Having Enough (In a Have-It-All World)

I am totally and completely blown away by a woman in Takoma Park, Maryland (my mother’s hometown, by the way) — a mom, artist, writer — who has just traveled to Rwanda on a mission to help one family and a village full of shining girls get an education and opportunities we Americans all usually take for granted.

Please check out Jen Lemen’s blog — her photos and stories and words and lessons have brought me to tears and a state of awe.  What she is teaching her daughter, through her own actions, is something I aspire to.  You go, Jen!

It’s been a while since I posted. Lots going on, good stuff, I’ll explain more later.  But, today I simply  must post the profound words of Hillary Clinton, all of them, as what she says is truly historic.  It doesn’t matter if you voted for her or not.  What she says about our country, our children, our history, and our dreams, will touch anyone who is awake.

You can watch the video here.  Or, if you like to drink in words with your eyes as I do, here is her full speech:

I want to start today by saying how grateful I am to all of you – to everyone who poured your hearts and your hopes into this campaign, who drove for miles and lined the streets waving homemade signs, who scrimped and saved to raise money, who knocked on doors and made calls, who talked and sometimes argued with your friends and neighbors, who emailed and contributed online, who invested so much in our common enterprise, to the moms and dads who came to our events, who lifted their little girls and little boys on their shoulders and whispered in their ears, “See, you can be anything you want to be.”

Thank you all and God bless you and God bless America.

I got one of my ultimate joys yesterday — sitting in a restaurant with three old friends, us four grown women laughing so loudly that others in the restaurant looked at us. It puzzles me when people are annoyed by laughter. I simply love the sound. (Except when it is at someone else’s expense.) But, generally, a group of friends laughing, to me, is just beautiful, one of life’s great gifts.

And, this particular group laughing was especially poignant. One friend lost her husband less than two years ago. Another was recently diagnosed with MS. And, I was just awed, talking with these women, looking at these women, so strong and so connected and so alive despite their hard times. I felt privileged to be laughing with them, and to be learning from the way they are handling their situations. Laughter not as denial, but as a way to experience the spectrum of life’s emotions, not just give into one. As a way to face challenges with grace and perspective. As a way to get through scary stuff with people we trust.

As I drove the 50 minutes home from this brunch yesterday, I thought about how I could’ve talked with these women for many more hours, how we barely scratched the surface in our two-hour, yearly catch-up session. And I felt lucky for that, too. How fortunate to feel that way, that the time spent together felt short.

I’ve written here before about how none of my closest friends live close enough to come over for tea. How some of my standby friendships have been shifting, even disappearing, as our lives change. And, yet, how my female friendships feed my soul in a way I feel I’d starve without. So, in the spirit of Having Enough, rather than focusing on my hunger for old friends in my neighborhood, or the loss of friendships I cherished, I decided yesterday to just enjoy the two hours with some amazing old friends 50 miles up the road, enjoy the connection and the laughter, and quit lamenting that I don’t experience it more often these days.

Funny enough, too, in working on my Having Enough attitude lately, and just letting go of focusing on any lacking, I am finding myself slowly connecting with more women in my community. I’ve had some great moments lately with women I’m just getting to know. It takes time to know others well enough to be the loud, laughing group of grown women in the restaurant. It takes shared experiences. Openness. And great good fortune.

A toast, to the laughter of friends.

This term came to me today, when talking with a woman who seems to feel the need to compare everything.  Not with malice, but compare nonetheless.

The comparison is often disguised as a compliment, and almost always lands in the other person’s favor. “Oh, your hips are so much narrower than mine.” “Your child is so much calmer than mine.”  ”Your house is so much cleaner than mine.”  (Please note that most of the time these statements are clearly untrue!)

Then, that begs the horrible back and forth that my DH and I jokingly refer to as the “YSS Dance.” (”You’re so skinny! No, you’re so skinny!”)  I love to dance, but for that one I will always rather sit out.

Nobody wins in a culture of comparison.  There is no right answer to those comments.  What, do you then insult yourself or insist that you, in fact, don’t sleep or clean your house? (I’ve tried this — “Really, you should see all the crumbs under the rug!” — but, ick.  What does that accomplish? Who does it make feel better?)

It’s hard not to join the dance, and feel the need to compare myself. And it often feels that if I don’t self-degrade or compare back in return (sometimes I just answer with silence), I’m seen as snooty or rude.  It’s a no-win situation.

Really, I just want to say, my silence is in honor of you!  You’re above this!  Can’t we just be comfortable with ourselves and each other?!  

At heart, that is what I think this is really about.  Being comfortable enough with ourselves — who we are, what we have, what we look like, all that stuff — that we don’t feel the need to always debate whether we are better or worse off than others.

I know, that’s not an easy task, and I certainly haven’t achieved it fully yet. Perhaps it’s hard-wired, and a crazy notion to think we can change this. But, you know, I’ll take crazy over the “YSS Dance” any day.  Why couldn’t we change this?

What do you think would happen if everyone vowed to stop these comparison conversations?  Just each and every person stop before saying the comparing thing. Or greet the comparison with a smile and silence. What would our conversations sound like, in the dressing rooms, on the playground?  

Do you think it would be different?  Would our culture change with this adjustment?

I’d sure like to try it and see. 

I had this odd dream the other night.

My DH and I were sitting at the foot of our bed watching one of my friends give us a “fashion show” of her new bathing suits. Only maybe she was actually modeling new plastic surgery for us, because my friend did not have her own body, she suddenly had a Victoria’s Secret body.

You know the one I’m talking about — large, perky breasts with just the right cleavage, then tiny, toned and fatless from the tummy down.  The body (with interchangeable heads) that prances in our faces in Victoria’s Secret commercials any time we turn on network television after 7 p.m.

So, in this dream, after a couple of my VS-bodied friend’s catwalks up and down our hallway-runway, I got annoyed at my husband for just being there, clear to both of us I was having issues with her body (and it’s potential appeal to my husband).

He said to me, smiling, “What’s the matter, Megan?  You’re comfortable with your body.”

And I snapped back, “Nobody’s that comfortable!”

I woke up, told him about the dream and had to laugh.  The exchange was oddly true-to-life.  And I had commented on those commercials the night before, in my usual feminist media studies teacher way, noting how often we see the ads even just watching a couple hours of TV a week.

Dream husband is right, I am generally comfortable with my body — but it was a long road getting here.  I went through high school in dance classes feeling fat and watching friends battle anorexia and bulimia, myself sometimes eating only an apple at school all day and then gorging when I got home, and even trying appetite suppresant pills a friend gave me (the only drugs I ever tried through high school and college!).  That was all with a rare mother who had a healthy body image, and being naturally thin myself.

It took years of talking and writing, finding friends with healthier body images, taking women’s studies classes in college, and intensely studying gender representations and media in graduate school to truly (almost completely) let go of those deep-seated body issues and feel really good in my skin.  I did my Master’s research on The Vagina Monologues, performed in the play three times (!), and I taught college classes in which we tore apart images of women in media.

And, still, I had this Victoria’s Secret dream.

The battle for healthy body image in this culture, for women and increasingly for men, is still raging as wildly as certain other undesirable wars.  Even young women (and not-so-young women) who are given every positive message at home must still deal with unrelenting media images of unrealistic, ridiculously seductive women’s bodies that supposedly define “perfection,” thus leaving us to simply buy more and more products in attempt to achieve an impossible look. (Airbrushing. Need I say more?)

I think often about how I will attempt to help my daughter through this inevitable fact of growing up now, female and American.

Then I come across a book like BODY DRAMA: Real Girls, Real Bodies, Real Issues, Real Answers by Nancy Redd and I get a breath of renewed hope for my dear little girl. Actually, I sing Hallelujah!!

When MotherTalk sent a call for reviewers of this new book, I emphatically pleaded my case to review it. I wanted to see what this twenty-something former Miss America swimsuit competition winner and Harvard women’s studies graduate had to say to all the young women out there about their bodies.

Bottom line, what Nancy Redd says, and shows, girls and women in this book is, in a word, revolutionary.

It’s not for the prim our faint-hearted, I warn you. Although I also think those are the ones who may need this book most. Nancy Redd leaves no taboo body topic undiscussed — or photographed — in this book, unlike any I’ve ever seen.  (Not at all shocking to this Vagina Monologues veteran, but I have no doubt this book will be burned in certain sectors, like many truth-telling tales before it.)

I actually worried a bit at first sight of chapters titled “Boobs” and “Down There” that she wasn’t going to deal with serious issues or take a feminist (read: woman-affirming) perspective.  But, in reading the book, I see that she uses these titles to ease girls into the chapters and make them more accessible.

Once inside, Nancy does the serious work of talking straight with her readers about real issues they may face, all the while underlying every discussion with a message to learn to embrace your body and respect yourself, and be healthy without striving for “perfect.”  She does an excellent job of tearing apart media images of women, in a comfortable “girlfriend” tone.

BODY DRAMA shows photos of (incredibly brave!) young women, and all their unmentionable body parts, to give the rest of us peace of mind that our bodies are “normal.”  (Seriously, I love these girls.)  And the book takes on airbrushing (hallelujah!) with a photo spread every person needs to see (page 240). 

This amazing young author set out to write the “book she wished she had” growing up female in America (and in the beauty pageant circuit) to help her deal with her body.  She uses important research (backed by a Dr. Angela Diaz, Director of the Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center), and courageously reveals her own very personal experiences, to give young women the tools to embrace themselves and all of their uncomfortable bits.  

This book is a gift to everyone, really — teenage girls, teenage boys, their parents.  It makes women real again in this culture of highly unrealistic images of women.

And she even taught this teacher a few things!  

In an interview, Redd says she faced a lot of scrutiny while writing this book, and I sincerely applaud her bravery and faith for continuing on and getting it published as it is.  She says her most important advice to young women and their mothers is “to talk!” She explains that, as close as she and her mother were, they never had “the talk,” as she calls it, saying, “nor did she share any of her personal body dramas with me, which left me at a total disadvantage growing up.”

I can relate to this.  As mothers, we all try our best to equip our daughters for this complicated world, while also just being women navigating this complicated world ourselves.  

For me, I will take Nancy’s advice and talk with my daughter about body dramas as she grows, and I’m saving this book as a tool for later, when we need to discuss some of the most uncomfortable body dramas (and especially ones I didn’t have to deal with as a teen myself — the body piercing stuff? bikini waxing?).  She will have plenty of body dramas. I have them. (Even still in my dreams!)  And Nancy Redd takes them on with courage, knowledge, humility and compassion.

Thank you, Nancy Redd, for BODY DRAMA, and for sending the message to women young and old and everywhere that our bodies, as they are, are enough.   

One day last spring, I typed “writer mama” into GoodSearch (a great do-good alternative to the typical search engines, BTW) and up came the world of Christina Katz. I’m still not quite sure why I GoodSearch-ed that term, but I am quite sure I was meant to connect with Christina, the original Writer Mama (or at least the most savvy, as she claimed the title first!), who lives and works in the lovely state of Oregon.

I read Christina’s great first book from Writer’s Digest Books, Writer Mama: How to Raise a Writing Career Alongside Your Kids and took her excellent online class, Platform-Building for Writers, from which this very blog was born. (She’s now hard at work on her top-secret next book for Writer’s Digest Books.)

Along with teaching hundreds of students through her Writers on the Rise site, book-writing, and publishing two zines, Christina has written over two hundred articles for magazines, newspapers, and online publications and has appeared on Good Morning America. She’s also a wife to a teacher-husband (woohoo!) and mother to one daughter (double woohoo!). In short, she is an example and a mentor to writer mamas everywhere (including me).

It is my great fortune that Christina invited me to be a new columnist for her zine, Writer Mama. (And she announced this yesterday on her very popular blog, so exciting!) I couldn’t be more thrilled about writing this column, which starts in January, and the topic she chose for me is more than perfect. (More details to come!)

Of course, it is only fitting that I asked the original writer mama to participate in a Four-Question Interview here at Having Enough. Her answers are insightful and telling of who she is, and why she is so successful at what she does (in short, because she loves it — at length, check out how her snappy mind works…).

1) What does “having enough” mean to you?

Today, it means that I have “enough” work on my plate and I have to say “No” or “Not now” to folks I hate to disappoint. But I think moms, and especially moms who write are challenged to prioritize all the time. And every once in awhile we realize that our “open door policies” need to be revisited.

2) What do you think about the concept of “having it all” in our culture?

I think that we already have enough. We are blessed to live in the most amazing country in the world with all of the freedoms and pleasures that come with that privilege. I can say “No” because I don’t need more, more, more. I have enough. I am enough. You are enough. And enough is enough.

3) How do you define success?

Heeding my inner calling and growth gaged by my instincts, not external measurements.

4) Can you describe a defining moment in your life when you had to choose between “having enough” or pushing for more? (And how did it turn out for you?)

Hmm. This is an interesting question because I am really a “Yes, please, I’ll have some more” kind of person. So I guess I don’t see it as black and white. I see it as there are times when more is appropriate” and there are times when enough is enough. I think the key word here is “pushing.”

The definition of pushing implies will. Will can be fine in the sense of being strong-willed or knowing your own will. But will becomes a problem when it’s “self will run riot,” as they say in twelve step programs.

In other words, when will is out of control, that’s a problem. Be we mustn’t be too quick to judge.

What I notice is that most women, including myself, are afraid to ask for more. And so we don’t. And then we feel crummy. And perhaps this makes us more willful. Powerlessness is not a good feeling.

I’d say that the solution is to expect more and ask for more with realistic and reasonable expectations. And be sure that the more that you are working on is actually meaningful to you personally.

Nature is wired for more. So it’s not unnatural. There is the sowing and the reaping. Also there is so much more than meets the eye going on in this world. These are perennial truths. So I think we need to be careful not to wage war against “more.”

More is essentially good. Except when it’s already enough.

Thanks, Christina! Readers, what are your thoughts on “more”?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about friendship, and how much it plays into my idea of success and fulfillment in my life. As a woman in my mid-30’s and a new mother, I am finding myself in major transition with some of the friendships I’ve had for years.

For some of us, our lives are taking us in very different directions. For others, we are seemingly going in the same direction, but that seems to draw out even more differences in how we are approaching certain life choices. And then there’s this phenomenon of making new friends, which we all do throughout our lives, and gauging which are the temporary or situational ones and which may stick around until we’re old ladies in purple hats together (both kinds being OK).

I’m realizing that successful friendships don’t necessarily have anything to do with whether two people (in my case, usually two women) are the same age or marital status or whether or not we both have children. Some of my single friends are closer to me than ever, while others have all but disappeared; and some of my mom friends and I can talk about everything still, while walls are being built with others. And I’m just beginning to make new potential friends in vastly different life stages and situations.

So, I’ve been trying to put my finger on what, then, seems to be the “sticking factor” — that intangible connection that allows a friendship to really survive through years and changes. I still don’t have a real answer, but I’ve come up with a few thoughts:

1. Commitment to the Friendship — What I’m seeing is that when two friends have equal commitment to a friendship, it can usually work no matter what differences arise. This commitment could manifest vastly differently with different friendships, but the key is that it is in balance.

For instance, balance could mean two friends are equally committed to talking once every few months, and have a lovely conversation catching up and reminiscing, then are fine with not hearing from one another until the seasons turn again. Or, it could mean two friends who are there for each other through thick and thin, dealing with the everyday details and the life traumas, talking often and going after one another to see what’s up if there hasn’t been contact in a given week. Either scenario can work, but if there’s one friend who wants a holiday card relationship and the other who wants the BFF relationship, that’s where things fall apart.

2. Basic Values – The most successful friendships I have and have seen are between people who share a set of basic values in common. Now, this certainly doesn’t mean they agree on everything (how boring would that be?), but at core there is a shared understanding of foundational values, such as how we treat people, how we view honesty, loyalty, life purpose, etc. It’s not about whether two friends share the same pastimes or favorite books that matters, but these fundamental values. When they are out of line I think it’s harder to stay connected.

3. Willingness to Face the Unpretty Stuff — Recently, a friend told me that a friend of hers (who I don’t know) said women who argue with their friends are “wierd.” In our culture, it seems that it is more acceptable for women to disagree with, argue with, or break up messily with men than it is for these normal occurrences to happen between women. It’s part of what Oprah calls “the disease to please” among women, the need for us to be so nice that we would rather let a friendship silently fade away than deal with an issue that may be less than pleasant to take it to the next level.

I think the deep, evolving friendships that stand a chance for the long haul (this may not apply for the holiday card friends) must have moments of disagreement, or bad behavior, and then the getting through it. Pretending everything is always pretty, in my book, is a recipe for denial and distance. This isn’t to say I argue often with my friends, or enjoy the ugly stuff, but I think the friends that last tacitly agree that we take the good, bad, and the ugly of one another, and talk about it.

***

Losing friendships can be heartbreaking, and finding new ones challenging. But, the joy I get out of the friendships that stick — and even the ones that fade away mutually after their purpose has been served — is one of the best parts of life for me. I can’t imagine calling myself “successful” without close friends whom I can really be myself with. After all, if we can’t share it, where’s the fun in it?

This somewhat convoluted train of thought will continue; there’s way more to say on this topic. In the meantime, though, I’d love to hear your thoughts about “sticking factors” that make friendships last.

While I often discuss books on this blog, this is my first official Mother Talk book tour blog entry. I answered the call to review February Flowers, by first-time novelist Fan Wu, because it is about a friendship between women in Asia, a topic and setting that greatly interest me.

I enjoyed Wu’s easygoing prose, and I loved her glimpse into Chinese university life. But, I must admit, the book left me with an unsettled feeling.

I think that is, in a way, what Wu intended. Her descriptions of this central, young friendship will ring familiar to most women, regardless of ethnicity, at least in some ways. It is unequal; Ming (17) looks up to Yan (24) and is often mocked by her. It is consuming; Ming (bookish and shy, ever-pleasing her parents) longs for the excitement and worldliness Yan (streetwise and shunned in her hometown) offers her. And, while this aspect may not play into every female friendship to the extent it does here, it is sexually charged; Wu paints a clear picture of Ming’s attraction to Yan, and perhaps to women in general.

What unsettles me about the book is not the theme of lesbianism (please, I went to grad school in Madison for feminist studies) but more the feeling that Ming is ultimately a woman who forfeits her authentic self.

Many have called this a “coming-of-age” novel, but my read was that Ming never came of age. She never shed her adolescent fears and embraced her true passions to become a woman who felt comfortable in her own skin. It doesn’t matter if her passions grew as her love for books and music, for speaking her mind, or for relationships with women. It doesn’t matter if she is straight or gay or bi. What bothered me is that she is a character who refuses to really try, or engage, with any of it.

Wu’s voice, as Ming, is of a girl (and, later, woman) afraid of her own feelings. We get glimpses of Ming’s imaginative, poetic nature — as she describes to Yan walking through a pitch-black cotton field and conjuring up a blue sky and pink flowers so as not to be scared. We see Ming’s passion for playing the violin, as she is when she meets Yan on a remote dorm roof. We see her burgeoning sexuality and romantic longing, as she watches Yan prance around in heels, looks at forbidden pictures of naked women and starts to date men.

And, yet, the modern woman Ming becomes, described through Wu’s masterful first-person weaving, seems remote and cold-hearted. She never lets herself experience real passion — just a clung-to memory of a, let’s face it, dysfunctional teenage friendship/unrequited love.

The Chinese culture in this novel is important, and my cultural bias as an American woman reader should be called out. Ming’s parents and her culture, a struggle between conservative and progressive, influence her disconnect. But, Wu clearly shows us modern China, and pretty modern Chinese parents (her mother tells her not to expect everyone to approve of her life decisions).

I realize my ethnocentricity in believing the sky’s the limit for this young woman (coming out in China is something I can only imagine the complexity of), but I can’t help it — I’m bothered by the way Ming declines to claim her life. She views Yan as her only salvation, and does not realize that she can merely look within herself. She has many chances to come of age, to become her own woman, but, to risk spoiling the ending, she settles for less and we are not sure that she ever will take a real chance to be happy.

Perhaps she will change, and that may be Wu’s strategy in the book’s open conclusion — to leave hope for Ming. But, Ming grows into a woman who chooses to hide, to compartmentalize, who chooses self-protection over love (for others and for herself). She has created her own chains. Yan, or Ming’s fantasy of Yan, will not be able to unchain her; she must do it herself.

Perhaps the book’s brilliance is in how it left me with this unsettled angst and frustration with Ming. It clearly touched on some of my own issues and judgments. I spend much of my time reading books that validate living authentically and interconnectedly, and trying to do so in my own life, so this book offered me a view of the opposite. It was good for me to get some yang with my yin (pun intended), to see from another perspective (on many levels, personal, cultural, and otherwise) how one could take a different path and hold back.

The book actually relates very much to my blog’s theme of “having enough” because it, more than any other I’ve read in recent memory, illustrates so clearly that if we do not embrace who we are, what we love to do and who we want to be with, we will drift, dissatisfied and lonely (and fantasizing about “what ifs”) through our days.

So, while February Flowers did not blow me away with excitement, it did get under my skin, and that is a testament to Wu’s writing. Wu succeeded in making Ming real for me, as disappointed as I was with her choices as she grew older. So real, in fact, that I want to call her up before she enters the next unpublished scene, give her a good verbal slap in the face and say: Live, girl! This is not a dress rehearsal!

For more great woman-focused books and discussion like this, visit Mother Talk.

I’m honored to have the second of my series of Four-Question Interviews be with author Deborah Siegel. Deborah is a Ph.D., writer and consultant specializing in women’s issues. She is the author of the new book, Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild and has written about women, sex, feminism, contemporary families, and popular culture for a variety of publications, including The Guardian, The Huffington Post, The American Prospect, Psychology Today, The Progressive, The Mothers Movement Online, and on her blog, Girl with Pen.

I was introduced to Deborah through Miriam Peskowitz, also an author I admire who is now becoming a colleague and friend. Another academic feminist now writing “on the outside,” Miriam is author of The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars and the forthcoming Daring Book for Girls, with Andrea Buchanan, with whom she also founded Mother Talk. (BTW, I got a sneak peek at the Daring Book when Miriam asked me to do a little story editing of her early chapter drafts — I can tell you it’s a must-read, soon-to-be-classic!)

Knowing this group of women is exciting, because they have much to say that matters, about many topics, including Having Enough. Deborah’s answers to my four questions blew me away — her candor, knowledge and insight made me stop and just breathe for a bit. I bet they do the same for you…

1. What does “having enough” mean to you?

Nothing says “retool” like a bout of bad depression. Depression was horrid (wouldn’t wish it on my enemies), but depression was also my teacher. Like marriage or childbirth does for some people, depression divided my life into a “before” and an “after.” Before, my goals were all about an end. After, everything became about the journey. Before, I could not have defined “having enough”; there was always something more to achieve. After, the most important goal in my life became to love well and be well loved.

Having enough, to me, means awakening to that boundless sense of compassion we are all capable of feeling—for ourselves, for others—and realizing that we are already, with all our human imperfections, enough.

2. What do you think about the concept of “having it all” in our culture?

It’s interesting to me how the lexicon around “having it all” keeps changing. In the 1980s, having it all meant shoulder pads, diapers, and the corner office. Then came “juggling,” the flipside of which, of course, was “dropping the ball.” There was also “balance,” which similarly implied its opposite: falling down.

Now we have “sequencing” (you can have it all, just not all at once!) and its still more recent correlative, “on ramping and off ramping” (a terminology which shifts the burden for making work and family work together to workplaces instead of individuals). Instead of talking about “work/life balance,” some now talk about “work + life fit” —a vast improvement, in my opinion. What I find most heartening, though, is the way we are finally beginning to widen the conversation about “having it all” to include men.

To me, having it all never seemed possible unless there was a partner—male, female, or hired—in the picture, doing their share to keep things going at home. I remember coming across a book once called Halving It All, which focuses on the ins and outs of shared parenting. I think that’s a very clever—and much-welcome—riff.

3. How do you define success?

Borrowing from a writer I admire, I would say that “success” means living in chapters and giving yourself fully to the chapter you are on. It means embracing the present, learning to cohabit with discomfort, and paying attention to your heart.

4. Can you describe a defining moment in your life when you had to choose between “having enough” or pushing for more? (And how did it turn out for you?)

I took an extended break during graduate school, when I was ABD (all-requirements-for-PhD-completed-but-for-the-dissertation, or, in layterms, all-but-done). I had hit a point where I just couldn’t push myself any further and needed a change of path.

I took a 6-month leave of absence as a precursor to a possibly more permanent leave, left the Midwest, moved to Manhattan, and gave myself full permission to be satisfied without completing the degree. That license liberated me. After six years of pushing myself toward a single goal that had lost its meaning once I knew that I didn’t want to go on the academic job market, I allowed myself free reign to reinvent.

The irony was this: Once I allowed myself to say “no, enough,” I was finally able to
choose “yes.” I finished my dissertation, graduated with my PhD, and went on to become a writer–my longtime dream.

How do you relate to Deborah’s answers? Have you had a “having enough” turning point?

I recently read a book called Women Confidential: Midlife Women Explode the Myths of Having it All by psychologist/”career guru” Barbara Moses, Ph.D. Moses’ book is based on her twenty years of counseling, an ongoing survey of thousands of women, and in-depth interviews with a selective group of “interesting” midlife women. She says of this group, I love this:

“In spite of the temptation to describe these women as successful, I call them interesting because they have defined success on their own terms. Like many women, I struggle with the word successful…”

She goes on to describe how some are traditionally successful businesswomen, while others left career paths for lives of leisurely country living or volunteer work. All are university-educated, two-thirds have children, and they “respresent all the tangled possibilities” in partner relationships. Then she says:

“Regardless of their path, the women understand the choices they have made and can reflect on what was and wasn’t wise. They accept who they are instead of endlessly second-guessing decisions they have made (and if they had any bitterness, they have moved on). They are excited about their futures. As the French say, they are bien dans sa peau, they feel good in their skin.”

So, what do you think? Does this sound like a fair description of success to you? Not the traditional description of success and “having it all,” at least, a more realistic image of what we can aspire to at midlife.

Anyway, the book is an interesting collection of insights from these women, covering topics from corporate life, approval-seeking, friendships, kids (having them or not), marriage, midlife decisions, and more. Here’s an abbreviated version of her “Summary Dish: Fourteen Secrets of Success for Work and Life from Women for Women”:

1. Know and act on what is really important to you.
2. Undrestand what you are really good at.
3. Be authentic.
4. Define yourself independently of your roles–as mother, daughter, worker, leader, friend, partner.
5. Make your own decision. (Drop people-pleasing.)
6. Pay attention to the niggling voice that says, “I’m not happy.”
7. Think in terms of life chapters. (You can have it all, but not all at once.)
8. Cherish and grow your friendships.
9. Give back to individuals and the community.
10. Invest in yourself, and stretch yourself.
11. Accept others for who they are.
12. Edit out the stuff that doesn’t add value to your life.
13. Have a healthy relationship to money.
14. Be kind to yourself and others. (This is perhaps the most important secret of all.)

So, readers, what do you think? If you’re a midlife women, does this ring true? If you’re a younger woman, do these wisdoms make sense? They do to me, and this book supports for me what “Having Enough” is all about — being real, being authentic, being kind, generous, making mistakes, letting things go, struggling and learning, becoming ourselves.