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Why Being “Of Service” to Something Bigger is Over-rated and Misguided (Stick With Me)

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My uncle said something last night that struck me and it fits in with so much of what I’ve been chewing on mentally. He said, “we aren’t a society, we are an economy. We aren’t citizens, we’re workers.” He said it ironically, as he and two of his sisters and I were railing at what passes for health care in the United States – at how we commoditized it and made it a business instead of a way to meet the basic needs of human beings in our communities. 

And then this morning, Nicci sent me a Marco Polo (seriously, folks, I’m addicted to this platform and the way we can record videos for just one other person and instead of a dynamic, ongoing conversation, we have to really listen to the other person in earnest, hear their thoughts and ideas, and sit with them before formulating a response) that, among other things, made me think about my parents’ generation and how they were taught (indoctrinated?) to believe that they had to be in service to something bigger, and how that was noble, and desirable, and that martyring one’s self to that larger thing (Capitalism and “Democracy”) was not only expected but lauded. 

But, hear me out: a collective, a community, is only as healthy as its individual parts, and my parents were taught that they ought to eschew their own health and well-being in order to be of service to something else. And if they did a good enough job, they’d get a pat on the head and a pension and Capitalism and Democracy would live on through their efforts. And so my dad went to Vietnam and fought for “Democracy” and came home broken broken broken. And my mom quit teaching and stayed home to raise  children and held on to her marriage with this broken broken broken man in service to her religion, her society (raising “good” children and all that), her country (as if). I know for a fact they both had dreams and passions and I also know that they sublimated those things out of a sense of duty. I know that they weren’t able to ask the question, “What would make me happy?” From time to time, when either of them was particularly tortured and unhappy, they were able to ask, “what would make this suffering stop?” – but  they never saw their own well-being as something that would serve the collective. 

I once heard Gloria Steinem say “if you want to have something at the end of your journey, you have to have it all along the way.” She went on to explain that if we’re looking for joy or a sense of purpose, we have to have experienced it as we go, or else we’ll never be able to recognize it or appreciate it once we get “there,” wherever “there” is (for the record, I don’t think there is a “there” there). But at least one entire generation of people were taught (indoctrinated?) that what they wanted in the moment wasn’t important. They could plan for retirement, to have “joy” and an opportunity to relax and indulge your passions and interests at that point, but until that time, you had to be of service. 

But a healthy collective is made up of healthy individuals. A peaceful collective is made up of peaceful individuals. The thing we are working for has to also benefit us in some tangible, meaningful way. I’m sure my parents both believed that Capitalism and Democracy would benefit them, but only inasmuch as it prevented other horrible things from affecting them – things like Communism and Socialism, lawlessness and anarchy and amorality. But I can tell you that, while my parents lived fairly comfortable, middle-class lives and they remained safe from whatever demons were out there, for the most part, neither of them got to enjoy their retirement. My dad died at 65 from an aggressive form of cancer (brought on by, you guessed it – his time in Vietnam) and my mom was forced into retirement by Alzheimer’s. Neither of them got the chance to travel or pursue a passion or reap the benefits of their efforts on behalf of That Larger Thing. 

So what if we flip this on its head? What if we teach a new generation of young people that grounding themselves in who they are, what they want, where their natural talents lie, and serving that is serving the collective? What if we teach them that, the stronger and more peaceful and purposeful they are, the more they are able to connect to others with clarity and compassion? And that those connections are what actually serve the collective? What if we don’t place the emphasis on some external thing that needs them to be/act/work a certain way, but instead look at what they need in order to act from a place of security and abundance? What if we make sure that they have what they need (food, shelter, access to the education they choose, health care, a supportive community and family) and know know know that this is what the foundation of our strong collective resides on? 

The kind of service my parents’ generation was built on required more individuals to constantly replenish the ones that burned out. It was this hollow shell of Capitalism and Democracy with worker bees propping it up and it ran on volume so that when some of the bees got sick, others could rush in and replace them. But building our communities from the inside out, ensuring that each individual who is part of it is healthy and has what they need, means that we have a solid core from which to draw our collective well-being. While I spent most of my life saying I wanted to be “of service” and believing that that was an incredibly noble thing, I now think it is important for us to examine exactly what it is we think we’re “in service” to. If what we really want to be is part of a community of care that honors all of us, then our work lies in making sure we are clear on our purpose and passion, that we are able to ask for what we need when we need it and offer our support to those whose needs can be met by us. Taking care of ourselves and being able to recognize our talents and gifts as well as knowing what joy looks and feels like along the way is how we serve the collective. 

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Just One More Thing…(there’s always one more)

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The gifts just keep coming. I have read every book by Brene Brown at least once and I’ve compiled pages and pages of handwritten notes, written down quotes, and had some of the most fascinating conversations thanks to her work. Her TED talks inspire me endlessly and often, when I go back and re-read parts of her books, I discover things I hadn’t noticed before.  She is definitely on the short list of women whose work impact my life every day, who have changed how I parent and learn and make my way through the world. (It’s a pretty awesome list, including the likes of Gloria Steinem and Maya Angelou).

My most recent revelation thanks to her latest book, Rising Strong, comes as a result of digging a little deeper into the layers of my life. In one part of the book she writes about people who identify themselves as ‘helpers,’ and notes that the trap of using that label to build yourself up is that it becomes hard to be the one who asks for help. I underlined that passage and made notes on a separate piece of paper because that message resonated so deeply with me. For most of my life, I found control and self-worth because I was able to help other people, lift them up and provide emotional and logistical support. Well, to be honest, I didn’t often provide emotional support until I was a lot older. “Fixing” things was a great way for me to feel as though I was being useful and helpful and it kept me from having to feel the pain of others, to truly empathize.

I was in my thirties before I learned about the concept of holding space for others. It took a lot of practice and a willingness to sit with discomfort for me to not immediately leap to problem-solving and balm-offering when I saw loved ones suffering. I am still practicing acknowledging and sitting with a stranger’s pain without rising to the challenge of making things better in some physical, tangible way. Dr. Brown is absolutely right when she says that tying my own self-worth to the fact that I’m a helper means that if I need help, my self-worth takes a big hit.

I will admit, however, to some amount of patting myself on the back when I absorbed that portion of the book. About ten years ago I slammed up against a wall of depression that stopped me in my tracks and if I was going to be able to move forward, literally continue to exist on the face of the planet, I had to start asking for help. It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t easy, but I was lucky to have some pretty tremendous people in my life who were willing to support me. I swallowed my pride shame (I think they might be the same thing, or at least two sides of the same coin) and accepted childcare, meals, help around the house. I learned to get better at saying no to helping others in every single situation where I was asked to help and, over time, I began to warm to the idea that I was not an island. So when I read her words about letting yourself be vulnerable enough to ask for help and accept it, I nodded my head and congratulated myself on having learned to do that.

I should have known better. (Remember the pride/shame thing?)

The universe has a way of smacking me upside the head when I’m feeling a little too smug.

Literally one day after I scratched my notes on yellow lined paper, I was tested. I was feeling good, preparing to get away with Bubba for a long weekend of fun, and I got a phone call that rocked me, that threw me right back into the space I had spent so many years cultivating. I was needed. My problem-solving skills, my particular calm-in-a-crisis, my physical presence was requested, nee, necessary. I spent several hours on the phone working out logistics, asking other people for help and trying to design an airtight plan so that I could keep my plans with Bubba. And while this is my space, my forte, my wheelhouse, I couldn’t help but lose it once everything was in place and things were going to be okay.

What is this about? I wondered. I had averted disaster, well, helped to avert it. Well, asked for help to avert it. Wasn’t this what I was feeling good about yesterday? My ability to ask for help so that I don’t shoulder the burden alone? That’s the goal, right? I had done it. Why was I feeling so awful?

Most of my personal revelations come about when I walk the dog. This one was no exception. It hit me so hard I’m surprised I didn’t fall over. I am pretty sure I made some sort of whimpering noise when it hit me, but I did manage to stay on my feet and I don’t think the dog even noticed.

I have gotten good at asking for logistical help. That much is true.
What I haven’t yet learned how to do is to ask for or accept help holding my pain. I have no idea how to open up and let my pain out into the world so that I don’t have to keep it all myself. I am good at writing about it (distance, anyone?) and sharing my story, but if I am in the room with someone and I am really hurting, I don’t know how to accept empathy without feeling shame.

More work to do.

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Listening to Stakeholders

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It is often hard to remember that listening is the best first step to creating solutions, especially when the solutions are not for us, personally. The older I get, the more I understand that listening is truly the best first step in nearly every situation, though, whether it’s meeting someone new, planning a project, walking with a friend.

If we don’t listen, it’s easy to forget that someone else’s perspective might be incredibly valuable.  Last October, Gloria Steinem told this story to a room full of people I was lucky enough to be in.

She had traveled to Africa to attend a summit on sex trafficking with many, many organizations and governmental representatives all gathered together to come up with ways to combat this rising challenge.  During a break in the meetings, she was approached by a woman who asked her to travel with her to a small village where several women had recently been lost to this trade. Gloria was flattered and shocked, unsure of what she could do to help this small village, much less how she would manage to communicate with the villagers, but she went.

She described a scene where a feast was prepared and blankets spread out on the grass, with all of the women in a circle ready to address her.  Translating their concerns was difficult, but they found a way to get their request across – the women of the village wanted elephant fences.  Gloria was confused. What do elephant fences have to do with sex trafficking? The women explained:

The livelihood of this village was largely dependent on growing maize.  Over time, though, as elephant habitats become smaller and smaller, the elephants discovered the fields of maize and came  to the village to feed on them.  This left the village in dire straits – they had not enough maize to feed their own families, much less to sell to others.  It is because of this that three young women traveled to the nearest large city to find work to send home money to support their families. When they arrived in the city, they were kidnapped and sold as sex slaves.  The rest of the villagers reasoned that if they raised the equivalent of a few thousand dollars to erect fences that would prevent the elephants from eating their maize, they could keep their young women from having to leave the village to find work.

Gloria was stunned by this simple solution – one that nobody at her enormous conference would have come up with. She traveled back to the city and worked for several days to raise money to build the fences.   More than that, she demonstrated the power of listening. By traveling to the village to hear the ideas of the people most affected, she was enabling them to empower themselves and helping them find a way to prevent their girls from being sex-trafficked.  It is not a solution for the many, to be sure, but for this village it was monumental. And it cost mere pennies compared to the proposals being raised at this multinational conference, most of which were not preventative solutions, but punitive ones for the traffickers themselves.

I am so often struck remembering this story as I read stories in the news about government agencies or non-profit organizations who are puzzling over potential solutions to poverty, hunger, major health issues, and violence in particular countries or communities. The first question I ask myself these days is whether the folks with the leverage and money to provide help have asked the communities in question for their stories, their ideas, their solutions. Bringing American-style answers to questions that exist in non-western countries may turn out to be wasteful or overkill and it may well be that if one or two people listen to the individuals living with the struggles and ask for their perspective, they can come up with simpler, more comprehensive solutions.

It seems obvious, but it is so easy to get caught up in our own viewpoint and the belief that wanting to help is enough. I do the same thing with my kids all the time, swooping in to offer advice or put into place some new system that I think will fix a pervasive problem in our household without asking them what they think. And, especially when it comes to kids, I think adults do that a lot. I watched my daughters’ middle school revamp their dress code four times in four years, having discussions with staff and administration, parents and board members, but it wasn’t until they listened to the students that they came up with a solution that everyone feels good about. It was a student that got so frustrated she crafted a PowerPoint Presentation to illustrate the issues and potential solutions, and it took a month of student council meetings to come up with a new set of guidelines that has everyone breathing a sigh of relief. Four years (at least). Four years of meetings, research, discussion, fiddling with different ideas, and nobody was happy.

I have a photo of an elephant fence tucked inside my nightstand as a powerful reminder that listening is one of the most effective, efficient things I can do every day. Even if I see my strengths as collaboration and a strong desire to help, it turns out that the best way to do that is by asking the stakeholders what they think, no matter who they are.

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Hang in There, Baby, Change is Coming

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I know a lot of folks who have been feeling what I call “churn.” For me, that is the sensation of being in the middle of a giant wave as it curls, completely underwater and surrounded by movement and sound and sand rolling all around you.  So much turmoil – not all of it bad – and the only thing to do is wait it out, sit tight until the water and debris have crashed over the top of you and you can see clearly once again.  I have heard it attributed to Mercury in retrograde, and I know folks that subscribe to that belief. I honestly don’t know what it is, but I do know that in the last year or so people I know and love have experienced a lot of big changes in their lives, felt huge emotional swings as they follow uprisings in other countries, outbreaks of illness, seeming epidemics of gun and sexual violence, and giant leaps forward for social justice like the swell of marriage equality laws and folks like Wendy Davis and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders standing up to speak their truth loudly.  I have watched loved ones experience big ups and downs in their personal lives and sometimes it feels as though this wave will never break on the shore, but I think it is imminent.  I have felt optimistic for a long time that all of this churn is heading toward something monumental, some sort of breakthrough for all of us that will eventually offer a clean slate of beachfront upon which we can begin to rebuild. I see strong, smart people working hard to create peace in ways big and small, parents having difficult conversations with their kids and kids stepping up to the challenge.  I see a genuine openness to have lively debates about personal freedoms and community values.  The pushback is fierce from those who are comfortable with the status quo, but that is to be expected and I think it’s a good sign.

Last week when Gloria Steinem spoke to the group at Ghost Ranch, she put it in a way I had never considered before, but I quickly copied her words down in my notebook. They have been bouncing off the walls of my skull ever since like that little pixelated square in the video game of my childhood, Pong.

Gloria said that she thinks it is informative to look at our civilizations in the context of growing up, that if we are afraid to look back historically and have honest conversations about what happened to us in our ‘childhood,’ we are doomed to repeat the same patterns over and over again in the future. In my opinion, we are at a crucial time in our country’s history where we are confronting those patterns and really talking about those things. We are speaking up about campus domestic violence, recognizing the toll that gun violence is taking on our families and communities, looking at the ways that we have marginalized and oppressed entire groups of people over the last hundred years. This churn is stirring up every grain of sand and holding it to the light for examination and the result is messy.  Perhaps the most powerful part of Gloria’s observation concerns the research that shows that women who are victims of domestic violence are most likely to be killed or seriously injured just as they are escaping or just after they have escaped.  She likened this recent uprising of conversation and activism around domestic violence and women’s rights in the United States to our culture readying itself to break free. We are sitting in a precarious spot, in the middle of this giant wave, and we have to remain very aware as we wait for it to break.  We cannot stop now, even though we may be afraid, because we are about to shift into a new place of liberation.  I hope you’ll hang in there for the ride with me.

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Women’s Rights: Convergence


I am in the center of this wheel. Instead of the spokes radiating out from me, these spokes are coming toward me, feeding me and offering up wisdom and feeling. I have been feeling something coming for a while and, at this point, my challenge is not to assume what it is or prescribe some action, but to sit and wait and honor what comes.

If you read the last post, you’ll know that I recently discovered “Girls Speak Out” by Andrea Johnston. I read the acknowledgements section and discovered the name of her agent, which prompted me to send out a query letter about my manuscript “Rock and a Hard Place.” Reading Gloria Steinem’s foreward prompted me to contact her and express my admiration for her years of work and service in liberating women in this country and around the world.
The book I was assigned to review for Elevate Difference this month is called “A Strange Stirring” by Stephanie Coontz and traces the impact of Betty Freidan’s “Feminine Mystique” on an entire generation of American women. Reading the history contained in this book and being reminded of the myriad ways human beings have of oppressing and belittling entire groups of people has given me much food for thought. But, you’ll have to wait for the review to get any more on that. Don’t worry – I’ll let you know when it’s on the site.
I support many groups that champion women and girls and on my Facebook page, my eye has recently been caught by media coverage of sex trafficking of young girls, including the news release that there are scores of young women and girls being shipped to Dallas to “entertain” partygoers and bigwigs attending the Superbowl.
In addition to local groups, I am part of World Pulse, an organization that exists to raise the voices of women around the world. They recently put out a call for members to write letters to the new executive director of women’s issues for the UN, letting her know their hopes for her tenure and I was inspired to share my five part dream for women and girls everywhere
with her. So far, I’ve gotten some very positive feedback on it.
Eve started learning about puberty and sexuality at school last week and, thanks to her teacher, has come home wielding pages of questions she was assigned to ask a trusted adult for her homework. This prompted a really lovely discussion the other night about my experiences with puberty and how the world has changed in the short time period between my adolescence and hers. She is concerned about menstruation and sexual orientation and exploitation and it is my job to give her accurate information and help shape her decision-making about her own morality. I am struck by the fact that this conversation never could have occurred in my 1970s world, but at how lucky I was to have a stepmother in the 1980s who was willing to at least scratch the surface with me.
So I am spreading the word for now. I forwarded the link to Girls Speak Out to all of the parents at my daughter’s girls school and I’ve offered to brainstorm with anyone who is interested about putting together an action group. I’ve become recommitted to getting the word out about my book and, come h-e-double hockey sticks or high water, it’s getting published by summer. Even if I have to do it myself. And I’ll continue to sit here in the center and listen and absorb the information coming my way. My heart is filled with optimism and calm and patience. I know that so long as I act out of love and compassion with an effort to educate and enlighten my actions will be met with open arms and my words will fall on the ears of those who need to hear them the most.
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Two Links, Please!

Sorry, not sausage links. But I think these two are better than pork bits, although pork bits are tasty. Don’t get me wrong…

A Link for Writers

Mira Bartok’s memoir “The Memory Palace” is one of the first books I downloaded to my new iPad. While I wasn’t certain how I would feel about reading without the feel of paper in my hands, there is no doubt about this book. It is lovely, well-written, engaging, and enlightening: everything a memoir ought to be, IMHO. In any case, at the end of the book, I discovered that Mira has a website where she highlights writing opportunities (grants, fellowships, residencies, etc.). Anyone who is looking for a leg up ought to check it out.
A Link for Girls (and those who care about them growing up to be strong and independent)

Yesterday I had some time to kill before a doctor appointment so I wandered into (where else?) a bookstore. One book appeared to be surrounded by that surreal Heavenly light that sucked me in like a vacuum and hollered, “Look at me!” so I did. In my current search for ways to empower women and girls a book entitled “Girls Speak Out” with a foreward written by none other than her majesty Gloria Steinem, it’s no wonder I was drawn to this book. Also in its favor was the fact that it is a used paperback and, thus, inexpensive. (I’m certain Bubba wishes my New Year’s resolution had had something to do with spending less money on books. Poor guy.)
Anyway, this book is several years old and was written as a guidebook for girls ages 9-15ish who are seeking ways to discover and honor themselves as they try to navigate the murky depths of adolescence in a consumer-driven society. I was glowing before I finished reading the introduction and foreward. And then I found their website. If you go, make sure you give yourself enough time to stay a while and marvel at all of the wondrous things Gloria and the author, Andrea Johnston, have inspired girls AROUND THE WORLD to do since this movement began. You won’t be sorry.
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