True Stories and Essays: Fire Fighting Tales from Rural Maine: This Matters

This Matters

Among the mantras that most of the adults in my family drove into my emotional body as I was maturing was this humdinger: "You're too competitive."

My mother, especially, shamed me for my desire to excel, to be the best, to discover excellence, to win! (She is, by the way, the second most ruthlessly competitive person I have ever known, with the exception of some professional/Division I collegiate/Olympic athlete friends.)

It's important to note that as much as I hungered to win, I was (generally) never a sore loser, a cheater, or a mean winner. And I was capable of feeling genuinely happy if I'd done my absolute level best, but still lost. And I truly (truly!) loved working as a team. That part's important, because misdirected and imbalanced, competitiveness, I suppose, can be an ugly and damaging character trait in anyone. But that wasn't the case with me.

The thing about being a child--perhaps especially, a girl child--is that you believe what your parents tell you, especially if they teach it to you over and over, in words and in practice, and if society seems to reinforce it. If your parents tell you that you're stupid or lazy or fat or too sensitive, you'll spend the whole rest of your life working to overcome and correct those negative self-beliefs--or just believing them and living from them!

I don't know why parents do this. I expect it's because parents are human beings, and human beings make mistakes, have flaws, and fight against their own demons, even if they are parents (especially if they are parents?).

The thing about Truth is that you can feel it in your body. Truth has a feeling and children know it. Truth always feels good, even if it's a painful truth. It feels clean. It lines up. And my body always knew--always!--that what I was being taught about myself being "too competitive" was wrong; it hurt in a really messy way. It created inner conflict. It felt like a lie. It went against the Truth of me. But without any outlet for that pain and conflict; without a way to dialog or frame the experience of receiving a painful message and feeling the feeling "This isn't true," I was left in a state of tumultuous self-loathing. A cycle of achievement and shame that just spun and spun and spun. I developed a fear of success--and an equal fear of failure. So much so that, in my early twenties, when the editor of Life magazine sent me a personal email, praising an essay I had written, I didn't write back, didn't tell anyone, and immediately lost it. Starting from adolescence, I spent more than twenty years in an almost constant battle against severe depression and anxiety as a direct result of this false mantra (and other damaging and traumatic things from childhood).

Dr. Christiane Northrup writes in the "Motherhood: Bonding with your Baby" chapter of "Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom" (which I highly recommend you buy and then *actually* read, not just use as a door stop), that "It makes sense...that girls would get moody around the age of twelve or so. They can see what's coming." She cites Naomi Woolf who makes a case in her book "Fire with Fire" that all girls are born with a strong will to power that eventually gets turned inward by what she calls, "the dragons of niceness."

"Thwarting their innate desire to excel and win can make girls very unhappy at this age," writes Northrop, "and can cause them to turn on each other, too. If girls are socialized to be passive and self-sacrificing, their powerful spirits don't like it."

One of the very best things I ever did was get myself into Smith College. As stressful as it was to constantly be trying to figure out how to pay for it, I relaxed into the experience of being free to be *excellent.* Not everyone who attends Smith is competitive, but they are, without a doubt, the smartest, most excellent, hard-working, clever, fierce, academically devoted women on the planet. And in many ways, I thrived among them. But at the same time, even in an environment full of female strivers, I still struggled with the fear of failure/fear of success and the damaging mantra, "You're too competitive."

My body was always rankled by this so-called "truth" from my family. My girl self endured so very much painful shaming! I lived in constant conflict with my desire to be excellent--and my ability to be so--as it pressed up against the sharp judgement of the adults in my life. I was the only freshman to make a varsity sport in high school. I was All Conference as a sophomore, all Eastern Maine as a Junior, All-State as a senior. I was recruited by colleges. And I never attended a single sports banquet, because I was too frightened, ashamed, and uncomfortable to go.

But now, in middle age, through yoga practice and long years of attention to personal growth, I can say that I am more at peace with my competitive side. I still try to hide it, hold it back, shame it, apologize for it, but I am more able to recognize it's value, too. Without the gift of my competitiveness, I never would have gotten into Smith--or gotten through. I wouldn't have graduated with latin honors or been published in the New York Times when I was only 21. And most recently, I wouldn't have uncovered the joys of fire service--or gotten through Fire Academy and passed my Fire Fighter I/I exams--without being competitive. I honestly think that without my inherent competitive drive, I wouldn't have survived. It's that essential.

Now, one of the things I do is work with people who have experienced trauma. I teach the children at Acadia Hospital and also a women's trauma group there. I teach people who have undergone cancer treatment and diagnosis or other serious physical traumas. Yoga is one of the ways we can teach children (and adults) how to trust what their bodies are telling them. It's one of the ways we can recognize Truth. It's one of the ways we can heal.

If you are raising a girl--or have influence over one or more in your life--I implore you to watch what you say and how you live around them. As Dr. Northrup says, "Young women need to be cherished, honored, encouraged, and praised for their gifts."

And I echo that. Even if their gift is a competitive drive to win--honor it, cherish it, teach them to expand it with grace.

I was born into a world before Roe v. Wade, before Title IX; I was in middle school before women were allowed to run marathons! So many barriers to happiness, excellence, and joy have come down just in my little lifetime because somewhere some woman (or little girl) stuck to her guns and allowed herself to get in the ring, to compete, to fight for what she wanted.

As you make your choices this election season, I hope you will consider delivering to this nation its first woman president. Do it for me. Do it for your daughter. Do it for your great grandmother and your niece and your best friend. Do it for you!

And as you make your choices about how to treat the children in your life, I hope you will tell them to do everything in their power to be happy and fulfilled; I hope that you will take them to their sports banquets and give them a safe place to share when they receive praise or experience victories. How you live and love yourself--how you live and love the women and girls in your life? It really matters. It matters to them; it matters to me; it matters to every generation. You have the power to change our collective mantras about women. You can shift from shaming them for fierceness, competitiveness, size, or desire; you can change their mantra and yours to let them know they matter; their Truth matters; being exactly who they are, fully: this matters. It matters on the smallest and the grandest of scales. Don't ask them to be less than they are; encourage them to be all that they can be. And if that means fighting to win? Then so be it.

#ThisMatters