Keep Something To Yourself

Okay, okay, I admit it: My name is not Zenia. (That’s a derivative of my grandmother’s name--a woman who needed a Plan B if ever there was one.) Everything else on the blog is true, though all the names have been created to protect the inno… the people I’m writing about.

When I started this blog, I needed to be anonymous because, frankly, I was pretty disgruntled with the state of my situation. I needed to vent. I needed to work some things out. I knew I needed to “go There” but I didn’t know where “There” might be and I didn’t want to risk shocking or offending or embarrassing anyone along the way. But I didn’t want to censor myself, either. Where better than the blogosphere to be totally you…and be totally invisible?

It didn’t take long before I started to think about coming out. Invisibility is apparently not a cure for the identity loss I mention in my profile. (That's true, too.) So I did what I always do when I have to make a decision. I carefully weighed the pros and cons. Then I asked all my friends for advice.

Now, my circle includes a wide-ranging collection of minds, so I was not surprised that each gave a different reason for her answer. But ultimately each answer was the same: To a woman, they all said, “Keep it to yourself.”

Was it not yet ready for prime time? No, they said they appreciated the premise. They praised the writing. But they knew it was mine—and they encouraged me to have something of my own.

Indeed, these passages are about having a room of one’s own—if only a virtual one. This blog (and perhaps every blog) is about having your own place—a place where you can just be yourself and speak your piece, without repercussions or self-incrimination or self-censoring. Without mincing your words or retracting your thoughts.

Ultimately, if it is to have any value beyond me, Plan B stops being just about me venting and plotting my escape from an unsatisfactory life. It’s about women (and men) taking control of their lives again.

A couple of months ago, when I wrote about “having your own” I had money on my mind. But I realize now that having your own is about more than what’s in your Birkin. It’s about owning something that no one has given you and that no one can take. It’s about having something that you hold in your heart that you value and love. It’s that thing you possess in full, with no co-signer. The stock market can’t crush it; the bank can’t foreclose on it; it can’t be outsourced, downsized, diminished, discounted or divorced.

This is the question that began Plan B: What do you have that is truly your own?
This is the question that each post asks and encourages us all to answer: What do you own that no one can take from you?

What I have is my name. And it isn’t Zenia. It’s Tamara.

First, Do Nothing.

I thought about going to yoga class.
I considered going to church.
Said Husband was outside sanding and painting the boards for much-needed book cases. I thought about helping him. Or taking the sander the old bureau that needs to be redone.
I need to write a letter to my friend who is ill, and send a thank you card to the woman who took me to lunch last week. I thought about doing those things. Or working on the text for my website.
I turned on the classic movie channel, thinking I might catch an old flick. Gene Kelly didn’t move me. Neither did I Love Lucy. Neither did Rachel Ray.
I acquired Obama’s biography. Considered reading that.

What I did instead was to lie down on the narrow couch in my room, pull a cotton spread up to my shoulders and allow myself to lie there until I fell asleep. I slept for a couple of hours until my child came in from play, squealing and chattering, and my husband finished his task, thumping things back into the closets. I got up long enough to quiet them. And then…I lay down again. I went back to sleep.

Okay, that was extreme. Oh, but I needed it! And there is something to be said for moments of silence, of quiet, of rest.

My days often begin at 7 a.m., and frequently end at one or two the next morning. I am famous among my friends for catching a few winks in the afternoon. (Still clinging to the idea that when baby sleeps, mommy should sleep—though “baby” is now four and hardly willing to nap herself.) But those naps are strategic. I figure that if I allow myself to sleep a while during the day, I’ll be able to stay up later in the evening to “get things done.”

The focus is always on getting things done. How many tasks can I accomplish in a day? How many tasks can I accomplish at one time? And I’m not the most "accomplished" among the folks I know. Many of my women friends work nearly constantly. Two jobs, some of them. A job and kids. Kids and elderly parents. A job and an all-consuming pastime. We turn our hobbies, our exercise regimens, even our social activities into tasks by which we evaluate our level of accomplishment.

For many of us, the very idea of stopping. For a minute. To rest. To catch our breath. To think. That is—well—unthinkable.

I wonder why? I think some of it comes from living in society that tells us we have to do more and more—and gives us the technology to be doing something constantly. But I think that, for some of us (okay, for me), there is a deeper need to prove ourselves. To prove that we can do everything and be everything. To fend off any criticism for our imperfections by being able to say, “But look at how hard I’m working….” To convince ourselves that we are good enough.

Doing—and being able to exhibit the fruit of our doing-ness—gives us a sense of power and control. But we forget that our source of power does not come from what we do. It comes from who we are. Before we do anything, we are powerful. Who wields more power than a newborn infant who can’t even raise her head? Who wields more power than the patient lying in a coma? All our energy, our thoughts, our decisions, our time, our attention is drawn to this one who can “do” nothing. That should tell us something.

Periodically, I will myself to do nothing. To let the e-mail pile up; to let the phone ring. To stop thinking, thinking, thinking about the next task I “need” to do. Once in a while I give myself permission to let things—and people—wait. I recall the phrase, “Cease striving and know.” And I do nothing.

It feels powerful.

Minimum Daily Requirements

Ever look at a box of Total with it’s 100% of 11 essential vitamins and minerals? Makes you feel like you’re eating the healthiest food in the world. Wow, look at the minerals! And all those vitamins! But it’s deceptive.

They’re talking about minimums—i.e. what you need to stay alive. But what if you want to thrive in abundant, overflowing good health? The minimum is not going to cut it. It’s easy to fall into a “minimum requirements” mode where the minimum is all you come to expect. Or, worse, you start to feel that’s all you deserve.

We accept minimums about a lot of things—the things we buy, not because they’re lovely, but because they’re on sale. The jobs we take just for the paycheck, not the creativity they inspire. Settling for Mr. He’s Alright instead of holding out for Mr. He-Treats-Me-Like-Gold. We accept the minimum as if that’s all we are worth or as if that’s the limit of our dreams.

That’s how I found myself in the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store, looking at other people’s dusty, cast-off chandeliers in hopes of finding one under $75 for my dining room.

Meanwhile, I know exactly what I REALLY want. What I REALLY want is the capiz-shell pendant light by that I saw in my favorite shelter magazine. It's simple, subtle, gorgeous. And it's $2550. Mm-hmm, two thousand, five hundred and fifty dollars. Don’t know about you, but for me that’s a mortgage payment. Actually, it’s two. Not exactly in my budget… but that shouldn’t stop me from feeling like I deserve something that beautiful.

The price of my chandelier isn't the point. It’s about feeling free to say what I want and feeling that I deserve what I want—even if realism and practicality tell me it’s beyond my grasp. (And even as I remind myself that many people live without electricity, much less a light fixture of any kind, and they deserve beautiful things as well.) I don’t want to get in the habit of thinking only in terms of the lowest common denominator. It’s one thing to make peace with the fact that a $2000 home accessory is not the wisest way to bend your budget. It’s another to forget that you are worthy of things that are fresh and beautiful and awe-inspiring and affirming. Compromises have to be made. But standards can be held.

I think I’d almost forgotten. And it wasn’t until I reminded myself—and allowed myself to go boldly into my local lighting boutique and monopolize nearly an hour of the lighting designer’s time looking at all the chandeliers I loved (cost be damned), that I was able go back to Habitat and buy a $50 fixture that pleases me. It is identical to one the lighting designer showed me at ten times the cost. Hey, I deserve nice things and I have expensive tastes, but I’m no fool. And I’m still keeping a picture of that pretty capiz-shell number in my wish book.


P.S. I adore Habitat for Humanity. Love what they stand for; love what they do. I've donated to them every month for more than a 10 years now—and that's not counting the amount of money I've spent buying great stuff in their Re-Stores.

Plan B(itch)

Yve’s husband called her a bitch.

Well, he didn’t actually call her that. He programmed her phone number into his cell under the b-word. Instead. Of. Her. Name.

Look, I’ve watched the TV show “Girlfriends” enough to know that some people apparently use the b-word as a term of affection. I understand that it has come to fall in the same category of code-switching as the “n-word” among African-Americans. I know that there are academic dialogues taking place about the appropriateness of the use of “taboo” words and language in helping a social group retain a sense of group identity and belonging, and to mark “their rights and obligations relative to others in the conversational setting.”

Blah, blah, blah. Whatever.

I also know that using “bitch” or “nigger”—depending on who you are and what your intention—is tantamount to abuse or a hate crime.

And that’s an important point. But it’s not my point here.

My question is: What is Yve going to do about it? What can she do? What is she willing to do? And how do her circumstances affect her response?

She, like a number of women I know (many who don’t work outside the home and a few who do), lives a lifestyle that relies on Husband's presence and his paycheck. Like many of us, she doesn’t have much of a safety net of her own. She is, at least to some degree, dependent.

Unless you have a strong sense of personal power, not having a sense that you have a safety net (even if it's as simple as "I can always go home to Mama.") can make your lines-that-must-not-be-crossed quite blurry. You can find yourself compromising values that you might otherwise hold firm.

I just read a compelling quote from Retrouvaille.org:

"If you are not free to reject, you cannot accept."

How do we get to the place—within ourselves and within our circumstances—that we are as free to reject as we are to accept?

It doesn’t matter to me how Yve finally addresses this with her man, as long as she's satisfied with her decision. I love her, I respect her choices and I know better than to try to tell even my best friends what to do within their own marriages. He’s her husband, for better or worse. They have children. And, it takes two, so she certainly carries some blame in her relationship's breakdown as well. That makes it complex. Even if she had a million-dollar trust fund and a private hideaway on St. Kitts, there would be no easy answers. But what I wish for Yve—and for all of us—is the ability to make hard choices from a position of strength.

Are you ready to leap?

I barely talk to the woman any longer. But she offered me a piece of hopeful wisdom some years ago that that I still hold onto.

We were walking along the river one day, and I was lamenting my status—at work and in my life. I was past 30 at the time and felt like I hadn’t accomplished much—not married, no kids, no house, and working a part-time job well below my experience level. I didn’t see a family anywhere on the horizon. I couldn’t see any way that I could scale the career ladder before I was nearly ready to retire.

But she told me that you can’t always look at climbing step by step. She said that sometimes we have to look at making leaps.

I’d never thought about it like that—I was a work-hard-and-wait-your-your-turn kind of girl—but I never forgot it. And then it happened: I made a huge leap at work. And suddenly I was working on par with my experience and my aspirations. That leap caught me up. And confirmed that river-side lesson that I’ll never forget.

How do you develop a leap mentality? It’s a little different than waiting to hit the lottery. That’s passive. And it’s not about cultivating a willingness to step on people. That’s unnecessarily aggressive. (And bad karma, to boot.)

It’s about being intentional, being ready and being open—really open—to the world of possibility. It’s the Olympic hurdler with her feet in the blocks, waiting for the starting gun. She has trained, she has prepared, she sees the finish line ahead of her and she has willed every muscle in her body to know that she can break that tape. She’s just waiting for the BAM!

Are you on purpose? Do you have a plan, so that if your number comes up, you’ll know exactly what you’ll do with that jackpot? It doesn’t have to be a 20-page life map. It can be an idea on the back of a napkin. But it should be a complete thought—because unless you’ve thought it through, you won’t know how to prepare.

You have to prepare. Identify and gather your gifts and talents and resources. Go get what will be required for you to step right up into your new role. Otherwise, when opportunity arises, you'll have to let it pass you by.

Do you believe? You know that Oprah thing: “God has a bigger dream for you than you can dream for yourself.” Do you believe that anything really is possible? And do you believe it’s possible for you? Are you walking around in the world as if you do?

You don't have to know in advance what the leap will look like. You just have to believe it's possible and be ready when it comes. And when you're ready—and not one second before you're ready—it will appear. BAM!

Know. Do.

She started quietly, lifting one picture off its nail in the wall and placing it in the hallway. Then she carefully took down another. By the time she started moving the furniture, she didn't bother to tiptoe. The bedside table slid along the floor. The nails she was wrenching out of the walls came free with a squeak and tinked to the floor. When her husband finally roused from sleep, the only thing left in the room was the bed he was sleeping in. "What are you doing?" he asked, trying to make sense of what he'd awakened to.

"I am MOVING!" she said, leaning in, looking him square in the eye. "You can stay. You can go. But I am moving."

That's my girl Rox. She'd started quietly, she says, months earlier, talking about how quickly they were outgrowing their apartment. It was time to move themselves and their two young children out of the two bedrooms they rented, she'd said. Over the weeks, she kept bringing it up. And he kept saying, "We're gonna..." But nothing ever actually happened.

That morning, she'd had it. Totally. After she emptied the bedroom, she started on the kids' room, and she kept going until finally everything but the bare necessities was stacked in the living room or packed in boxes.

All this talk about Plan B? She didn't have one. Hadn't looked for a new place. Had no idea where they would find one. She just knew it was time to go and that she was going. She was not asking. She was not suggesting. She wasn't waiting. She was moving.

What she had was more powerful than a B-plan: She had clarity--a crystaline certainty about what was needed. And she trusted herself and her God enough to know she could make it happen--whether her husband came along for the ride or spent the rest of his days lying in the middle of their empty room.

Her story made me realize something: a plan B is just courage in a bottle. It's something we stir up, distill, and label Our Saving Grace. But what really saves us is our own willingness (willingness) to leap right past fear, self-doubt, second-guessing or whatever else has been holding us back, and put our feet down on what we really want, need, deserve and demand.

The best plan is simple, really: Know. Do.

As for Rox, it was barely two weeks after she emptied the bedroom around her sleeping husband that she was moving into a quaint house on a hill in a lovely old neighborhood. Husband and children in tow.

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.