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Introduction | 1, 2, 3, 4 Chapter One The Forgotten Self
Several years ago, I was on a plane to California to attend a family celebration when I happened to sit next to a very engaging woman in her thirties. We struck up a conversation, and as women sometimes do, we told each other about our lives. "Val," as I’ll call her, was thirty-four, had two young children, and was flying to a business convention. She had also recently separated from her husband. As she told me her story, I couldn’t help but think how much she spoke for so many women I’d met and worked with over the years. Though her story is her own, so universal were many of her feelings and conflicts that she seemed almost to speak for the dilemma of women in our time. "Until six months ago, I ran everything I thought and felt through the filter of ‘What would Richard think?’ " She paused and looked at me, looking to see if I understood. "Don’t get me wrong. I had my opinions. I didn’t submerge them for his. But whatever I thought, whatever I felt, always, it went through my mind: ‘What would Richard think about this? What would Richard want?’ "I had another filter, too," she continued. "It was ‘not good enough.’ I’d worry, ‘Is the house clean enough? Is my cooking good enough? Did I help the kids enough with their homework?’ Even though I worked full-time at my job just like him, I’d think, ‘Am I doing a good enough job being a wife and mother?’ " "When I discovered that he was having an affair, after he insisted over and over again that he wasn’t, I was permanently freed from ever having to make him happy." But she wasn’t free—not really. "I’m never content or satisfied with myself," she told me. "I reevaluate everything at the end of the day. I’d get together with a friend, for example, and then afterward I’d think, ‘Should I have asked her more about her kids, more about her?’ I’m always second-guessing myself. And I always think I’m short-changing something or somebody. If it’s not my family, it’s my job. "And I keep trying on other people’s feelings and opinions for size. I’m glad that I do, in one way," she reflected. "I want to be open, I wouldn’t want to be rigid and hardened so that other people don’t affect me. But it gets exhausting, to have that much static and so many voices in my head. What a relief it would be if I could listen to others but stand by my own feelings with more conviction!" We spoke about other things for a while. Then she went back to telling me the rest of her story. "Richard’s been seeing a therapist," she said, "and he wants to get back together with me. And if I just follow my heart, I will let him. There is a part of me that still loves him. Also, he is the father of my children. But there is the part of me that says, ‘Here is your chance to have something better.’ I can feel how exciting that might be, but of course there are no guarantees. So I can feel both of these parts of me, but what I can’t get my hands around is the gray in between. "How does anyone really know what to do? It’s so easy for me to lose track of myself," she said in frustration. "Much of the time, I feel like I’m in neutral, ready at a moment’s notice to go with the flow of someone with a stronger opinion."
As women we are destined to confront a fundamental challenge that colors practically every day of our lives. On the one hand, we must respond to, notice and be true to who we genuinely are, what we genuinely think and feel in our own unique and inimitable way. For many of us, the pulse of our internal lives beats strongly. We are aware of how we feel—sometimes, perhaps, more than we want to be. Yet this is our gift, one that we must find a way to honor. At the same time, we are drawn to connect. We are drawn to follow that urge inside us, that pull of the tide to respond to others, to take their feelings and needs into account, to reach for that moment of intimacy and communion, to tend the web of relationships that sustains (and sometimes smothers) us, and, if we are responsible for dependent children, to fulfill our responsibility to take care of them to the best of our ability, even when it extracts a great cost from ourselves. Somehow we must balance these two forces. We must bring them together so that neither one cancels the other out. We must find a way to make them work in tandem so that who we truly are enriches all the people we touch, and so that the connections we have with the important people in our lives mirrors, validates and makes stronger the woman we are inside. Unfortunately, very few women have been taught how to balance these two forces. Very few have been encouraged as young girls to hold on tightly to who they really are; very few have been told that they have an inner voice that is theirs and theirs alone. Instead, they often learn the intricate arts of developing and maintaining connection at a high cost—at the expense of their true selves.
Tend and Befriend A few years ago, a group of six psychologists from UCLA announced the results of a study showing that, while each person is an individual, in general men and women react in very different ways to stress. Specifically, the psychologists said that under stress, men’s bodies automatically turn to the strategy known as "fight or flight" (gearing up either to fight or to make a hasty retreat), whereas women’s bodies automatically prepare them to do what the researchers called "tend and befriend." That is, when stress mounts, a woman’s own hormonal system naturally inclines her first to protect and nurture her children (tend) and then to turn to a social network of supportive females (befriend). This, the researchers said, was the biggest difference between men and women in their responses to stress. This finding didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me, though perhaps it shouldn’t have, was that the research team, headed by a woman, was nervous about publishing the study because they worried that it might be used to stereotype women negatively. "I hope women don’t find it offensive," Shelley Taylor, the lead researcher, told a Washington Post reporter. "We’re trying very hard not to have people say, ‘Aha! We always thought that women should be at home taking care of their children.’ " How sad! Here was a study showing that under stress, women are more likely than men to try to make friends instead of enemies, and the researchers still felt the need to worry that it could be used to support keeping women in a circumscribed, traditional role. If only this tendency could be bottled and given to men! "No man is an island, entire unto himself," wrote the poet John Donne. Rare is the woman who needs to be told this. Most women, in fact, would probably find it laughably self-evident. The human species has survived because of communities of women tending and befriending, protecting and sharing food, resources and information with each other. Your connections—your relationships—are not separate from your sense of self, as they usually are with men; they are a part of you, included as much in your experience of yourself as your talents and abilities, or even your arms and legs. Chances are, you can feel a tear in the fabric of one of your relationships right in your body. Why can a man go for months without calling his family, or forget to send birthday presents, and not have it bother him? Of course, part of the reason is that less is expected of him because "he’s a man." But it’s also true that he literally doesn’t feel the break in the relationship the same way you do. —Reprinted from I Know I'm in There Somewhere: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner Voice and Living a Life of Authenticity by Helene Brenner by permission of Gotham Books, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright © 2003 by Helene Brenner. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission. Next page | The pull toward connection leaves women vulnerable |
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