Three Risky Things We Need to Talk About (A Lot!) if We Want to Elevate Women
The other day, I was talking with a girlfriend and I casually mentioned that I’ve been dealing with some anxiety lately. “Oh, man…me, too,” she said. “Perimenopause is horrible! I can barely leave the house sometimes.” As the conversation progressed, we realized that so many woman we know are going through something similar, but most of them are very quiet about it, admitting it only to very close friends.
When my friend acknowledged that she, too, had suffered, I instantly felt less alone, and much more empowered. I started to think about other difficult experiences that are so common among women at various stages of our lives, and I realized that they all share a certain trait: women tend to suffer them in silence, afraid to admit to any weakness. There’s a good reason for that, of course. We have had to work (and are still working) damned hard to overcome the ridiculous workplace stigma that women are ruled by our emotions, our hormones, our cycles. We’ve seen a viable, strong woman presidential candidate dismissed as weak, prone to making catastrophic decisions every 28 days or so, and as (gasp!) the worst thing of all: AGING (see also: worthless). Is it any wonder that so many women, especially in high-profile careers like politics and entertainment, and in youth-driven areas like tech, resort to endless, expensive and time-sucking procedures designed to make sure our outsides look as young as we feel inside?
In this, the #MeToo era, we are tearing down the poisonous culture that has resulted in so many of us having to sacrifice our humanity and submit to misogyny and harassment in order to keep a job, climb the ladder, have an opportunity to break through. I remember my days in the entertainment industry, before I moved into the world of product, so well, and I am astounded, and more than a little ashamed, that I so casually dismissed egregious sexism, and even assault, as a necessary evil. I’m proud of my sisters out there who finally said, “Enough is enough.” And I can’t wait to see where this leads.
But if we truly want to create a society that elevates women, we need to stop allowing our sisters to believe, when they experience something difficult that most or all women experience, that they are somehow deficient, uniquely damaged. It’s time to lift each other up by talking about some hard truths.
- Impostor Syndrome — We’ve All Been There
When I was first starting out in my career, which began in the entertainment industry, I constantly felt like a fraud. It was my job, as a young creative executive, to pursue potential feature film material in the form of screenplays and manuscripts. I remember taking home stacks of scripts every night, working until the wee hours. In the entertainment industry, often a literary agent will submit a new piece of material to several producers at the same time, knowing that each one has relationships with different studios or packageable talent. When I’d read at night, I was paralyzed by my own self-doubt: if I liked a script, I’d worry that I’d be the only one, that other producers around town reviewing it at the same time would pass on it. Instead of believing in my own instincts, not worrying about what my counterparts at other production companies thought, I somehow worried that liking a piece of material that others dismissed would make me not a maverick, but a laughingstock. If I read something that didn’t speak to me, I’d worry that everyone else in town would love it, that it would get set up by another producer at a studio and become a huge blockbuster success, and that I would be the person who passed on the next Star Wars. I also realized that this process was very subjective, and that I was holding the hopes and dreams of a writer in my hands. I couldn’t believe that I’d been entrusted to be the gatekeeper of such important decisions, and that a writer’s future could possibly depend on my opinion. In short, I had a great job in a field that attracted tens of thousands of hopeful newcomers every year, I had the potential to do anything, and I had a crippling case of impostor syndrome.
I wish I had known then what I know now: almost every woman, even those who have achieved the heights of success, experiences impostor syndrome at one time or another. I was sure that everyone else knew what they were doing and were somehow more qualified than I was, but the chances are very good that everyone else was feeling the same way. Impostor syndrome is almost a universal experience among women. Had I been brave enough to confess how I was feeling to any of my mentors in the industry, and had they told me they’d gone through the same thing, I believe my career would have been on an upward trajectory from the start.
It wasn’t until some years ago, long after I transitioned into product, that I finally realized something that should have been obvious. I’d so far had an amazing career. I’d been able to do things that others dream about. By this time, I’d been at the same company for years, working hand-in-hand with the founder/CEO to build a thriving business. One day it hit me: nobody is this good at hiding failure. If I were truly unworthy of my career, I wouldn’t have it. And pretending to be good at your job? It’s the exact same thing as being good at your job, if you’re getting results. It was a realization that changed my life.
That’s why we need to talk about impostor syndrome to any young women who will listen. Women need to know that these feelings, these worries, are normal. And they’re fiction. If we let our impostor syndrome get the best of us, we derail our own success. But if we can get out of our own way, women can achieve anything. Let’s help young women entering the business world by removing that gigantic obstacle for them. It just takes the words, “I’ve been there, too. We all have.”
2. Motherhood is Hard
If I go by my Facebook feed, every other mother in the world is perfect. They all feel incredibly fulfilled and are thrilled to the core by every word their perfect children utter. They‘re yoga goddesses who work 50 or 60 hours a week and still manage to make dinner (not frozen!) every night. They attend soccer games, volunteer at school, help with homework, and stay up all night with sick kids…all with a perfectly-styled ensemble and a smile.
I call bullshit, and I’m fairly sure I’m right on this one. I know because in private conversations with some of these women, they’ve admitted to me that they feel like their lives are a mess, that they don’t do enough, that they can’t keep their head above water. They cry about how hard and exhausting it is to juggle a career and motherhood, and about how much guilt they feel when one area of their life suffers in favor of the other. And, of course, they look at other women’s social media posts and they wonder what they’re doing wrong, not realizing that they themselves project that same image of perfection to the outside world.
Ladies, motherhood is HARD. It can be thankless work. It’s okay to feel overwhelmed and doubtful. It’s normal to feel like you’re doing it wrong. It’s perfectly acceptable to wonder, several times a week, if THIS is the moment that your child will talk about with their therapist 25 years from now. We’ve all found ourselves torn between work and family, remotely dialing in to a meeting from home while comforting a sick child. We’ve been annoyed by our kids, who want our attention while we’re answering an important email or Slack message on our phones in the evening. And we’ve felt guilty about our annoyance. Some (probably many) of us have felt a flash of hot regret during the early infant days, wishing for a brief, irrational moment, that we could undo our decision to become a mother. And if we happened to be suffering from postpartum depression, those regrets might have been not as brief as we would have liked.
Sure, there are exceptions, and I do have at least one friend who truly is Superwoman (but she honestly doesn’t sleep more than a few hours a night). For the rest of us, can we stop projecting the image that we’ve got it all handled? Can we do each other a favor and acknowledge the reality that, while we love our kids and would do anything for them, some days are just really, really hard? Can we give each other the psychological safety to admit that we’re all just doing the best we can at any given moment?
3. Aging is weird (at best) and sometimes horrible
Now that I’m in my 40’s, I’m constantly struck by one thought: “How come nobody told me about [fill in the blank]?” It amazes me that I know, respect, and am related to so many women who are older than I am and yet I had no idea what to expect from this part of life’s journey. Aging, for a woman, is an incredibly odd experience.
It began, for me, when I suddenly remembered that there was a time I’d get catcalled all the time when walking alone in the city. I remembered that people noticed me. I remembered that I often felt uncomfortable under the weight of the male gaze. The reason I use the word “remembered” here is because it occurred to me that it had been a long time since that had happened. Although I couldn’t pinpoint the moment that it had happened, I’d become invisible. As an enlightened woman and a feminist, I wanted to (and eventually did) find strength and freedom in this. But — and I feel shame as I write these words — as a woman who’d always secretly found some validation in the admiring gazes of others, I felt adrift. If I wasn’t young and sexy, who was I? What did I now have to offer?
It took me some time to find my footing in this new reality, and honestly, I’m sure I’ll have to find my footing again and again as each new phase of aging presents itself. The truth is that there are kickass parts of being in my 40’s: I feel more confident and more creative than ever. I’ve truly gotten out of my own way and accepted my competence. It’s wonderful to see value in who I am, totally apart from what I look like. I have more energy than I did in my 20’s or 30’s. And, in reality, I’m keeping it together fairly well in the appearance department, now that I’ve made friends with the little creases around my eyes, I think. But I think we all mourn the loss of our younger selves for a little while.
On top of that, changing hormones really can throw us for a loop. The anxiety I mentioned earlier in this post is happening because of a hormonal imbalance and premature menopause caused by an autoimmune condition. During my quest to figure out why I’d lost my mind (which is what it felt like at times), I came across many posts on message boards written by menopausal women who admitted to being suicidal. There were pages and pages of responses by women experiencing equally unpleasant emotional and mental effects. Huh? How come nobody told me that these things are possible, and even normal? That’s why it was so comforting to have that honest conversation with my friend, and to hear that she’d experienced the same thing. If you’re in the same boat, the kindest thing you can do for yourself, and also for the women in your life, is to talk about it and, in doing so, to normalize it.
So, why haven’t we been talking about these things? I think it’s because we fear reinforcing pervasive, misogynistic stereotypes. If we admit that we’re insecure, imperfect, or that hormones are real, there’s a chance that the men in our workplaces will hear about it. And if they do, we fear, they may feel that women don’t belong in positions of power or that we’re less competent, less stable, more (groan) hysterical than men. So, our silence, in a sense, is noble and designed to protect ourselves and indeed our entire gender from judgment. But, in hiding our vulnerability, we deprive other women the chance to learn from us, to feel supported, and to feel normal. So let’s find safety in numbers, let’s lift each other up…let’s talk!
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