Wandering Through Nothingness

Let me just say this at the outset…this post is going to be very short, sweet and is for the lay-tees…my girlfriends…my seestahs.  Now fellas, don’t get me wrong, you are more than welcome to read along, but I can assure you that it is NOT going to be pretty and there certainly isn’t going to be a lot in its content that will resonate with you…at least I don’t think so.

So, here goes nothing or something depending on how you look at it.  I’m turning 51 in a few days…8 to be exact…and I can officially say with absolute certainty, that this is the year my butt dropped. (Oh my God…did she just write what I think she did? )   I was enjoying the blissful ignorance of not knowing this wonderful truth about my body, until I took my daughter and three of her thirteen year old friends to the SC coast for Labor Day Weekend.  Helen, in her completely context-free, non-judgemental way informed me, just as we were about to head out to the beach,  that my backside was having a difficult time staying tucked into the confines of my swim suit.

“Um, Mom…you might want to see if you can tuck that (she gestures nonchalantly to my backside) back into your suit.”

“What? Is my bathing suit tag stickin’ out?” I ask, not yet aware of this dismal  and universally-known-to all-womankind truth.

“Uh…no Mom. ” Helen is my drama queen.  Born with a tiara and boa, the girl, in her queen-like fashion gestures again…this time with an interesting dismissal-kind-of-ta-ta-for-now-hand movement and a look on her face like she just licked the sour interior of a lemon.

“That.”

I peered around as best I could, which was pretty darn good, thanks to the infinite number of hours I’ve spent twisting in yoga and took a gander.

And I’ll be darned.  There it was…my dropped butt.

Now if the thought of this is repulsive, scary or downright TMI…then you either are in a serious case of denial about aging or you are in your 20′s and just can’t believe that something as atrocious as this could ever occur.  But I’m here to tell you, that it really is just a fact of life and that  no amount of working out with Hanz, yoga with your guru “Shakti,” unconditional love through subliminal tapes, group therapy or intense visualization during meditation can stop butt droppage. (It’s not like I’ve tried any of these, of course.) I guess I could opt in for some kind of derriere implants, but the way I see it…my body is literally traveling toward its grave…and as hard as I fight the inevitable effects of this process…it will eventually win. I mean we are going to die…at least our bodies are.

Growing old is not for the faint of heart.  Admittedly, I don’t have the average body of a 51 year old.  I don’t drink or smoke.  I get as much sleep as is possible with two teenagers living in my house and that “ain’t” saying a lot, and I eat moderate amounts of everything…including chocolate, cheese and chips…so the years of self-care and love have paid off for sure. But growing older also includes getting an older body and well…I’ve simply decided that having a sense of humor about the whole process is a really good approach to take and seems to work in deflecting some of the fear I have about becoming invisible in a youth-obsessed, wrinkle-free, perky-boob culture.

Speaking of perky-boobs. I could go into a lengthy diatribe on my breasts, but that is getting a bit too close for comfort.   I’m embarrassed to tell you the immense amount of brain energy I’ve wasted worrying about those precious body parts and the ginormous sums of money I’ve spent over the years, on acoutrements that lift them up, flatten them out, cover them up and uncover them just enough.

When I was in sixth grade, I prayed that God would give me breasts and then when I got them, I wished they would go away.  When I started running, they magically did go away and then I wished I had them back again.  I have a more intense on and off again relationship with my breasts than I ever did with any man.

Years ago, when my daughter Helen and I were walking into her elementary school…I swear she couldn’t have been much older than 7… a new student teacher was walking quite perkily, if you know what I mean,  right in front of us.

Wanting to insure my daughter is as comfortable in her skin as I attempt to be (note the word attempt), I decided in all my mother-wisdom to use this as one of those enriching, deep, provocative, p0ignant, teachable moments.  ”Wow, Helen.  I know you find this hard to believe but mine used to look a little something like that.  But now, well now, after years of all that heavy lifting, hard work and living life to its fullest, they just joyfully hang.”

Helen, without skipping a beat..I mean not even ONE beat, stated, in that context-free, completely factual way that 7 years old do because they just don’t know any different, “Mom.  Your breasts don’t hang.  They swing.”

Ouch…double ouch.  All I could hear, as I bid her farewell in what felt like some kind of suspended, out of body, slow-motion experience, was a soulful rendition of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”

But the truth is, with all this dropping, drooping, swinging and hanging going on, I remain amazingly happy.  I can still run fast and alot, ride my bike a long way and practice yoga for an hour and a half.  I can enjoy a huge banana split when I want to, hang out with 8 year olds and still be called cool, dance in my living room and wear a bikini, not because I care if it looks great, but because I want to.

I can also celebrate my body, admire with wonder, memory and love the remnants of joy, displayed across its landscape.  There…see?   The beautiful softness from the babies it has birthed and over there, yes, that’s right…the now less than plush paths it has blazed, from the children it has nourished. I can float through a room and feel perfectly comfortable in my skin because I know it’s all mine–no artificial ingredients, no additions, no lifts, tucks or snips.  What you see is what you get and when we get down to brass tacks, having as little to distract me from sharing the real me with the real you is all I’ve ever wanted in life anyway.

The eyes say it all. Me with my daughter Helen.

So…the way I see it, the alternative of not growing older would pretty much stink, and so…I think I’ll just whistle along with all that swinging, dropping, drifting, hanging, drooping, dangling, falling, flagging, leaning, lolling, lopping, sagging, settling, sinking, slinging, slouching, slumping, wilting, and withering.

Dead butt or dropping butt?  I’ll take the dropping one any day.

Swing low, sweet chariot,
Comin’ for to carry me home;
Swing low, sweet chariot,
Comin’ for to carry me home.

I looked over Jordan,
And WHAT did I see,
Comin’ for to carry me home,
A band of angels comin’ after me,
Comin’ for to carry me home.

If you get there before I do,
Comin’ for to carry me home,
Tell all my friends I’m comin’ too,
Comin’ for to carry me home.

I do a lot of public speaking.  I hope when I talk, I inspire, provoke and just get people thinking.  I’m getting ready to do a lot more of it.  As I begin to do more of this…I realize that a huge chunk of my personal history has been missing.  The part between when I  got sober and actually started Girls on the Run.When I started the program, I was three years sober, a not-ready-to-give-it-up elite athlete and the mother to a 12 month old.

Viewing the world through brand new sober eyes was both alarming and exciting at the same time. Nothing seemed real…at least nothing I saw, felt or believed was showing any consistent connection to what I had seen, felt or believed prior to sobriety.  I swear I felt like I was hanging on for dear life to one trapeze rope and trying desperately to time it so I could grab the next as it flew at me, but the truth is, I could never seem to get the timing right.  I always felt a little bit out of sync, either too rushed or too complacent.  So, I hung out, held on and was always here, but wishing I was over there.  The balance I had hoped would come once I got sober just seemed to get more pronounced.  Either I was really balanced or I was really NOT balanced.  There was no nice balanced space in the middle.

So, when the first nudge from the universe came along I was unbalanced and undefined enough to know any better than to heed the crazy call. I had never felt any sense of responsibility to serve the world prior to 1995.  As a matter of fact prior to 1993, I basically didn’t care all that much about anybody but myself.  I wouldn’t have told you this and no one else would have told you this, but secretly parading underneath my skin was someone pretending to care, but deep down, I really didn’t.  I pretended to care so you would say that about me.  “Look at that girl.  She’s caring.  Ohhh (wave fingers in the air) look at her.  What a kind person.” I lived life as the perpetual candy striper…hoping my pseudo-acting-like-I really cared attitude might eventually prove worthy on some kind of go-to-heaven resume, or in attracting a really hot guy.  Heaven or hot guy.  In my 20’s this was a tough choice and as matter of fact I often thought they were the same thing.

But giving birth to my son…it’s as if the world, peered out from behind a corner I had never even seen and shouted at me “Hey you…yeah you the new mother…look over here.  About time you gave me some attention.  I’m struggling over here.  How about you lend me a hand?  It’s not like you’ve ever done anything about me before.” There was a lot I didn’t like about the world but there was also a whole lot about it I was learning to love, especially looking through the new context provided by sober eyes and a brand new baby, and while I couldn’t change all the things I didn’t like about the world, what I could do was change the one I lived in…the little tiny one that surrounded me…the one I saw on my way to the grocery store, along the greenway where I ran and of course, the one that lived inside of me.

And so I did what I could within that eight foot world around me.  I read a few books, daydreamed a lot, journaled, danced to music whenever possible, sang loudly in the car, smiled at strangers, nursed my son, ate chocolate without feeling one ounce of guilt, built fires in the fireplace in the dead of summer, went to bed when I felt like it and woke up when I felt like it too, kept my eyes open and just waited.  I waited because I knew, even then, that something was coming along.  Maybe it was hope or faith or just some kind of clingy-pollyanna-ish, puppy-dog-eye-ish optimism that led me to believe so, but I remember feeling a powerful sense of anticipation…like at any moment I would walk into a room and whatever IT was would jump out from behind the furniture, throw lots of confetti into space and scream “Surprise, I’m here.”

In 1994 and 1995 I spent lots of time cleaning the house.  Maybe cleaning house was the first easy “actionable” contribution I could make to my 8 foot world.  During Hank’s first six months of life I was home every day.  I would prop him up, strap him into the car seat, and carry him around or fold him up against my belly in one of those soft fabric thingies that looked like a hammock for babies and talk to him as I made my rounds.   “Now Mommy is making the bed.  Now Mommy is washing the dishes.  Now Mommy is cleaning out the kitty litter box.  Now Mommy is dusting the floor.”

I spent more time cleaning that first year than I did anything else.  I wonder if I wasn’t instinctively preparing for never doing it again.  I got a whole lifetime of it done, in my son’s first and second year…knowing instinctively somehow that I would never have time for it again or frankly never choose to see it as a priority.

In all that cleaning, journaling, dancing, singing and chocolate-eating, I began to find my energy moving toward feminist psychology.   I don’t know why, it just did.  A book entitled “Reviving Ophelia” was making the pop-culture rounds and I was intrigued with the topic.  Marjorie PIpher was the author.  She wrote about girls and how they were spiraling into an abyss, walled in by self-objectification, low self-esteem and feelings of little to no worth.  I made it half way through the book and then had to put it down.  The bleakness of it felt watching an “I love Lucy” episode for the second, third and fourth time.   As a previous inhabitant of the dark abyss-full hell, I was helplessly frustrated by my inability to do anything for the other characters in the show, who were all continuing, despite my insider information and gesticulating at the screen, to be sucked into the dramatic black hole of their own despair.

The problem was, it seemed to me, that we were using old feminist language to try and articulate the entire feminine psyche, when in reality it was only describing a teeny tiny piece of it. The cold, hardened play-equal language—we can compete with the boys just like the boys can dammit—didn’t add up for the girls, including me, who’d just assume also honor their soft side, tender touch and yearning for “let’s all get along in the sandbox” approach.

The only feminist language I had ever known was filtered through my father’s thick trifocals when he, peered out over them, one morning after my mom had slaved for at least an hour to get eggs, bacon, fresh cut grapefruit and coffee on the breakfast table, after, might I add, her daily six mile run.  “Those damn feminists,” he said. My Dad didn’t say damn very often so whenever he did said it I was little bit scared, but more humored by it, enough to have one of those uncontrollable smiles…like when you aren’t supposed to laugh in church, but you just can’t help it because the choir director’s chin shakes so funny when he sings and you just can’t NOT look at it.

I hated skirts for as long as I can remember and felt like wearing them was unfair because I couldn’t run and jump and swing on the monkey bars like the boys did.  My dad cursed Gloira Steinem and my big brother’s wife Susie, for their wearing pant suits and go-go boots and somehow by their doing so, at least in his eyes, they had convinced me that I was being denied my fourth grade girl rights to wear pants in elementary school because our school made me wear a dress. .  I’d have come up with this whole rights denial thing on my own.

I was a monkey-bar-activist before I was a feminist.

That's me on the right. Do I look like a Monkey Bar Activist or what?

So the only feminist language I knew was the angry kind, the kind that sounded angry, filled with mother-hate and a “men are all Darth Vadars” kind of attitude. This disturbed me.  I was feeling the most powerful I had ever felt in my entire life as the bringer-of-a life-into-the-worlder.  There was nothing both so divinely beautiful and so disgustingly messy as motherhood.  The eight feet of space I lived in, now included another person.  A littler version of me, but with a penis, occupied my eight foot world.  We were attached at the hip, Hank and I.  So over the first ten months of his life, my energy started to bundle around a new feminist theory…one that combined the gifts of the tender, cooperative feminine and the kick-ass mom I needed to be for my son.  Kick-ass but do it with your gentle feminine touch and don’t forget to say please and thank you like your kick-ass mom told you to do.

So when I wrote out the topics for the first curriculum, it took less than fifteen minutes.  I was nursing Hank, and writing at the same time.  The soft mother me holding my baby and the kick-ass feminist activist me writing out nothing short of what I would later see as a miracle.  I was neither hanging on a rope nor suspended in empty space, but floating through, with absolute certainty, some kind of celestial jell-o, where everything that came into my thoughts and out through my pen, landed on the paper in absolute perfection.  I went back less than a handful of times to make a few tiny changes but realized it was time to launch.

Lights on.  The confetti flies.  “Surprise, I’m here.”

Ten months after Hank’s birth, I loaded him up along with what little I had pulled together about this new program I wanted to try out, and headed over to the school I had attended in middle and upper school (I had also taught there for two years).  The after-school coordinator was actually also the man who had served as my counselor all through middle school and high school.  He knew me…well. His last name was Justice.  I liked his name.  It seemed appropriate for someone about to be as excited about my call to Social Justice as I was.

“This sounds cute.  I say you give it a shot.”

Hank was nestled safely in the baby jogger next to us.

Cute would never be how I would describe my work, but who was I to argue.  This was something brand-spankin’ new–a really odd kind of combination of sports and psychology–a Dr. Phil kind of curriculum that also required the intentional use of one’s own human body.

Whatevahhhhh.

“Okay. It’s cute then. Let’s give it a shot.”

So now my eight foot world had edged slightly over to cover a different space and I had to actually communicate this thing, this Girls on the Run thing, in a way that parents would not be afraid of it or me and bravely sign up their daughters.

I created two pieces of collateral, one for the girls and one for their parents.

The original letter to the parents included a fuzzy heart-warming and mildly gut wrenching essay on why I was starting the program.  I remember saying something about combating “the MTV images and an advertising industry gone haywire.”  The language was dramatic and powerful, convincing and a little scary.

It worked.

Thirteen parents called me and after conversations that ranged from a couple of minutes to thirty, they all courageously donated their bundles of energy to the program.  I fondly recall, during one of those phone calls, one of the moms saying something like “Sooooo, it sounds to me like you are going to get into my daughter’s brain.”  I wasn’t sure how to respond to that.  I remember exactly where I was in my house at the time she said it. Kind of like remembering where I was when Ronald Reagan got shot or Princess Diana died.  The memory of it was, for some reason, permanently tattooed onto my brain.   I paused longer than I would have liked.  What she didn’t know was, at that moment, all I could picture was some kind of campy sci-fi movie–a large squishy and gross-noise-making octopus resting painfully on top of her 8 year-old daughter’s head and sucking out all of the gelatinous material holding it all together.  “Yes. I am.  I (the Octopus) am going to get into your daughter’s brain.” Slurp, slurp, slurp.  I wanted to chuckle, but didn’t of course.  We are talking her daughter’s brains here.

As I write now, I realize how alive I felt in those days…real, wired and on fire.  Every meeting with all 13 of those girls would send a new electric impulse down a neuron yet undiscovered or used in the same way previously. I swear at times I could literally hear the crackling noise of electromagnetic impulses moving around inside my head.  My levels of self-awareness went from two on the Richter scale up to a six…and if you know anything about the Richter scale, the increase isn’t incremental, it’s exponential. I thought at times my head might crack open like an earthquake and all these joyful parts of me would start bubbling over.

There hasn’t been a day where I haven’t had some sense of bubbling over…it hasn’t always been joy.  There’s been quite a bit of fear in here sometimes.  And what’s really weird about all of this…is even though the program has now spread across miles and miles of North America with literally hundreds of thousands of people involved, I’m as excited, challenged,and sometimes overwhelmed by, the little eight foot yard that surrounds me:  Mothering teenagers, the ageing process, relationships.   Everyday I wake up, wondering what will  speak to me, love me, teach me and reveal itself in that little eight yards of space.

What, within your eight yards of world can you change, celebrate and journey throughly into, with joy, wonder and curiosity?

About two years ago, when my daughter Helen was just 11 years old, she had earned some money by doing additional chores and helping out around the house.  She decided to spend a portion of it on herself.  Our first stop was our local mall and a trendy store completely in sync with their target demographic…girls in middle school and higher elementary grades.  (Although I admit, I purchase my jeans there…so what does that say about me?)

Anyway…their highest selling products are their T-shirts…screen printed with some really fun sayings which are often times quite inspiring and humorous.  Helen decided to spend her money, all of it, on T-shirts.

I don’t remember two of the shirts, but I do remember the third because it struck me as a very odd purchase for THE Ms. Helen Barker.  The words “Trophy Girlfriend” were screenprinted  across the front;  the word trophy positioned above a shiny gold trophy emblem and the word girlfriend just below it.  As we walked to the checkout counter, I nonchalantly held up this particular shirt and asked “Are you sure you want to get this one?”

“Yes,” she replied confidently.  “I like it.”

“Do you know what this means?” I asked calmly.

“Yep.”  She looked at me a bit quizically. That fine line between pushing my children to see as I see and showing them to see as I see is a very hard line to maneuver.

When we got home, she tried on the three shirts.  When she got to the “trophy girlfriend” shirt, she came into my room.

“How do ya like it? she asked.

“Well, the shape of that shirt looks great, but I’m not a big fan of the slogan on it.”

“Mom, I don’t understand. Seems to me you would really like this shirt.”

“Trophy girlfriend? Mmm…I’m not seeing it Helen.”

“This shirt is all about what you believe about girls, Mom.  What boyfriend wouldn’t want a trophy girlfirend.  She is a WINNER! Awesome, smart, funny, the best friend and person he could have in his life!”

I laughed out loud. “Ohhhh.  Now I see Helen.”

I proceeded to share wtih her the cultural and societal context for what the expression “Trophy Girlfriend” means.

I never saw that shirt again.  My eleven year old didn’t like the larger context of this particular slogan and chose not to wear it.

Recently there has been much ado about a particular shirt making the rounds in a number of stores. “I’m too pretty to do my homework so my brother has to do it for me” is printed on it.

I will not share a photo of it, the name of the store or anything other than what I just did.  I’m not going to market the company, the store, the brand…but what I am going to market is Girls on the Run, the way I talk about girls and the belief I have in them.  The girls in my life would make this shirt “so yesterday” and irrelevant that whoever thought it would sell would be totally surprised by the LACK of sales.  I honestly don’t know one girl, one mother, one father…ANYONE who would purchase this for their daughter.

So all the hoopla seems like overkill.  Let the lack of sales speak for themselves. Focus on what works, what is good and if you are into making money…what sells.

The way I see it, advertisers, marketing strategists and other media folks have simply not caught up with the current status of girls.  They still think that girls will buy into this notion that stupid wins, beauty is all that matters and whether or not we have boyfriends determines our happiness.  I just don’t see it in real life anymore…not once I seive it down with a girl…really talk to her and get to know her…let her know the larger context…of how all this affects her and her “sisters.”  Yeah..she may buy the stuff, but it is often times, I believe, because it is all that is offered.

So let me blunt.  You wanna make money…celebrate girls.  Talk about their strengths.  Talk about beauty as an inside job.  Talk about the stuff that matters like loyalty to friends, standing up for yourself, speaking kindly of others and staying true to your beliefs.  Then watch your product fly off the shelves…My daughter would buy it and so would all her friends.

Mr and Ms. Product Maker, Advertising Executive and Media Mogul…I got news for you…girls are a lot smarter than you think.