Circle of Friends

Ok first I am sorry for pretty much falling off the face of the earth lately – I have not done a Goal Monday in a while, or a Homespun Sunday or pretty much even a post about what is going on with anything. To say that I am working into a full fledged funk is an understatement – I believe I am already there, not only at work but at home as well. There are a host of reasons, some I can talk about some I cannot, but such is life. But this seems to have worked perfectly into this post for Ladies of the Roundtable. This month I can post twice once as a free for all and once on the actual topic which I can sadly admit that I do not even remember what the topic is this month. But as the title suggests I want to talk about something most women not only need but seem to get us through the day, week, month, year(s) from hell, our friends.

When we are younger it seems we are friends with a different array of people, people who have different interests and beliefs, etc… and as clicks or groups start to form then we choose our friends based on who they are (or who they are not). I do not know a woman who cannot tell me she has one childhood friend that she can recall who was her sounding board during those “wonderful” pre-teen and teen years – someone who always knew her crushes, her first kiss, what she planned to do (or not do) on Prom night, what her real grade on that pop quiz was, how she really felt about her parents – I could go on but you get the idea. That person, and I say person as by the time I reached high school my best friend – the person I counted on for everything – was a guy and not another girl, can predict things even you could not, things that you never would. If this person is not still in your life, should you meet them again you would find that they fit right back in and for some people it may even be a group of people a – circle of friends shall we say. I have to say that most of the women I know fall into one of two groups with this first true friend – that person is still in her life, even if from a LONG distance away but they talk constantly and still are as close as ever or like in my case part of my life changed and I rarely if ever talk to the people I considered friends in high school and that aforementioned guy, I have no clue where he is or what he is doing. I heard from him once when I was in law school and at that time he was married and we caught up on what life was like for us and said we would stay in touch, but I have not talked to him again. I would LOVE to find him, catch up and this time actually stay in touch and even with his unusual last name I cannot find him, most likely he does not want to be found that would fit him. But this second group of women, like me, would like to be back in touch with their friend but cannot find them or have not even tried for a whole host of reasons, usually life just gets in the way.

After childhood (and high school), each season of life brings a whole host of new friends – be it college, marriage, parenthood or something totally different. Somehow we gravitate to those who are in or who have been in the same situation as we are, for example right now I feel more closely connected to people I have never actually met than to my friends who live in the same town I do, why is that? Well my blogging buddies are not only experiencing or have experienced what I am right now but I can relate with them. I have no idea what being pregnant is like and most likely never will – I know what I have heard from my friends or read in a book but not in person. I cannot tell my labor and delivery story or laugh about what my newborn baby is doing now. At some point these friends and I’s seasons will be the same again but for right now they could not be more different and I feel horrible but some days I cannot deal with their season and mine (and I firmly believe the opposite is true some days they cannot deal with their season and mine) – while we are happy for each other and want to be there for each other it is hard to be a true friend and listen and tell your friend it will all work out when you have NO IDEA what is going to happen. There are things we say such as “well I read that..” or “another friend did …” or “I wish I could help more than just listening” – and before you know it if that season lasts long at all you and your friend now just seem to be passing acquaintances.

My best friend from college who I still talk to almost every day (though not as often lately) and I have a theory about being single and being married – I got married when I was firmly in my 30’s and she is only six months younger than me and she is still not married – each of us has been in at least thirteen weddings, many of mine while I was single and all of hers, most of these women consider us close enough friends to be in their weddings but within months of the wedding we have stopped hearing from them in any regular fashion (and in some cases after the divorce is final we have all the sudden become close to them again) but we really could not figure out why. The more we examined it – a real effort had to be made to be friends, we no longer had dating (or not dating) in common and the one who remained single had nothing in common with the married one – now a real effort had to be made by both parties to listen to the other about the issues you have no clue about or just were not 100% interested in. In some cases these women became mothers and we have NEVER heard from them again because now there really is no common ground. I swore when I got married this would not happen with her – but now with the adoption we have to make an effort to talk and I HATE that as we used to talk all the time but once again – I am in a different season and so is she, we are trying but it is not always easy.

There are seasons we go through that we feel as if there in NO ONE in that season – I have a few though not many in my life – and that makes it harder. There is no one who can tell you it will all work out and you will walk out a stronger woman on the other side of it. Sometimes we help our friends through those seasons – such as I have seen women shave their heads in solidarity when a friend has cancer and will lose all of her hair, so that woman will not be alone in her experience of being bald and they can all experience that together. That is a show of friendship and something I may do for my friends as well.

We all revel in shared experiences, can you think of any of your friends who you do not share something with? I cannot think of a friend in my life who I do not share some sort of something that is important to me with, and in most cases it is more than one thing. My question becomes what do you do to help your friends when they are experiencing something you have not and may want to such as pregnancy or do not want to such as cancer – what can we do for those we consider special, our friends and loved ones when we are not on the same page? I want to deepen my friendships – all of them, those online, in person and from a distance. I want to be there for my friends no matter what, even when things in my life are falling apart around me. Sometimes when I talk to my friends I feel like the conversation is all about me even when I try to talk about them as well – there has to be a way. So maybe you my friends in this season of my life can help me stay friends who are not only not in this season with me but may not be as excited that I am entering this season and leaving other seasons behind or am not as excited about other seasons…so please I ask you to share your experiences in friendship good and bad, long and short in the comments! My hope with this post is to start a discussion about friendship that we can all learn from!

A Sad Goodbye, A Happy Hello

I’m sad to say goodbye to Lorri from All That We Let In. She has decided to step back to focus on her family. I know we all wish her the best and hopes she’ll come visit from time to time.

As we say goodbye, please also warmly welcome K from Mixed Nuts. She will be joining us as a contributor at Ladies of the Round Table. Welcome!!

In with the In Crowd?

This is Char from Metaphase. I haven’t written here yet, and if you visit my blog, you’ll see I’m not the best writer in our little group. I hope you all bear with me as I try to put my thoughts out here…

I never thought a WHOLE lot about beauty in the media until just a few years ago. I think this might be for a few reasons. I’m about to be pretty honest here, so please don’t take this the wrong way.

First, I have always been, until recently, what people would consider pretty. Not that I’m an ogre now or anything, but I mean in high school and in my twenties people would come up to me and tell me how beautiful I was. I was thin, had a nice face, and confident. I can remember I was at work (manager at GAP, I know lame, right?) and I said hi to a mom and her little girl. As they were walking away, the little girl said to her mom, “She’s so beautiful, mommy. Like a princess!”. That’s always nice to hear on a work day. So it’s funny, I hardly ever thought of how the media portrayed women or their sexuality then. Was it because I was “on the inside” so to speak? I was what the media was telling everyone they should be, no I had to need to think about it any further. Ok, so now, I’m 33, have given birth. Let’s face it, things don’t go back they way they were after a pregnancy, I’ve gained about 35lbs. since I was 25 and my “pregnancy mask” (dark spots on the face) never went away. People don’t look at me and tell me I look like a princess. I don’t have time (and money) to spend on myself. I used to be able to go to the gym 5 times a week. I don’t know the last time my be-hind was in the gym, but from the looks of it, it’s been a while!

Now, I think about how the media tells us we should trounce around in a size 2 and have boobs the size of watermelons hanging out. Is it because I no longer am one of those people? (I never had the watermelons, BTW!) Am I more sensitive because I am so far from what everyone thinks women should be? Or is it that I now have an education, a family, and a better perspective on what is really important?

I also think in the last few years, things have gotten more out of control in the media. Photos of celebs and videos can be downloaded any time, no one is ever able to fly under the radar. I taught science at a middle school here in the Boston area. The school is in the wealthiest town in Mass. Most of these kids will go to Harvard, MIT or some Ivy League school, just like their parents did. I think about this one girl who was so full of personality and really smart, except she didn’t want her friends to know about the smart part. She could command a room with her presence, and yet she wanted to be the “dumb girl”, like Paris Hilton. This broke my heart. Her work reflected a totally different person than the way she acted in class. I wanted to shake her and tell her she had been given a gift- brain and charisma- now use them both and become a diplomat, the president, or a Nobel Peace Prize winner-not Paris Hilton!

So I don’t know if my growing up changed my perspective or my growing out made me think about how much more our girls could be and how women are objectified in the media now more than ever it seems. I hope it’s me growing up, and I hope I can teach my daughter not to be a “stupid girl”, in the words of Pink.

Being the Beauty

One of my favorite things to do to relax is sit down on the couch, feet up, watching really bad, really entertaining reality shows. My favorites are the dating shows on VH 1. 20 or so women vying for the affections of a 40-50 year old man by wearing as little as possible and creating as much drama as possible. Good times.

I have two problems with the whole “sex sells” idea: when it’s a teenage/young girl, and when that’s all we are presenting as women. I am all for an adult women dressing to feel sexy. I do think that it is a part of womanhood. I dress sexy at times and I like to feel sexy. Now, my definition of what feels that way to me I have realized for a long time is much more modest than average. But I understand the need to fulfill that aspects of ourselves.

Back when I was in college I started worrying about what raising a daughter in our society would mean. I started to worry about the images that we present in mainstream media and just society behavior in general as acceptable. There were a couple of things going on at that time in my life that kind of shaped how I began to feel. It was around the time of the rise of stars such as Britney Spears and Cristina Aguilera, who utilized sex appeal as young stars. I was working retail when they were at their peak. I worked in the girls clothes section of the department store, which included babies, toddlers, and young girls. There was a junior section for teens, and a women’s section on the first floor. Prior to this all of the girls underwear were things like disney princess ones, or just plain colored ones. I only say this because one day we got a shipment in of new underwear. No kidding - they were so “sexy” (lacy, low cut designs) that I thought they had made a mistake and it was supposed to go to lingerie. Nope. Girls clothes.

I think that we say that teens and young girls shouldn’t be viewed this way, but we send an entirely different message through mainstream media, and hell, through that department store. I remember shopping for clothes for my own daughter when she was just a few months old. I went to a store in the mall only to find skirts, in her size, that honestly wouldn’t have covered diaper. They were short skirts, and I do mean short. I don’t believe at all that this was me being too modest.

These images are what I worried about a long time ago in my early twenties when I told my sociology professor that I absolutely refuse to have any girls - only boys. I had no clue how I was going to fight society on this one, and that was my big beef with raising a girl. The uphill fight with how I was beginning to realize society and the media present women and young girls.

I think that as time goes on I see more and more the sex and sexy part of being a women is pushed, and pushed so much as to begin to only highlight that aspect of being a woman. Media has come to be unforgiving in how it treats its women, especially those that are not thin enough or sexy enough. I would love to see a more shows that emphasize a more well-rounded view of women, think Beauty and the Geek where it’s the women who are in the role of being the geek.

There is an acceptance of being empowered through being the Beauty, through pushing our sex appeal rather than focusing on highlighting our other skills. I’ve spent the past month watching as one of the women in another department where I work flirt with our director (I work right next to his office). I’ve watched as she applied to be his executive assistant and go into the meeting wearing a semi-seethrough shirt, whereas the other applicants all wore suits (men and women). The last I heard she’ll be getting the job. Now, far be it from me to say that she doesn’t deserve it. What really interested me was the way she went about it. She is a women who is charming (the job requires working with clients) and is educated. I have always fought so hard to put out my skills first, fighting the idea that a woman has to be sexy to be of worth to whatever it is she is doing. This has me doubting. I have seriously considered changing the way in which I present myself at work because of it. I wonder if being less modest at work will garner me more respect - or hell, at least more money.

I think it is emphasized in the dating shows that I watch. In fact, so much that my husband hates it if I’m watching them and our daughter is anywhere near the tv. Think about these young women, who probably are so much more than just the sexy outfits that they wear, and yet to win the heart of an old man they’ve never met, they are competing in competitions where they prove their worth to him by using their sexuality to its fullest.  That’s their worth, all packaged into the smallest clothes possible.

Of course that’s not their full worth, but that is what we are presenting to society, to women, to young women - that this is what our worth is tied to.

Protected: Today is April 1st…

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April Topic

Happy Spring Ladies! I thoroughly enjoyed all of your posts for March and look forward to your thoughts on April’s topic. Speaking of which, here it is:

Women’s sexuality and how it is portrayed by the media.

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Also, I am looking for a couple of guest posts. If you want to write on this topic, stated above, then let me know by April 11 in the comments and I will contact you via email.

Ideally Affectionate

First of all, I have been absolutely floored -FLOORED - at how wonderfully you ladies have taken on this topic. You have discussed very personal details of your life and your hearts. Seriously, I am amazed and I my respect for all of you just shot right through the roof these past few weeks.

My parents and I haven’t always had the best relationship, and though I didn’t always feel the love I know that it was there. I had all the typical daughter days, I suppose.  Fights with my mom about everything. Pressure to do well in school. Vacations to exotic places like Rhode Island and Florida. Moving about every 3 years to a new state or country.  The time my parents convinced my sister to be the one to ruin Santa by telling me he’s not real when I was 7. The big blowout the first time they saw my pierced eyebrow - and the even bigger blowout the first time they saw my tattoo (the sigh of disapproval when years later they saw my other tattoo because my wedding dress was strapless).

Looking back there are a couple of things that really pop out at me, things that really tell my story growing up as a daughter:  my duty/obligation as a daughter, and my affection, or rather, my lack of affection.  What’s been on my mind is mostly my lack of affection.

Before the age of 10, I was affectionate. Hugs, kisses, hugs and kisses goodnight every night, I love you’s. All of it. Basic, run of the mill affection between child and parent. Around the middle of when I was 10 years old it stopped. No affection from me at all then or even since then. I felt guilt over the years, and I mean - felt really, really bad. The idea of giving affection, however, came at too high a price for me to give back in to it.

Now that I have a daughter I can’t imagine how painful it would be to have her not be affectionate anymore - and I mean, at all, in any sense. So I get a sense of how much pain I must have put my parents through. I mean, they weren’t perfect and we had our own battles, but I know that they loved me. And, I know that I loved them. Unfortunately, I couldn’t say with any amount of certainty that they knew that or could have guessed that.  I know that we don’t love our daughters just to receive love back, but hell, I’m pretty sure it helps.

I love my parents. I do and I did.  But now you know one of my big, bad secrets and what a horrible daughter I have been.  I don’t think I was all bad.  I stayed out of trouble, got decent grades, married a nice man, and have a wonderful daughter that my parents just pour their love onto.  The kicker is that I didn’t stop giving affection because I didn’t love my parents - though I’m sure that’s the way that they felt, which just kills me. 

I think the biggest failure in all of this is that I never learned how to open up, how to talk about difficult things in my life.  So when I was 10 and my dad got shot and nearly died and I suffered horrible nightmares every single night until I was about 16 - I never knew how to talk to them about it.  Instead, I stopped showing any kind of open love.  My nightly nightmares always had to do with one or both of my parents dieing and it always tore me apart.  I didn’t realize it fully at the time, but I know now what my nightmares did to me and how not opening up and discussing it did more harm than good.

I don’t blame my 10-year-old self for what I did.  I don’t even blame my 16-year-old self.  I blame me.  This 28-year-old woman, who has become so comfortable with the lack of affection that I haven’t even tried to break myself of it.  Now that I understand what was going on and I’m in a position to correct myself, I find that I fight it.  I am so comfortable being standoffish with my parents.  I find that even saying, “I love you” to my parents is hard for me to get out, not because I don’t love them but because I got too comfortable with not saying it.  By now, well over a decade later, it’s foreign to me.  It’s foreign to my lifestyle as a daughter. 

I realize that in my adult life I have been trying to make up for my lack of affection by being extra nice, extra giving, extra everything but affectionate; and one of my biggest fears is that it does anything but make up for it.

Protected: I love my role as daughter

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Protected: The roles we are assigned

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Guest Post: Role of Daughter

The following is a guest post by Reen from Reen’s Place.

My role as a daughter has not been an easy one.  I have spent the majority of my life feeling completely inadequate.  I was not the smart one.  I was certainly not the athletic one.  I was not the pretty one, or the popular one.  This didn’t leave many roles for me to play.  So I chose the one role that was left.  I was the caretaker.  I was the scapegoat.  I was the chubby one that was more comfortable with my nose in a book and music in my ears.  My childhood was not one of idyllic stories.  You see, my father has always been a practicing alcoholic.  Unlike some, one more beer did not turn my dad into a funnier, more friendly person.  No, my father turned into a mean, verbally abusive man.  My father never raised a hand to me, my mom, or my older sister though sometimes I wish he had.  Those scars heal better than the ones he left behind.

My role as a daughter was one of walking on eggshells, never knowing which of my father’s personalities was going to walk through the door at night.  Was it going to be the man who would yell and say horrible nasty things or would it be the man who would just leave me alone?  On the nights that my father came home drunk, there was not much of a doubt who was going to be the one bearing the brunt of his tirades.  I was the sensitive one that always gave him the reaction he craved… my tears.

I remember one Easter when I was young, probably 5 or 6 years old.  My mom had taken us dress shopping earlier that day.  Somehow, I managed to lose my dress in the mall.  Well my father went ballistic.  He yelled and swore until there was not a doubt in my mind that there was no love for me.  There have been numerous fights over the years, too many to count and more than I could ever care to remember.

I am 29 years old, an adult now, but to this day, I do not have much of a relationship with my father.  He is a part of my life because he is my father, not because there is any great love there. Most days I am at peace with this fact.  It hits me when I am at a wedding and watch the bride coming down the aisle with her dad, or when, at the reception they have a Father-Daughter dance, that these are moments that I will not have.   

My niece and nephew are now experiencing all of the good that is within the man who is my father.  It took Hannah’s birth for my father to openly adore someone.  While I know that it’s a wonderful thing for Hannah and Ethan, I would be lying to myself if said it didn’t make me a little sad for all that I missed.  

For as much as my father is not a part of my life, my mom has been the opposite.  She is the rock that I have stood on throughout my life.  She worked so hard to give my sister and I everything that we needed and so much of what we wanted.  Things were not easy for my mom.  She was basically a single mom raising us on her own.  She wanted everything for us that she had never had.  It was never an option in our lives whether or not we were going to college.  It was just understood. 

My mother instilled in us a respect for ourselves that went against everything my father did to us.  She taught us to stand on our own.  She taught us to fight; to fight for what we knew was right and for those who couldn’t fight for themselves.  My mother nurtured in me a love for the arts that I would be lost without.   Would my life have been easier if she’d have left him, I don’t know.  I’ve never questioned it.  My life, all that it has been, all the good and all of the bad, has brought me to where I am now.  I am a strong woman.  I am an independent woman.  I am my mother’s daughter.  I hope one day to pass along the strength my mother has given me to a child of my own.  Whether or not I get that opportunity remains to be seen.  But more importantly I hope that my mother knows how proud I am to be her daughter and how thankful I am that she chose me.