A Voice of Hope

This One's For All the Girls Like Me

It's no secret I struggle, or that I struggle a lot and deeply. I wish I could be one of those amazingly together women who are calm in crisis, joyful in suffering and wake up singing with the birds like Snow White.---But then, none of you who are my friends would find me as endearing as you do right now, right? ;)

Truth is, I'm more like Lily Tomlin in "9 to 5" or Josie Grossy in "Never Been Kissed" than any of my Disney princess heroines. I once told someone I was about as feminine and at home in a dress as Whoopi Goldberg. I was thinking of her character in Ghost and in my mind seeing her walking down the street looking more like a drag queen than a real woman. That's how I feel when I try to play dress up and look all "sexy."

Recently I saw Whoopi in a comedy special on Bravo. She didn't look at all awkward in her own skin. Rather she looked completely comfortable with herself, her body, her femininity, her womanness. I Googled her image and came across this photo. She looks decidedly vulnerable and feminine to me, beautiful. I realized I've completely misjudged her as a woman.

Maybe I've misjudged myself too.

Tonight I came across  this post by Emily McGowin. She's a new discovery for me, and a blessing that I was in desperate need of tonight. My sexuality (apparently) took quite a beating at a very young age. It cowers in the corner most days and other days beats the living crap out of itself for merely existing. No, I'm not at all one of those amazing women who has it all together. I need to be reminded often that I don't have to be, that God loves me just the way and how I am, that, as Emily says,

"there is nothing in you that is inherently un-feminine or un-womanly. Being female, being feminine, is something very personal."

I needed to hear that tonight. I needed someone to celebrate my womanness for me because I just couldn't do it myself. Now I think I can, at least for tonight. Come celebrate with me, won't you?

This is for all you girls about 42
Tossin' pennies into the fountain of youth
Every laugh, laugh line on your face
Made you who you are today
This one's for the girls
Who've ever had a broken heart
Who've wished upon a shooting star
You're beautiful the way you are
This one's for the girls
Who love without holdin' back
Who dream with everything they have
All around the world
This One's for the girls

Every Girl's Dream

Speaking of Much Ado About Nothing... To have a man act like this over me, that would definitely be a dream come true.

 

Royal Bitch Mode

Sorry for the language but it's the only thing that fits my mood for the day. I was in a nasty snit all day and I really have no rational reason why.

I only know it started early this morning, perhaps when TiVo was trying to record something random for the umpteen millionth time when all I wanted was to watch GMA. It grew when I once again couldn't lock my front door with my key because the lock is too stiff (guess it needs WD-40??) forcing me to lock it from the inside, go through the back door and lock that then walk through the wet grass (it rained early this morning) to get to my car. And it exploded fully with all the idiots on the road this morning who insisted on doing 10 mph in front of me down every road I went even though there was no traffic in front of them and the speed limit was 40+. Aaaauuugghhh!

My Royal Bitch Mode (RBM) continued unabated throughout work, as my boss found nit-picky errors in the formatting of the Budget Directives I was desperately trying to get out to our IT department for web publication. Poor man had to put up with me snapping and being utterly snarky at every turn.

The RBM kept its strong hold on me as I drove home, once again behind people going 10 mph down 35mph+ streets all because a few rain drops dared to fall on their cars. All the way to the grocery store I spewed forth words that would make a sailor blush.

It didn't get any better as I walked the isles of Publix wracking my brain for all the things I needed to get (forgot to write a list), looking in vain for several items I really wanted to get and never found and failing miserably at avoiding all the children and haggard mothers creating chaos in every isle.

I know I was a complete and total bitch all day. I tried not to let it take me completely down, but the RB inside pinned me to the floor and took over in spite of my every effort. And no matter what I tried I could not get rid of the 'tude and act like a lady.

I didn't deserve any reward, but I gave myself one anyway -- I guess for just surviving the day without killing anyone. I treated myself to something I haven't had in nearly four months, a Starbucks iced chai latte (I broke the caffeine habit at the end of May). It tastes wonderful, and took the edge of the RB. Now that I'm safe at home and in my comfort clothes and watching my TiVo-recorded shows, the RB is calming down -- perhaps even getting sleepy.

Sometimes its a pain to be a woman -- the hormones and emotions just boiling over and spilling out everywhere. It can be overwhelming. I don't know if this was just hormones, or perhaps a side-effect from the tapering off of my antidepressants (I cut my current dosage in half last week in an effort -- and under my doctor's supervision, btw -- to get off the antidepressants all together, taking at least a month or more to do so), or whether the RBM was just due to being so tired after a long and exhausting weekend, allowing emotions to flow more freely and without my usual filters.

It was all just so exhausting, keeping pace with the RB. She, or rather I -- because it really is me, just a part of me I don't like so much -- can be a raging lunatic when I'm in that mode. It's embarrassing, and yet I just did not have the energy today to fight it off.

Do men have to deal this this kind of stuff? Do you guys find yourselves struggling with your emotions, or with bad attitudes -- days when you are just a "bitch" for lack of a better word? I know my gay friends would have their bitchy days, but then again, they are more in tune with their feminine side than the average man.

What is it with us women, that we have such emotional spill-age??

Sheesh. What a day. I pity the people who found themselves in my path today. All I gotta say is, I'm so glad the day is over and I hope I don't have a repeat tomorrow (and yeah, I'm in an Emma Thompson/Much Ado About Nothing sort of mood).

Real Women, Real Advertising

Wendy has a great point about Dove's and Nike's new campaigns using real women, not the airbrushed stick models. What do we need to do to ensure that this becomes the norm of advertising, instead of the exception?

I love these campaigns! I think it's so cool to finally see women the way we really look, rather than the way the fashion industry would like us to think we should look like.

I wish someone had been doing advertising like this when I was a teen. Perhaps I wouldn't have starved myself like I did, or loathed the way I looked because my breasts were so small, my thighs so much bigger and my "Brooks" (my mom's side of the family) hips and waist were so prominent. ---- My mom had the perfect sweater girl figure. But she was a teen back in the 30s and early 40s, when the sweater girl, hour-glass figure was not only appreciated, but idealized. By the time I was a teen, the waif look was in, and waif-girl I am most certainly not.

I'd love to see the profits of Nike and Dove soar in the wake of these new campaigns. In fact, I've decided that I'm going to by Dove from now on, to show my support. I know, I'm just one person, and my $2 doesn't' really make much of a difference. But I hope that there are other women out there like me who are tired of the messages our culture shoves down our throats on a daily basis that only stick-thin, no-butt, big-boobed women have all the fun, the men and the life worth living. Perhaps if we all add our $2 -- or $60+, in the case of Nike -- we can make a difference big enough for Wall Street and the fashion industry to sit up and take notice.

Dove even has this cool thing on their website called "Real Beauty", which includes a self-esteem fund to help raise awareness of how body-related self-esteem is affected by the messages young girls receive through today's media.

So please, go out and buy Dove. Go out and buy Nike. Support these companies who are pioneering a new, better way to advertise their products.

My She Community

In memory of Helen, I stole a couple of pictures off Wendy's blog, cropped and re-posted them here.

Helen, on the left, with Wendy (center) and Debbie in Verona, was an incredibly vivacious, rowdy but yet all woman crazy friend. I never knew her as well as I'd liked. I'm one of those girls who watch women like Helen and Conna do insanely funny things from the sidelines. Not because it's safe there. But because I just don't have the mental/emotional agility to think up those kinds of things, and I lack the personality to be able to carry them off.

I can't remember if it was Conna's or Helen's birthday that the two of them led a large group of our friends into a local firehouse and got the firemen to serenade the birthday girl with "Happy Birthday". All because the one said she'd always wanted to be serenaded by firemen and the other took up the call to make it happen.

Add Debbie into that mix, the intellectual who always fascinated me, and Wendy the soul-lover who connects on deep levels with pretty much everyone, and you've got a crazy, wonderful, mind-bending she community.

But it doesn't end there. There's still Leticia, Sylvia, Irene, Joyce, Kat, Niza -- and of course my sisters, Nina and Cathy. Those are my peeps. Women who get me. Women who get it. Who get that deep relationship and community is forged in the fires of honesty, authenticity, transparency and conflict resolution. That's not an easy thing to find.

I remember a time when Conna (the red-head on the bottom of the "chick-stack"), Wendy, Sylvia, Leticia and I formed an accountability group that met every Wednesday evening before Life University. We shared our hearts with each other; our burdens and our joys, our needs and our abundance. It was out of that abundance in each others hearts that we were each, in turn, nourished by the others. Even though that group in that form and time, whose theme became "e'spose your toes", based off Syl's fear of ever revealing what she deemed the ugliest feature about her body, her toes, was only for a season, the relationships forged there have lasted a decade.

It's the same with Irene and Joyce, two roommates, one a Weigh Down buddy, one a former team leader; Kat, my precious friend whom I met at Paramount, and Niza, whom I first met through Kim and now could never imagine my life without. Each one of these women brings into my life significant God-dust and I would not be who I am right now without them. Nor will I be all that God has for me to become.

Some people are brought into your life only for a season. Wendy's perfected the art of not letting this happen if she can help it. :) But regardless of what we try, some people just aren't meant to belong in our small circle forever. My friend Judy is one of those. She came into my life in '87, when I desperately needed someone just like her. And a year or so later, she drifted out. But a little over two years ago I discovered her on Classmates.com and we've kept in (inconsistent) contact ever since.

Conna, well, Conna's a woman all to her own. She's one who's always in my heart, even when she's not in my life. She's one of those rare gifts from God -- she and Kimberly Michelle -- mind-bogglingly complex and special. Even when she's not right in front of me, she's in my head, in my heart, in my very soul. She's one of the few people who can see the weirdness of who I really am and not be offended or frightened off. Perhaps that's because she's got a weirdness of her own that matches mine. I've said it often before, and I'll probably say it till I die, if Conna were a man, I'd marry her. She'd be my "match".

Helen, I guess, was just one of those people I wasn't meant to keep. She was always in that "cool" group of people I couldn't quite fit into -- though Wendy and Conna always brought me in anyway. I watched her from a little distance and envied her energy and love of life. As she struggled with cancer, and her own decisions to seek alternative therapy until the cancer had spread too far, I stood amazed and dumbstruck at her resilience, resistance and refusal to just lay down and die. I had counted her as "dead in a few weeks" more times in the last few years than I care to remember. Yet each time she bounced back. Each time she beat the odds, beat the cancer down and once again triumphed over the indestructible.

When she lost her battle I was stunned. I had come to rely on the "fact" that Helen would always be there as my model/encouragement/challenge to fight hard, never give up and beat the odds every time. Each time I've hit my lowest points, my heart has gone back to Helen and her fight, and I remind myself that this beautiful, amazing, (still single) woman is fighting the battle of all our lives and if she can keep going, keep hoping, and laugh in the face of death, then so can I. It probably sounds selfish to think of my puny loss of Helen as an inspiration, especially in light of her realized glory in the presence of Jesus. But her death was a severe blow to my soul.

My friend Julie gave me a pink "Breast Cancer Awareness" bracelet a couple of weeks ago in honor of her sister, Nancy, who's currently battling it. I wore it off and on until Helen died. Now I wear it every day. It reminds me of my She Community. Past, present and future.

It reminds me that some women will pass in and out of my life, some will linger for a while, some will park for a lifetime (thank you Jesus for Wendy!!). But all will leave their mark. All will leave an indelible imprint on my soul where their lives have pressed in upon mine, our hearts have bled together and our souls intermingled until we look like, sound like, act like one another. Each will leave me covered in God-dust as we walk through Life side-by-side, or one behind the other. I hope I add as much to their lives as they have added to mine!

How I love these women!