you land at a point of your life at a destination you only once dreamed about, that feels like a life – if not consistently well-lived – then at least you can say it has been a life of some value.

As I “celebrate” my birthday today, just as you might be celebrating yours today or soon or certainly someday, that feels like the greatest present of all.

My life to date has been valuable to me for all the challenges, children, lessons, dear friends, adventures, and romantic experiences along the way.

I greet the upcoming decade with a warm welcome. Intention being about 99% of the success of any endeavor – another lesson I’ve learned. Bring it on. Happy birthday to me.