Accepting Womanhood/Adulthood
I remember how all throughout college, my girlfriends and I would periodically return to our never-answerable-question-until-time-told-us: Who will be the first amongst us to have a baby? And when that happens, what will it be like? We asked these questions, looking at each other in dazed wonderment, shaking our heads at the inconcievableness of it all. Motherhood, even amongst those of us who declared on a regular basis how much they could not wait to be mothers, just seemed too fantastical for us to even think about as reality.
Fast forward seven years later, and four babies birthed within the past year, and I find that I was the closest in predictions: the girls who coveted motherhood the most, had children later than the ones who seemed most unlikely to. What did surprise me about this first wave of motherhood in my peer circle was how uneventful it felt for me, personally. When I think about our college conversations, I think what fascinated us the most was what it would feel like to have our circle of friends expanded by beings completely dependent on us for their survival? How would my friend having a child change my life and vice versa?
The answer, on a certain level, is not much. Yes, I was overcome with emotions at different points during their pregnancies, and holding their babies, at how beautiful it all was. At how beautiful my friends were. And how excited I was to bear witness to the next phase of my friends’ lives as they pass on (or at least, attempt to), their greatness to their daughters and sons. But the reality was, my girl A is still the same girl I knew at 12, 18, 25, and I was just witnessing another part of life she was transitioning to. Nothing changed for me. A friend gave birth, and I’m still freaked out about the actual process of childbirth. Another friend deals with the stress of when to stop breastfeeding, and I listen, fully engaged and offering as much advice as I am equipped to give from the things I have read and heard other women talk about said issue. Another friend processes the life commitment she’s just made both to a tiny package of awesomeness and the partner who helped make it, and I sit in bewilderment at how she felt ready to take on such a task when I still feel like the possibility of the combination of words “motherhood” and “me” exist only in a parallel universe.
In the meantime, I’m dealing with my own life transitions as I set up a career and visions that I’m still in the process of creating via grad school and research projects in different cities and countries. I am feeding a wanderlust that was aching to break out fully since I was 15, when I took my first trip out of the country, on a class trip to Italy. I finally learned how to date in a way that lets the moments unfold as they need to as opposed to immediately sending myself into a tizzy with questions of: “is he the one? is this love? what is this? what are we? should I settle even if I am not wholly feeling him, because he’s stable and secure? Maybe I should not be so picky at 26, least I end up alone like all the women in their 30s I know who are freaking out about being alone? MAybe I should go another date with him, even though I am feeling like I want to be alone right now, least I end up alone….repeat ad nauseum.”
I am finally learning how to fully inhabit and get comfortable with the new skin I’m in, one in which I fully accept, love, and value myself. One in which I commit to manifesting my dreams and goals just as much as I committed to, and worked hard for, the realization of others’ goals and dreams. I have needed my entire 20s to arrive to this point, before I could evenbegin to think seriously about being someone’s partner and mother.
And this is the thing about being a woman that no one tells us when we are younger: everyone will arrive to themselves at different times, in different ways. And in our society, this reality, as it slowly dawns on us, creates a lot of distress and panic for women in particular. We as women are socialized to do everything together, and we do for the most part, until we graduate college. And then life takes over. And it takes many of us a few years just to get our balance semi-together and take care of ourselves. And for many, it takes a few more years to let the realization fully sink in that we, and only, we, are responsible for ourselves, and our happiness. That is some heavy shit to digest after 22 years of being lead by the hand on the path toward “success”!
And many women are unfairly made to feel that in between trying to figure out how to make our way in this world, in between trying to figure out who exactly we want to be in this world, we have to also be hyper vigilant about our romantic and reproductive lives at the same time as the rest of our peers, in ways that our male friends never feel the demand for. To me, this is the definition of crazy making, which I see manifested in so many different ways among the women in my professional and personal lives. And I really believe, that if we are committed to living in a productive, and healthy way in the 21st century that does not see us returning to a pre-1964 United States of America, we have to accept and live this fact, and all the personal and cultural changes it requires.
Some of us will be ready to be partners and mothers earlier than others. And this is okay. Some of us will prefer to commit their energies to the work that feeds them on a deep level, whether that be through their careers or through the home. And that is okay. Some of us will not want to have children. And that will be okay. Some of us will be ambivalent about children until we are 40, and then we might adopt. And that is okay. Some of us will not get our shit together as responsible adults until we’re 40, and that will be okay too.
The point is, we all have our own paths to walk, and nothing productive will come out of comparing our time-tables and paths to others. The best we can hope and give thanks for is that we have women in our lives who will walk with, and support us on our journeys, even during the moments when we have to give support from afar during divergent moments in the time-space continuum. Trusting that we will come back together again after we have learned the lessons we needed to learn to bring us to our higher and best selves, in order to teach these lessons to others.
This is what I am accepting about being an adult and woman as I reflect on my twenties and why they have been such a roller coaster ride. It has been such a relief to start this year with this acceptance, continuously grateful for the diversity of experiences I am able to witness and learn from through the community of inspirational women in my life who are taking this life adventure, one step at a time, full of integrity, love, and grace.
Turning arrows into flowers: My 20s thus far.
There is this story of the first recorded Buddha on the night that he achieved enlightenment, the forces of Mara shot arrows at him to distract him from his path as he sat under a tree. This is really scary right? But instead of getting scared, or running or trying to hide, Buddha continued sitting right where he was staying present in the moment, and those arrows turned into flowers.
I had a conversation with my friend last night about how not so long ago, like, two years ago, we were just going THROUGH it and feeling we were not in good places in life. At that time, I felt very stuck and very directionless. You know, having a serious, “what the fuck am I doing with my life and what am I going to do next?” I also was experiencing life moments that force you to confront your mortality and scarier, the mortality of your loved ones. There were days where I really could not see how shit was going to change or get better, and in the words of Iyanla Vanzant, having a serious Valley moment. Most of the times, all I could do was just literally put one foot in front of the other and even though nothing in life was showing me that at the time, know that things would not always stay the same forever. So suffice to say, I was not in a good place and was unsure how any of that was going to change.
But when I say, “not in a good place in life”, I see now that those moments were actually good moments for me, and that I was in fact, in a good place in life. Those seemingly dark moments were foundational lessons on how to turn my proverbial arrows in life into flowers, and I am so thankful for them. My “trials and tribulations” were wonderfully necessary experiences I needed to go through to help me learn more about who I am, what I am capable of going (ummm, feeling like anything actually), and what I felt like I needed to do next.
Those moments taught me lessons of the consequences of living your life in fear, of not knowing and acting off of your self worth, of compromising yourself, and not following with passion and determination what your heart, gut and soul pulls your forward to do. Having gone through those moments, so many of which were avoidable because of stated above reasons, I now know without a doubt that I never want to repeat those moments again, ever in life. Meaning, I know I won’t act in ways that are not supporting and affirming of my life and goals. Everyday that I am here expanding into a new community and life, I receive reminders in small and big ways, that I am exactly where I am supposed to be in life and that I am engaging in work and experiences that feeds my soul and will help me be a better participant in the world.
I have been thinking about that time period in my life a lot lately as I am faced with a new set of challenges during this growth process, and at first could not understand why. Now I understand that it’s because I have to remember to ask, “what am I supposed to learn in this moment?” because transitions never end. Every seemingly scary moment or obstacle can be a beautiful gift with a slight shift of perspective and focus on our personal goals. My arrows that were the mid-twenties of figuring out “what next?” have provided me gems of lessons that continue to help me live my life better than I have ever imagined.
Dr. Me, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Unknown Future (2009)
Getting back into the blogging thing has been difficult. Another reminder of how arduous it can be as we get older to get back into the swing of things when we have been out of practice for a while. And this all relates to me slowly exercising my writing/creating muscles again.
The above title aptly summarizes my life right now. For whatever reason today, I started thinking about Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove”, had an “aha” moment and the title came forth. I’ve been thinking for months lately about my knee-jerk, almost self-sabotaging reactions when it’s revealed to me in a crystal clear way that my life is seriously about to change. I’m thinking most right now about February, when I found out that I was accepted into a PhD program in Anthropology. The woman who is now my advisor emailed me about my early admission with info about a Fellowship I would receive, and asked that I call her at home that weekend to discuss further. Basically, in Academic terms, this woman handed me the keys to the city; an opportunity that many fight, scratch and bite over and would fly to the moon upon receiving such an amazing opportunity.
But what did I do and how did I feel? My stomach dropped to the floor and I instantly forwarded the letter to one of my best friends with the line, “We need to talk ASAP tonight! I’m freaking out and think this could be a mistake.” WTF you may ask? I had just started second-guessing the whole year process I had put myself through; GRE prep, taking the GRE twice, numerous grad applications and fellowships, requests for recommendations, writing 7 drafts of my Statement of Purpose and countless editing my 20 page writing sample. Was grad school really the right option for me? Did I really know what I was getting myself into applying for a DOCTORATE program when I initially started out looking for Master’s programs? A very smart acquaintance, who is getting his doctorate in Sociology and shares my interests in media and music, had nudged me the previous year along the PhD route. I had called him freaking out that I was not finding programs that would let me combine creative practice and theory and his query, “What about PhD programs in Sociology or Anthropology” was the inciting moment that lead me to where I found myself that February afternoon, 2009.
I was about 7 months in working at a film production company for a notable celebrity, and had finally felt like I’d landed the job I’d been searching for in film 4 years out of undergrad and working in various capacities in film and media. I had access to Hollywood, information and scripts that I hadn’t had before working mainly in the New York indie film world. The problem was, after the initial euphoria of YES! A gnawing thought that I had been suppressing for about 2 years finally popped up and refused to go away. I had been saying since I was 18 that I wanted to work in film, and after internships and jobs, decided that writing and producing was what I liked most, and only wanted to direct if they were serious passion projects, like the documentary that I am working on now. But lo and behold, I’d finally gotten a front seat view to what working as producer in Hollywood looked like and I was not particularly thrilled by the view.
This was NOT what I was expecting and disconcerting on many levels. For many years, people knew me as a person who wanted to take the film world by storm, and here I was starting to question whether this life and industry thrilled me in the same that it had in years before. I found myself slowly easing out of my Quarter-Life crisis to landing in a spot where I had to re-think my career path. And the feelings of unease and fear that engendered in me are a whole other conversation. I felt insecure on many levels because I hate giving up on something, and not seeing things through from beginning to end. I was looking at the fact that I spent more time and energy working on other people’s projects than my own, which fed a vicious cycle of masochistic dialogues on how I was NOT an artist because what did I have to show that supported that statement? And wasn’t going to grad school for Cultural Anthropology going to be another distraction away from doing that which I needed to do?
From February-April, I was the definition of angst and self-made confusion. And I say self-made because the thing is, I was listening more to my head than to what my gut and my heart was telling me. And if I listened more to my intuition, I would have admitted much earlier that it was time to face the music and admit that the idea of JUST being a film producer depressed me and I was no longer passionate about that. Whether I’ve always been aware of it or not, I was raised and groomed to be curious about the world, my role in it, and to actively take part in shaping the world to fit my visions of what I’d like to see. And the truth was, working on projects for film and television was too small of a container to fit my ideas that at times seem too big and unattainable.
Yet, I was given an opportunity to see if I could indeed explore the places, people, things and idea that quicken my pulse and excite my mind. I’ve been shown these past months that I’m about to enter a program that will indeed, let me be both creative and theoretical. More importantly, I’ve been given the chance to work on anything and everything that I want to do, which is what I have been searching to do from the very beginning.
And I still stop in the street at times, in shock, that I almost said NO to that. Simply because it meant that I would have to alter the path I initially set out on, to disrupt my comfort zones and move to another city with few friends, and essentially, start from scratch again as I forge another path and another career that I still cannot tell you what it will look like. I’m not fully there yet, but each day I feel lighter as I accept that I don’t know what the future holds, and not only is that okay, it’s part of this adventure that I’m excited to take.
The Roaring Twenties: What It’s all About
This is my second blog processing my journey through life and trying to figure out LIFE and what it all means (ha!). My first blog dealt with the transition from college into “the real world” as a post-student, and I can safely say that 2007 was my graduation from that limbo feeling and 2008 has brought a new chapter in life.
The Roaring Twenties is all about figuring out how to be and accept being an adult, trying to balance being a carefree, “enjoying life” twentysomething at the urgings of thirty/forty/fifty/sixtysomethings who are more the wiser, with all the expectations of achieving ultra success and changing the world as soon as possible from the same people of the same age groups in your family, friends and society. It’s about navigating the new frontier of the 21st century world with all it’s post-isms and post movements as a human, a woman, a Black, the “future of America and the world”, and figuring out my place and identity in it.
It’s about finding a creative way to channel all the questions, confusions, angst and existential crises that inevitably seem to plague those of us in this decade.
I doubt any answers will come from these musings, just more questions, but hopefully some peace of mind.
The Roaring Twenties 