Internal Coherence = External Fluency

So?

What do you want?

They say you can’t have what you want if you don’t know what it is. I suspect that you can probably have it either way. The problem is if you haven’t articulated what you want, you may be looking right at your heart’s desire—it’ll be sitting next to you on the sofa, grinning and winking—and you won’t even see it. Which will feel like the same thing as not having it. Such unnecessary anguish.

Why is it so hard to know—and to say—what we want? Is it difficult precisely because it’s so important? How can we make it easier for ourselves?

A few weeks ago, I had the wonderful experience of having a Style Statement consultation. Style Statement is a process in which you answer a series of probing questions about your preferences, your cravings, your interests—and the brilliant women who developed the process, Carrie and Danielle (carrieanddanielle.com), distill the information and present you with two simple, rich words that describe your very essence. The idea is that, if you have this mantra, this mandala of authenticity, you can use it to choose your next job, your next dress, your next man, your next sofa, the theme of your next gathering—with effortless ease. Because you’ll be clear that, though the Queen Anne settee is just lovely, the leather chaise is what really suits your style. It’s about knowing what you want through knowing who you are.

Internal coherence. External fluency. That’s a phrase I read today in the mission statement of a creative company where I used to work. (CraneBrandwork.com) It’s brilliant. Think about it: When you pull yourself together on a soul level—when you are making sense to yourself—then you can speak your desires into the world clearly, without fear or shame or hesitation. I believe that if you can say it, you can do it, you can have it, you can be it. And no one and nothing can get in your way, because nothing is as invincible or as undeniable as a woman who knows.

So, babe, who are you and what do you want?

What makes you smile?

“I just want to come home and see you smiling.” So says sweet, sincere Said Husband.

To which I respond with a smirk and a snarl. Further proof that there is, indeed, a deep problem. Because when a guy says he wants his wife to be happy, it wouldn’t make her mad if she wasn’t so unhappy to begin with.

I hear a lot of women say they’re sent off the rails by the slightest thing Dude does. Why would you put on that ugly green shirt? Why do you stir the chili counterclockwise? Don’t you know that the toilet paper should roll outward, not back? What are you, some kind of idiot?

I’ve started to realize—through lots of counseling, lots of self-help books, lots of quizzing other women, and the hard, long slog of gaining tiny bits of wisdom through experience—that when we’re just constantly angry about the things he (or anyone) does, we’re really mad about something going on within us.

The idea is to get past his counterclockwise soup stirring long enough to figure out what our own issue is. Because here’s the thing: Even if he's doing something that’s actually stupid, the fact that we’re also mad at ourselves just compounds the problem and distracts us from doing a real, objective analysis and, ultimately, finding a solution. His stuff is just a distraction from what is really trying to get our attention.

So, woman, why aren’t you smiling? What would make you grin?

It's Plan A, actually

I’m afraid some of this sounds so cynical and untrusting, as if I’m writing this with my lip curled and my neck rolling, a squinty-eyed, man-hater whispering, “Go ahead. Make my day.” That’s not the intention. (Even if it is, sometimes, my mood.)

My eyes are wide open and I love men. I adore my father. I revere my grandfather. I love and respect my husband. Overall, I have known some really amazing guys in my life. And then there’s Obama. (Hey, any excuse to mention Obama.)

I hope that my Little Bitty will (if she chooses to and if that’s her path) meet a fabulous, respectful, visionary, hard-working, talented, brilliant guy and live in a blessed union of bliss, balance and harmony. But I also hope that she will never forget that she is fabulous, respect-worthy, visionary, hard-working, talented, brilliant and capable of creating a life of bliss, balance and harmony—in or out of a partnership. And—here’s the thing—it will be especially important to maintain that sense of herself if she is, indeed, trying to make a life with someone else.

Ultimately, I guess this “parachute” stuff is not even about my man or my marriage or escaping anything. This is about maintaining myself—and encouraging other women to do the same.

It’s about identity—literally re-membering myself—putting myself back together—and creating my own definition of self that doesn’t include anybody’s name but my own.

It’s about finding purpose and committing to the work that I’m here to do.

It’s about husbanding resources—being smart about my finances, my “papers,” my talent and all my assets—and tapping my creativity to use them wisely.

It’s about cultivating the power and courage that will hold me up so I can keep doing what I need to do for self and family.

It’s about my spirituality, because it takes a strong spirit to give yourself wholly and trustingly to your family and relationships, but still maintain the person created by the Divine.

It’s about the belief that, if I tap into that power, that courage and that spirit, anything is possible. Joy and peace are possible. And that is what I want.

I call this Plan B, but I might need to change the name of the blog. This is about Plan A—putting your own mask on first, keeping yourself grounded and clear about who you are and what you need to be your best and do your best—for yourself and the people you love.

The Child That's Got Her Own

“Have your own money, girl.”

That’s what my mother always preached to me and my sister: “Have your own.” (Interestingly enough, she was repeating a lesson she’d heard all her life. From her father. My grandfather was a minimally educated laborer who worked to send his (six!) girls to college because he said he never wanted them to have to depend on a man. An impressively enlightened idea for a guy born near the turn of last century.)

But Mama and Daddy only had joint accounts, which they always seemed to manage carefully and harmoniously together. I wondered if she just thought she’d gotten the last trust-worthy guy, and that her girls were going to have to be extra careful—though she never said a man-bashing word to that effect.

It wasn’t until I was out of college that I realized something: My sister and I each had a bank account where birthday money, Christmas money, random windfalls and after-school job paychecks were dutifully deposited. As minors, we had to have an adult’s name on the account. Our sole co-depositor? Mommy. And as the years passed—and my parents never, ever let us withdraw any money—all those Christmas club deposits started to add up to quite a little nest egg. And Daddy couldn’t have gotten his hands on it without some kind of court order. Mama would never have touched it. She never did. But it was there.

One day I’ll ask her if she did that on purpose. Knowing her, she’ll say something vague and imply that I’m making too much of it. But I also know she’ll still say: You just make sure you have your own.

Which ‘08 is this?

Time check: 10:19 a.m. July 22, 2008.

2008.

That's 88 years after women earned the right to vote. 40 years after the first bra burning. 48 years after Father Knows Best went off the air. A month after the first really, truly viable female Presidential candidate conceded.

Why, in 2008, would there be any need for a blog for women who don’t have a Plan B? I don’t mean the abortion pill. I mean an escape route, a parachute, an emergency exit, a safety net. We’re smart. We know better. Right? Right? But I keep hearing these stories.

• The husband who makes an expensive purchase—a sports car, a motorcycle, expensive electronic equipment—finances and family needs be damned.
• The guy who makes a major career decision—one that affects the whole family—without talking to his wife.
• The working mom whose husband tells her that, if they ever split up, the court will give him the kids because she’s never around anyway.
• The guy who withholds grocery money and hides the children’s passports so his wife can’t visit her family in Canada.

Okay, only one of these is potentially an actual crime. (The Canadian wife was found in a puddle of rainwater last week. Dead.) But all of these stories say something about the balance of power in these relationships. It points to the fact that a lot of us—I’m including myself here—are in situations where, if a partner decided to subtly or overtly pull rank, we wouldn’t really have much leverage or recourse.

I’m the last woman in the world who thought she’d be thinking about it this kind of thing. But here I am, an at-home mother of a toddler, whose nest egg disappeared into the down payment on the house, whose job disappeared when we moved away from Manhattan, who depends on a husband for health insurance. (All of this was done voluntarily on my part, I must emphasize.) Thankfully, Said Husband goes to work, comes home with his check and isn't hiding any grocery money.

But if he did? What’s my plan? What’s yours?

‘Chutes and ladders

My girl Yin and I were sitting in the bookshop café late on Thursday night, having a cup of tea. She’d announced to her husband that she needed to go out, left him with their three kids, and called me for a spur-of-the-moment rendezvous. Perfect timing. (It was the day I realized that, though I am a rabid Obama supporter, I could find common ground with John McCain on at least one front: Here was a poor soul who was captured and held captive by people who spoke a foreign language and tortured him continually for years. I could relate. Let's just say it had not been a stellar week with Said Husband and Little Bitty.)

As we sipped we talked, as we often do, about the state of our lives as wives and mothers. From all appearances, these klatches could certainly be categorized as bitch sessions. Dirty laundry is aired. Steam is blown. There is a lot of profanity (whispered so as not to offend other coffeehouse patrons). But there is also laughter and, always, the striving for higher ground.

This evening we talked a lot about our "hostage situations" (because that's what I've realized family life sometimes feels like) and our escape routes. How would we get away from the madness of family life if it, indeed, got too crazy to survive? What is our Plan B? we asked each other. What happened to our parachutes? Why don’t we have them packed?

The reality is, though, that we chose the lives we have. We wanted to be married and have children. We love the children and their Daddies. We don’t want to leave them. (Well, not permanently.) We just want a more balanced life with them.

Yin came up with a good analogy: skydiving. She wants her parachute back, not because she thinks she’ll have to eject herself from a burning plane, but so that she can experience the joy of leaping into the free, blue sky; seeing the long view; feeling the wind against her body lifting her on invisible currents. She wants to know what it’s like to look at life from her highest place, knowing that her parachute will bring her back safely to earth when the time comes.

It’s not about escaping our lives in search of the false freedom of the refugee. It’s about being free in the lives we have.