Sainthood and Martyrdom: It’s a girl thing

I spent time today with a woman I consider to be a good friend.  We’ve known each other for about 6 years, and yet it feels like just the slightest brush of time.  If you offered me money to pick one thing about her that I don’t like, I’d be hard pressed to come up with something.  When I think of her or engage with her, my experience is always one of dignity, integrity and courage.  

Today, our time together really tugged at something deep inside me – something that has been rumbling around for the past couple of weeks as I made my way through the ‘leadership’ material and then a few subsequent gatherings of women.  I have noticed things about myself; and I have noticed things about myself in groups of women.  I have become very clear, open, honest and direct about my intense disgust with the cultural conditioning of women and the degree to which we allow ourselves to continue to subscribe to it even when we recognize it for what it is.  

For most of the women I now spend time with, long gone are the days when they were too small or too young to choose otherwise.  In this moment, they are old enough and wise enough to recognize that their prison is one of their own construction.  As much as there are places in the world where women are killed because they refuse to take out their subscription to the status quo, here (at least today) it is not so.  And yet, we are crippled under the weight of ‘what will others think of me’ or ‘I must be loving/careing/supportive/helpful/etc even if it kills me’ or ‘No problem – I know you’re hungry so help yourself to my entrails.. Here!  I’ll just roll over and make it easier for you to get to…’ – when with all of it, we know that our lives will not be worth living.

Strong and frequent are the pulls to allow ourselves to succumb to what we think others want of us… expect of us… require of us… need of us… demand of us (at least, in the dark places of our own minds)!  Easy and slippery is the downward slide of allowing ourselves to become lost in the myth and story of what we should be… must be… ought to be – even if it kills us. We don’t need to take our own life – we just need to lie back and think of England and allow it to be taken without protest.  It’s not that we choose to die, it’s that we are unwilling to fight to live!  

Unwilling to declare… to demand… to take!  Unwilling to wrap both hands around our life and say:  “NO!  This life is MINE!  This one belongs to ME!  Get your own life – you CANNOT have mine! ”  But we don’t do that.  We suffer in silence.  We grit our teeth and lock our jaw so that we can get past… can stomach… can tolerate!… our own life.  We slide silently into the dark from yet another moment lost to our own unwillingness to stand up for ourselves.  We are so quick to take up and fight for the cause of others…. any other!… and yet for ourselves, we turn weak at the knees and dewey-eyed about our own right to live as we desire.  

We allow our sense of duty… of obligation and commitment… to sweep our life to the side, watching it slither slowly and painfully into the gutter of another lost hope… or forgotten intention, often turning our gaze away – pretending not to see – so that we do not have to witness who we have become.  We let go of our sense of being deserving of… of having the right to… a life of our own.  And as if it were not already bad enough, we then hate ourselves for who we’ve become.  We no longer need to be held in check – we’ve mastered doing it to ourselves.      

I’ve noticed lately in my work with women that there is this deep, intergenerational self-loathing that seems to be the back of the hand of which the huge desire to live, is the front.   It is the secret we try so desperately to keep from ourselves:  we want to live!  We want to live fully… and LARGE!… and with  gusto!  It is as if we despise our own unquenchable thirst for life and the degree to which it shows us up for wanting it to be so!  Just how deep does the cultural training go?   To what ends are we willing to go to pretend that it is not so; to be seen to be self-less and willing to put our lives on the back burner so that everyone else can have one?

I watch women come and go in program experiences, in coaching and small group gatherings.  I watch women begin to awaken; begin to find their voice, to recognize the vibration of power in their own sound.  I watch women begin to stir – carefully, at first – and reach for the life they want.  In the safety of each other, they become willing to allow their voices to carry the truth of who they are.  

There is a dynamic tension in their experience in the presence of each other.  There is a strength in the intensity with which they engage.  There is an ‘aliveness’ that is palpable; a sense of play,  an awakening to the irreverent and the outrageous, and a willingness to laugh out loud, dive in and take their lives by both hands!  It is as if they finally show up to take a stand – for themselves, for their own lives, and for a way of moving through the world that carries no apology for who they have become.  

And then, they return to their lives.  They hide the journey of how they came to stand where they stand.  They allow themselves to fall asleep – and sometimes, to feign sleep rather than deal with the consequences of being awake.  “I don’t want to upset the apple cart”, or “They wouldn’t understand”, or “They don’t need to know” and in those moments, the opportunities for them to create and share their bigger, more compelling and rewarding lives with others… is lost to their own fear.  And yet, their world could have changed profoundly!  

I have yet to meet a single human being who does not have the desire to be more alive, more present and more engaged with themselves and the people they care about!  I don’t know a single soul who is not starved for the intimacy that comes with profoundly connecting to Self and the people they care about.  Far too many people are discouraged and exhausted by their seemingly endless and often hopeless search for authentic change.  And all that was required was that a truth be shared.   

I watch far too many go back into their lives and pretend they are not who they have become.  I watch them pull back, pull in and tone down.  I watch as the roar of who they have been returns to the squeek with which they have long made friends, over their life.  And I watch them disappear.  

In this moment, I feel saddened and fatigued by the relentless nature of how we keep losing ourselves; allowing our lives to slip away and not noticing until long after the trail has grown cold.  I feel overwhelmed by the density that comes with the passage of time and depth of  repetition that results in the unquestioned ‘grooming’ of women to become beasts of burden.  To me, it feels like watching a magnificent mustang turn into a donkey; a creature designed for freedom transformed into a beast of burden.  And if that were not bad enough, we have trained our own voices to repeat what we’ve been told and heap praise upon ourselves for having accomplished this transformation.  But inside, we’re screaming to get out and choking on our own despair.   

Maybe tomorrow will be different.  Maybe tomorrow, we’ll not be so unsure of ourselves, so afraid to be seen, so willing to hide who we are behind the expectations of others.  Maybe tomorrow, we’ll find not only comfort but a sense of personal power in relaxing into the intensity of how deeply we desire, how much we care and how profoundly it really does matter that we have the life we choose for ourselves… now!   Maybe tomorrow, we’ll give up waiting and hoping and wishing and we’ll simply make it so.  

Breathing is good…