Telling Herstories: The Broad View

Failures and Other Fine Fiascos

Flops are part of life’s menu and I’ve never been one to miss out on any of the courses.--Rosalind Russell
 
There is no getting around it, is there? Failure is a definite drag. It’s hard. It hurts. It isn’t an experience that we happily invite into our lives.
 
But there are a heckuva lot more failures in life than there are successes. There isn’t one of us who hasn’t flopped numerous times--some minor failures, many major. In these challenging times, this economic downturn, you may be living through what you consider failure right now.
 
But the value of any failure lies in what we do with it. If we deny it or diminish it, we can’t learn from it. When I flop (as I do, often!), I have to face it squarely and ask myself why I failed--and be willing to learn from the answer. Then I can take another try. Having had a couple of practice runs (failures provide some really stunning practice), my chances for success are much greater. From this point of view, failure is just a practice run at success, a necessary step toward a glory. A grace, in other words.
 
It doesn't matter how many talents and gifts we have, or how often we succeed. it’s a rare glory that isn’t graced with at last one failure--likely, more than one. I wonder how many times Ginger Rogers fell on her fanny, or Merrill Streep missed a director’s cue. And I don’t dare tell you how many rejection letters I received for my China Bayles mystery series before an astute editor at Scribner’s read the first book and liked it. 
 
So here is the bottom line, my dears. I’ve been telling you that it’s important for women to share our success stories. Now I’m telling you that it is much more important to share our failures. When we discover that our flops and fiascos look and sound a lot alike, we may discover that our lack of success isn’t an individual failure, but arises from something that is common to all of us: that it grows from our shared history as women, from our culture, and (perhaps especially) from male expectations of us.
 
Or maybe we learn that what we or others define as failure isn’t failure at all. That was what I discovered when I began to probe my reasons for abandoning my career as a university administrator and tenured professor--an abandonment that my colleagues viewed as either a failure of nerve or as stupendous stupidity. But when I began to collect the stories of other successful women who had left their careers, I discovered that we had not failed, but had redefined our ideas of success. My book, Work of Her Own, grew out of these conversations. The book is testimony to the importance of sharing what some might consider failure--and discovering that "failure" may be far more glorious than the little success we aimed for.
 
Which is why I’d like you to spend a few minutes writing about some of the flops in your life. Yes, I know. It’s embarrassing. Maybe it’s painful. Some fiascos are funny, but some may be almost too devastating to think about. But chin up, dears. Take heart, be brave, and write.

• Start by jotting down a half dozen of the failures you have experienced--the first ones that come to mind. Don't dig around for the best of the worst, just jot down the first that occur to you.
• Choose one. What flopped? What happened? When did it happen? Where? Who else was involved besides you?
• Why did it flop?
• What did you learn?
• Where did you go from there? (Hint: from the bottom, the only way out is up. Right?)

Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to “jump at de sun.” We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.--Zora Neale Hurston

Glories, Gifts--and Graces

                                 

 

The heavens give of their abundance. Rejoice in riches.
“Possession in Great Measure” Hexagram 14, The I Ching

In these posts, I’ve been thinking about how we’ve gotten where we are in this world--an important kind of thinking in these times of difficulty. In “Glories,” I asked you to consider your accomplishments, your successes, your glories. In “Gifts,” I invited you to look at the gifts--of strength, courage, experience, training, determination--that you developed in order to aim for what you wanted.
 
Now let's explore one more aspect of trinity of ideas. Let’s explore our graces. here are a great many definitions of this small word: grace, most of them theological. But let’s see what happens when we define it this way:

 

Grace is what we are given in this world. Some of it is good, some bad. We don’t “earn” it--it comes to us through no particular merit or mistake of our own. Grace may come from God, if you’re a believer in Divinity, or from a beneficent Universe, or through the generosity of random chance. It includes things like the time, place, and circumstances of your birth and upbringing, as well as the happy accidents and synchronicities that have contributed to your growth and success. It also includes many things you wish hadn’t happened. These are still graces, although you may not recognize them as such. They are the fortuitous oppositions that strengthen your resolve.

In my own life, I’ve received more graces than I can count. I’ve written quite a few books, some of which I count among my glories. I confess to having a good mind, an insatiable curiosity, and a belief in the possible I. (Bragging? Yes, but take a look back at “Gifts.” We women need to learn to claim our strengths!)
 
But when I really start to think about it, many of my “gifts” turn out to be graces. My intellect is part of the package of genes I inherited from generations of unthanked ancestors (the luck of the genetic draw). My curiosity was encouraged by parents who answered my endless questions and sent me to the library, so I could chase down my own answers. (Fortunate me, with a free library around the corner!) And my optimistic belief in an open-ended self arises in part because I was born into post-WWII America, where women as well as men could get an education, and into a culture that asserts our right to realize our full potential. I was also graced with a couple of marital failures (bitter medicine), which taught me to understand what I needed in a partner, and a business failure that helped me understand my limitations. Grace, that’s what it was. Grace.
 
I am often surprised when I think to count my graces, for the more I count, the more there seem to be. And if pride in my accomplishments is the emotion I feel (naturally!) when I focus on my glories and gifts, gratitude is what I feel as I become aware of the many graces that have shaped me.
 
And what of your particular graces?
 
When you look at your glories and the gifts that have empowered you to achieve them, can you also see grace, sweet grace, braided through like a golden thread?
 
If you’re journaling with us, here’s a little journal exercise that may help you pull all this together: glories, gifts, graces. It won’t take more than a few moments, but it will richly reward your effort. The tougher the challenges we face, the more important it is to recognize our graces.

• In your bedside journal, each night, write down one glory for your day: one success (there are probably lots, but choose a favorite), one achievement.
• Next, write down two specific gifts (strengths, education, experience, attitude, whatever) that helped you achieve your success.
• Next, write down three graces that have helped you to become the woman who could achieve what you achieved today. (Bet you’ll be surprised!)
• Finally, write thank you.

Would you like to know one of my own daily graces, every day of my life?
 
You, beloveds. Each of you, all of you. Every brave woman who joins the circle of like-minded, open-hearted women; every vulnerable woman who fearlessly shares her story; every compassionate woman who listens with respectful attention to the stories of other women. Graces, all of you.
 
Thank you.
 
 
I do not at all understand the mystery of grace--only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. --Anne Lamott

Glories & Gifts

Well into the twentieth century, it continued to be impossible for women to admit into their autobiographical narratives the claim of achievement, the admission of ambition, the recognition that accomplishment was neither luck nor the result of the efforts or generosity of others.--Carolyn Heilbrun, Writing a Woman’s Life
 
Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards, in high heels.--Anonymous (probably a woman)
                                         

In a previous post, I asked you to consider your glories--the things you’ve done in your life that you’re proud of. If you made the lists I asked you to make (you did, didn’t you?), you were making notes for your success story, something that is often hard for women to write. As Carolyn Heilbrun says, it’s difficult for us to take credit for our successes, our achievements, our glories. Especially in challenging times, we tend to downplay our glory stories, our triumphs, and focus on what didn’t work so well: our tragedies.
 
But it’s important both to claim and to understand our successes--not least so that we can enjoy more of them! If I do something really well, I often wonder, “How did I do that?” and then (naturally), “How can I do that again?” If you think about it for a little bit, perhaps you’ll see that you have done something well because you have a “gift” for it: an aptitude or an attitude (perhaps sharpened by education and training) that enabled you to achieve that particular success. 
 
What’s a gift? you ask. That’s for you to say, isn’t it? What is a gift to one person is an obstacle to someone else. (For example, stubbornness can be an asset, a gift, allowing us to stay committed to a project or an idea. But it can also be a curse, can't it?) And of course, everyone’s gifts are different.
 
Think for a moment about Ginger Rogers’ marvelous gifts. What made it possible for her to dance with such astonishing elegance? Well, let's see. There was physical strength and stamina, of course. An innate sense of rhythm developed through hours, days, months of strenuous practice. Control. A willingness to learn. A refusal to cry. Professionalism. Dedication. Stubbornness. Courage. And more, lots more--you can read about her life here.
 
Now, if you were writing these things about yourself (“I’m courageous, I know how to use my body, I’m a dedicated professional”) someone might say, Oh, but that’s bragging! Yes, of course it is, and of course we know that women are never supposed to brag--it is terribly, unforgiveably unladylike. But that’s exactly the point, isn’t it? In order to fully own our successes, we need to acknowledge and claim our gifts. In order to enjoy more successes, we need to name and practice those gifts.

Let's do that: name and practice. Last week, I asked you to make lists of  your glories--your successes. Now, choose one of those glories. Write it at the top of a page in your journal, and then play around with these questions:

• What gifts did I bring to this task that made success possible?
• What kept me going when I was tempted quit?
• What training or education did I need in order to do this?
• What was I willing to give up in order to do this?
• What obstacles did I meet? What strengths did I need to overcome them?

And one last pair of questions, to put your achievement in context:

• What earlier achievements did I build on to create this success? What later successes grew out of this one?

Your life, my life, all our lives are filled with glories, large and small. In tough times, when all the news is bad news, when everything seems to be going wrong, it’s easy to be burdened by a sense of failure and loss. But this is exactly the time when we must celebrate our glories and name and claim the gifts that made them possible.
 
Take credit where credit is due, my very dears. It’s yours. You’ve earned it.
 
“All the girls I ever danced with thought they couldn't do it, but of course they could. So they always cried. All except Ginger. No, no, Ginger never cried.”--Fred Astaire

Glories

I’d gone through life believing in the strength and competence of others, never in my own. Now, dazzled, I discovered that my capacities were real. It was like finding a fortune in the lining of an old coat.--Joan Mills
 
Years ago, I wrote a book called Writing From Life. In it, in a chapter called “Glories, Gifts, and Graces,” I wrote about the importance of taking credit for the important things we’ve done in our lives: times when we have taken risks, dared to do something new or different, excelled at our work, and challenged ourselves to surpass expectations. These achievements and successes, I wrote, are our glories. They give us a sense of pride and authentic personal empowerment. They are part of our success story.
 
But when times get tough, we tend to forget past achievements. Instead, we focus on what’s happening to us, on the forces that are acting upon us and changing our lives in ways we don’t understand. We feel helpless, at the mercy of circumstance. We stop thinking of ourselves as strong, positive actors, and picture ourselves as passive people, acted-upon. We forget the daring, excellent, risky, challenging things we’ve done. We forget our triumphs and look instead at our tragedies.
 
This week, we’re celebrating Thanksgiving. It seems to me that this is a particularly appropriate time for us to remember and record the things we’ve done that we are rightfully proud of: our success stories. One way to do this is to make a list of our glories.
 
Ah, lists. Oh, my dears, I love to work with lists! It’s always hard to begin writing on a blank page, so I try to fill my journal with lists of things I want to write about. When I have plenty of lists, I feel wealthy. I know I’ll never run out of topics. Here’s how I do it. I set a timer for, say, three minutes, and start writing things down. I don’t go into detail, just a couple of words. The purpose is to get the ideas down on paper so I can work with them later.
 
If you’re keeping a journal beside your bed, that’s a good place to make your lists. Every day this week, before you go to bed, set a timer for three minutes, and start making a list of the things you’ve done--today, the past week, the past year or decade or at any time in your life--that you’re proud of. Your glories. What kind of thing? Anything, from having a baby to earning a college degree to kicking an addiction to being director of the community cultural center to learning to sky-dive to (as one of my students, a weaver, once wrote) raising 15,000 silkworms in the attic! Crazy things, goofy things, wild things, hard things, glorious things. Your glories.
 
As you write, try to feel the strength and power of those achievements. Feel proud of yourself, and let that pride and power and strength color your feelings about your current situation, no matter how challenging it may seem. You’ve done it before, you can do it again. Right? 
 
When I was very young, I had a wonderful book called The Little Engine That Could. The little engine ("I think I can I think I can I knew I could!") taught me that I was capable of doing more than I imagined. I was stronger than I knew, I was more powerful than others expected. I could do what had to be done. And so can you, my dears. Of course you can. You’ve already achieved all the glorious things you’ve listed--you can do them again, and more.
 
Now, go make those lists.
 
I know how to do anything--I’m a mom.--Roseann

Securities

“Securities” is not a very nice word these days--if you’re thinking of stocks, bonds and the like. These “securities,” which are traded in various financial markets around the world, seem suddenly to have become dangerously insecure, and we are learning that it is very difficult to count on any of the “securities” we might once have trusted. Whole industries are in jeopardy. Entire segments of the economy are faltering. Our jobs, our 401(k)s and retirement plans, our homes, our health, perhaps even our marriages--many of the foundations we thought were guaranteed seem suddenly insecure, shaky, in danger.

Where does this insecurity come from? Right now, a great deal of it seems to be generated by outside forces, doesn’t it? Hurricanes along the Gulf Coast, fires on the West Coast, the failure of the financial sector of our economy, subprime mortgages, oil shocks, illness and health care costs--gosh, what a long list! No wonder we feel terribly insecure and helpless, as if there’s nothing to hold onto. All we can do is the best we can, cope, and hope for the best.

If you’ve read my previous entries in this blog (Mercies, Soul Colors), you already know that my journal is the place where I learn to create my own personal order in a disorderly, changeful, impersonal world. It is also where I learn how (as Christina Baldwin says in her fine book, Life’s Companion: Journal Writing as a Spiritual Quest) to give up my illusions.

Now, giving up illusions is a very hard business, as perhaps you know, for they are so comforting and comfortable, so sweetly warm and deliciously fuzzy, that we almost cannot bear to let them go. But sometimes we are forced to do this by circumstance. These days, circumstances are challenging many of us to give up the comfortable illusions of external “securities”: things and expectations and processes and people we thought we could depend on. Instead, we are learning to recognize our true securities, most of them inside us, not outside. And perhaps the greatest of these securities is the faith that allows us to let go of the things we used to hang onto, and permit ourselves to be insecure--a frightening but grace-filled paradox.

Let’s write about this. Each night for the next week, in that journal you’re keeping beside your bed, write these things, before you go to sleep.

• Write something that you have learned, today or recently, that you cannot trust--an “insecurity.” Name it, describe it. Where did it come from? How do you know you can no longer trust it? How do you feel, letting it go?

• Write something that you have learned, today or recently, that you can trust: a true security. Name it, describe it. Where does it come from? How do you know you can trust it? How do you feel, holding onto it?

• Write: thank you.

This isn’t much, is it? Just a few words scribbled on flimsy paper. I can hear you say: I am in a big deep hole, and this is not going to help me out. Believe me.

I do believe you, and yes, you’re right. Being able to name and describe even your truest securities won’t solve all the problems you are facing. What’s more, a “true security” today may become an insecurity tomorrow, as circumstances change and the ground shifts dangerously under our feet.

But perhaps naming what you can trust will help you feel more grounded, more solid, more able to trust yourself, whatever the fates throw at you.

And perhaps being able to trust ourselves is the greatest security of all

And that, my dears, is a mercy.

Soul colors

The soul presents itself in a variety of colors, including all the shades of gray, blue, and black. To care for the soul, we must observe the full range of all its colorings, and resist the temptation to approve of white, red, and orange--the brilliant colors. --Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul

Our journeys take us far and wide--and high and deep. For every sunlit peak of confident success, there is a place of shadows, where we feel anxious and uncertain. We have high-energy days when we sail happily and competently through our work and our play; and days--weeks, even--when life seems to offer no mercies and we are depressed, lethargic, and sad.

Bad, huh? Yes, bad, very bad, according to the conventional wisdom. As a culture, we Americans are afraid of the dark. So what do we do with all this "badness"? We reach for a pill to lighten our mood, hire a therapist to open the drapes and let the sunshine in, or turn on the TV and find something to make us laugh. Brilliant colors, that’s what we want.

But maybe it’s not always such a good idea to turn away from gray, blue, and black. Our experiences of the pain and sadness of life are necessary to our growth, and our “bad” feelings can even be helpful. I don’t like having a stomach ache or diarrhea, but those are signals about the state of my body, and if I ignore or suppress them, I may get myself in trouble. In the same way, my anger, sadness, and grief may help me adapt to the world--or prod me to change that world. (Mothers Against Drunk Drivers is a famous example: a mother’s anger and grief at the senseless death of her daughter moved her to work for change.) And if I anesthetize myself with mood brighteners or amusements, I may rob myself of emotional elasticity and reduce the variety, richness, and nuanced subtlety of my emotional experience.

Hey, now. I’m not saying you shouldn’t seek treatment for long-term, disabling depression. What I’m saying is that maybe it’s time to stop trying to live in the light all day, aiming to turn everything yellow or orange or sweet pink. Given all the challenges we face in this changing world, perhaps it might help to pay some constructive attention to the grays, blues, and blacks that color our experience.

How? How are we going to look at things that really bother us, without getting swamped by all those difficult feelings? Yes, that’s a problem, isn’t it? The minute we start to examine our darknesses, it gets very dark inside, and the dark can be overwhelming. We don’t want to go there.

But there is a way we can do this without losing our bearings or our balance. Remember last week, when I asked you to name the hardest thing you had to do all day, then name a mercy? This week, let’s continue our naming practice, but change the focus a bit. Each night, in the journal you’re keeping beside your bed (you are, aren’t you?), write down four sentences and two words. That's it, that's all. Four sentences, two words.

• Name a black feeling that you experienced today. Don’t go into detail, don’t get lost in the dark, just describe the felling in a single sentence, specifically, briefly.
• Name a gray feeling. Again, one sentence, briefly. But feel, as you write, how the gray is different from the black.
• Name a blue feeling, and, feel how blue is different from gray is different from black.
• Name a bright feeling that you experienced today. Sunflower yellow, maybe, or peachy orange, or creamy ivory. Just a few words, feeling how different the bright feeling is from the darker blue, gray, and black.
• Then write: Thank you.

Wait! you say. What’s black, gray, blue? That’s too impressionistic for me. What do these words mean, anyway?

But that’s the point, isn’t it? What we're trying to do here is to describe and to feel the colors of experience, the colors of our souls. For me, black is a feeling of chaos or confusion, darkened with anger or pain; gray is a gloomy feeling, but lightened with a sense of possibility; blue is my gloom, tinged with sadness; yellow is cheerfulness, hope. For you, these words may mean something different, even something you’re not quite aware of at this moment.And maybe you'll see (I notice this in my own life) that what's black one day may be gray or blue the next. Black doesn't stay black forever. Watch it for a while and observe how it comes, and goes, and changes.

If you follow this retrospective daily writing and naming practice for a week (more, if you can), you will be better able to define these soul colors for yourself, according to your own color scale. And perhaps you may even, at the moment the feeling occurs, be able to say to yourself, “Oh, look--black again.” Or “Here comes gray,” or “Ah, blue, yes, blue,” and “Hello, yellow!”

You might even be able to say, at that moment, “Thank you.”

Try it. Let me know how it works for you. Share your experiences, your thoughts. As I said last week, the mercy is that we have each other.

Mercies

Nature has no mercy. Nature says, ‘I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I am going to snow anyway.’--Maya Angelou

No mercy?

It’s no secret, is it? Many of us are going through some very tough times right now, and things may get even tougher. Jobs are at risk. An increasing number of mortgages are higher than the value of the houses they cover. Companies are in trouble. Credit is hard to get. The cost of everything is going up, up, up.

If you’re feeling like you’re standing barefoot in a bikini in the middle of a blizzard, you’re not alone. You’re not alone in wondering what in the world you can do about it, either. I think most of us right now are looking around in some confusion, asking ourselves what has happened to our orderly, predictable lives. “I can’t see any light at the end of the tunnel,” a friend wrote to me the other day. “Zilch. Nada. None. Nothing but dark. Somebody light me a candle, please! Please?”

Over the coming weeks here on HerStories, I’m going to explore ways we can write ourselves out of the dark tunnel that our lives may have become, and toward some kind of light--or at least, toward an understanding of the situation we are in. I hope you’ll make this a conversation by adding your comments, saying how you feel and telling us what works for you. Let’s build a writing community around “writing in difficult times” and see whether we can lighten our dark tunnels. And while bikinis and bare feet are great for the beach, they're not so hot in a blizzard, so let's see if we can share a warm wooly coat and a good pair of shoeshoes

No mercy? I don’t believe it. Here is what I do believe.

• I believe that recording the daily events of our lives in our journals helps us to create order in a disorderly world.
• I believe that despair (and anger and fear and grief and confusion) can be positive emtions, if we can name them, describe them to ourselves, and face them honestly and truthfully
• I believe that our journey through this life is the process of giving up our illusions about what is fun, safe, easy, free. Giving up illusions is transformative. Documenting changes in ourselves can move us--mercifully--toward growth and maturity.
• I believe that documenting the transformations in our lives will help us make these transformations more mindfully, more attentively, more purposefully. What’s more, we’ll have a record of what we’ve done, how we’ve changed, and how we feel about it. And that by itself is a mercy, isn’t it?

Believing these things (faith in mercies is no small matter!), I would like to invite you to join me every week, here at HerStories, over the next few months. We’ll write together about the hard times we are facing.

Here’s how we’ll get started. Find a notebook you’d like to write in and put it beside your bed. At the end of every day during the next week, I’d like you to write down three things.

• Write down the hardest thing you had to do or face during the day. Name and describe it specifically, in as much detail as you can: what happened, what you did, what you felt.
• Write down one mercy you received during the day. Name and describe it specifically. What happened? Why was this a mercy? How did you feel?
• At the end of your two-part entry, write two words: Thank you.

That’s all there is to it?

For now, yes. Just one week. The hardest thing you had to do or face each day. One mercy every day. And thank you.

Okay? Got it?

I’ll see you back here next week--on Thursday. And in the meantime, if you’d like to enter your hard things or your mercies in the comment section below, please feel free. If you’re facing something really difficult--a cutback at work, crime in your neighborhood, illness, the loss of a home--somebody else is facing it, too. None of us are alone in difficult times.

The mercy is that we have each other.