Archive for 'Stages of Life'
The Siren Shoes and the Fairy Tale Sisters
Why do we love high heels?
They hurt our feet, put our back out, prevent running or walking rapidly. Looking sexy and having longer legs seems more important to us than being able to move fluidly and with grace. Many women wouldn’t dream of torturing themselves with high heels, while others cannot imagine a life in flats.
Magic
Shoes are connected with change and magic: Cinderella wore glass slippers to the ball where she met her Prince. Dancing in them would have been an excruciating experience. Her sisters were willing to cut their toes off to make the shoes fit. Were they really so keen on the Prince, or was it the shoes? Dorothy had only to click her ruby glass slippers to return from Oz to Kansas. Shoes themselves are often made by Leprechauns or Pixies or other magical creatures.
The custom tying of an old shoe to car bumpers of newlyweds dates back to a time when the bride threw shoes instead of a bouquet to the bridesmaids and her father gave her old shoes to the bridegroom to take into their new home. Freudian theory places shoes as a sexual symbol. Wearing expensive but impractical shoes can be a way of signalling wealth. If you arrive by limo or taxi you don’t have to worry about whether you can walk in your shoes.
It’s easy to start a conversation at a business women’s networking event around shoes. “I love your shoes” is a great ice-breaker. For some women wearing high heels simply complements the line of their suits. For others high heels are more about feminine bondage than bonding. Shoes are something a woman buys herself. They are not only objects of desire in their own right but can be symbols of success and self-expression. Few women wear high heels all the time – most vary the shoes and the heels to suit the occasion.
Shoes replace hats
Shoes seem to have taken over the role that hats once filled for Western women. Changing shoes can be a way of changing our mood. The deep pleasure of kicking off our shoes as we get in from work, or the anticipation we feel as we climb into our favorite dance shoes are transition points in our day. Shoes retain their magical power to signal a transformation.
The modern woman moves her own shoes from house to house – often creating special storage areas to accommodate them. The average woman owns around 30 pairs of shoes. We still like our sparkly shoes. We know the time will come when we have to click our heels together. And we know we aren’t in Kansas anymore.
Tags: gender, professional women, shoes
Rethinking Youth
It really comes down to attitude.
I went to the eye specialist a while ago and came out with a clean bill of health and a new prescription for glasses to take care of the inevitable effects of “Mother Nature and Father Time”, as my ophthalmologist is so fond of saying. The good news is, I can see much better than before.
The bad news is …
I can see much better than before. With my old glasses, I could fool myself into believing that the ravages of time had left me unaffected, relative to my peers. They were showing their age. My reflection, on the other hand, showed less evidence of it. And, in my vanity, I was rather proud of how I had been able to preserve my youthful look.
Uh-huh. The application of new eyewear gave me cause to pause as I looked into my usually friendly make-up mirror and saw my face, warts and all. Well, okay, I didn’t see any warts. What I did see was a long white hair growing out of my chin. It had smaller companions sticking defiantly and coarsely out of a variety of other areas of my face too. There were little blue and plum coloured veins spidering their way over my cheeks, heading for a nose that contained cavernous, moon-cratered pores. And the lines on my forehead and around my eyes resembled cracked earth at five thousand feet.
Rethinking
This new knowledge of myself compelled me to rethink my perspective as a “person of youth” and to dive for my tweezers and cover-up make-up with renewed fervor. And, more seriously, (or perhaps desperately), it has obliged me to look differently upon the whole notion of what constitutes a youthful woman. Thinking more deeply about it, I recall having met some very young eighty-year-old women and some very old thirty-year-old women as well.
It really comes down to attitude.
In a youthful eighty year old, it is not difficult to look past the creases, blotches and saggy bits that typically adorn their faces, and notice the aliveness in their eyes; the curiosity they show about things and people; and the energy they put into every day. It is this aliveness that makes them compelling and attractive. Young, old people are always learning. They are not content to sit on the sidelines of life simply because their bodies are in decline. They get on with their lives and inject into them the balm of good humour and the gracious resignation that allows them to look in the mirror and see more than the spectre of the grim reaper looking back at them. They accept themselves, as is, without regret and I would guess that those close to them love and admire them all the more for it.
Maybe for me, there will always be some measure of vanity but I’d like to think that as I age, I’ll also be lucky enough, and wise enough, to retain an aura of youth simply by being less interested in me and more interested in the people and things around me.
Gwyn Teatro
Tags: baby boomers, Gwyn Teatro, leadership
National Dishonor Society: High School Tales
Foreword
My high school classmates have recently taken to the virtual world to share stories secreted away for decades. After reading Betsey’s roll-on-the-floor-laughing tale, I asked permission to share it with 3Plus’ readers. Please enjoy this humorous retrospective on coming of age in the late 60′s – early 70′s. And if you think Betsey’s story is an anomaly, consider that after reading Betsey’s tale of dishonor, two more classmates came out of the closet and shared similar feats of dishonor in the halls of Swampscott High.
National Dishonor Society
From the Harrowing Escapades Department
In our senior year of high school, Sue, Carol and I took our one permissible “tardy” per year and borrowed Roger’s car (thank you, Roger — what a great clunker that was!) to go to Lynn District Court to support a friend being tried for marijuana possession. Somehow Sue’s mother, who worked in Swampscott High School’s food services department, found out where Sue was and showed up at the courthouse, where Mother of Sue literally dragged Sue out by the ear.
Carol and I drove back to school — it was still morning — and claimed our one free tardy (my first tardy in 12 years), and went to our respective classes.
Then the other shoe dropped…
and we were called to the principal’s office (another first…). Sue and I were interrogated by a group of school administrators sitting around a table, including Mr. Roger, principal – emphasis not on “pal”- and Mrs. McVeigh, assistant school princi-not-pal. They asked whether we had attended parties where “they passed around that LSD pipe and those marijuana sugar cubes.” We honestly answered, “No.”
We all received an “internal suspension” (for what, exactly, I’m still not sure), and each of us was made to sit alone in a supply closet for an hour a day to consider our offenses. (Remember those supply closets between the classrooms?) Anyway, my second or third day in the supply closet, the steam radiator was blowing heat — it must have been 90 degrees in there — so I opened the big bay window and sat on the window seat (OK, ledge) admiring the view of Fisherman’s Beach. I remember it was really nice. Peaceful. Until…
At some point, Mrs. McV came out into the parking lot and saw me sitting in the window. She screamed, “DON’T JUMP!!” and ran back into the building to save my life. The suspension was called off.
There were repercussions
I was barred from the National Honor Society. (“Your superiors determined that your character was lacking,” Mr. Roger said to me when I asked him about it.) I was lucky to get into Simmons College, which my mother had attended — as you can imagine, my recommendations were also lacking.
Betsey Hartford
Nice to be a part of history, isn’t it?
Betsey Hartford is a writer and president of Signature Communications, a Boston-area direct marketing agency working with nonprofit organizations and universities. She can be reached at betsey@signaturecom.com.
Tags: 1960's, high school, national honor society
Taking a Look at the Comfort Zone
For a couple of decades now, we have been contemplating the dangers of being in The Comfort Zone.
“Step out of your Comfort Zone“, we are told, ” Growth and achievement do not live there. Get out! “
- How long is it OK to stay in our comfort zone?
I can, of course, see the importance of stretching; challenging ourselves to take risks, and encouraging others to do the same. After all, if we choose to stay cocooned for too long, the Universe will find a way of catapulting us from the comfort place into foreign territory anyway. Better to make a choice for change than have it foisted upon us, right?
But, (and there is one), a place of comfort seems to have become somewhere in which none of us would want to be caught dead. And, if we find that we are feeling comfortable, it’s possible that this, in itself, creates an uneasiness that causes the devil on our shoulder to whisper something about not doing enough or being enough or living up to our potential.
Wikipedia defines The Comfort Zone as, a behavioural state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition.
That’s one perspective.
Judith Bardwick, who wrote Danger in the Comfort Zone (first published in 1991), refers to it as a place where our sense of entitlement hangs out. Dr Bardwick’s book discusses the habit of expecting something for nothing and our tendency toward righteous indignation when we don’t get it.This is another perspective.
If we were to subscribe to the latter one, it’s easy to see how being in the comfort zone can be interpreted negatively.
On the other hand, if we were to view it simply as a place in neutral territory, it could very well have its benefits. Here’s what occurs to me from that vantage point:
- The Comfort Zone can be a place of planning and reflection.
Often, when we are in the middle of change, there is internal noise that eclipses our ability to fully grasp what we are learning. We simply want to get through it and come out the other end relatively unscathed.
I think though, when the turmoil created by change dies down, the neutrality of our more comfortable place allows for the opportunity to reflect on what we have learned and to plan for what comes next.
- The Comfort Zone can be a place of respite
We all know that the pace of change is unrelenting. In many ways it’s exciting. On the other hand, sometimes we simply need to step back and take a deep breath. Giving ourselves a short break from the pressure and risks of unrelenting “newness” just might, in the long run, help us re-energize and go back in with greater focus than we otherwise might have.
So, to me, the danger does not lie in being in the comfort zone. It lies in staying there too long. The question is, how long is too long?
Anais Nin once said, “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Perhaps it is then that we know it’s time to step out; when we realize staying in the comfort zone is no longer serving us, or anyone else; and when comfort is in danger of morphing into pain.
What do you think?
Gwyn Teatro
Tags: comfort zone, Gwyn Teatro, leadership, Women in business, Work/life balance
Caregiver: an increasing role for Boomer women
Suddenly we’re faced with the necessity – or the looming reality – of continuing to manage every other aspect of our lives while we balance our parents’ needs, too.
Another balancing act
We Baby Boomer women have issues.
We were the first generation to have equal rights as women: equal rights to work full time while doing everything else that women have always done, that is.
We were the first generation to have true reproductive freedom with the advent of The Pill and legalized abortion; we were also the first generation to grieve the loss of friends to a horrific new virus, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). We invented what today we can’t imagine living without: cell phones, microwaves and the internet.
We grew up in the age of sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. We believed we could do it all; have it all; never grow into the generation that couldn’t be trusted past age 30.
We’re the generation that believes that 50 is the new 30 – just watch us, still rockin’ out on stage or in our living rooms, trying to out-hike, out-play and out-work our kids.
Older generation
And now we’re the older generation. We’re squeezed between our responsibilities to our kids (our pride and joy on whom we have lavished perhaps too much stuff) and our parents – those people who forced our rebellion and with whom our relationship has painfully adjusted over the years.
We’re struggling with keeping our own standard of living while we set our kids free and hope they learn to swim on their own. We have jobs that are often intense and exhausting and additionally struggle to find a balance while we realign our new priorities.
Many of us have waved the white flag of retreat. Church attendance is down; social clubs are dying out with the elders; we and our kids are staying at home connecting with our friends via Facebook.
We have disconnected at a time when we need even more connections to face the next chapter in our lives which has come swiftly and often times unexpectedly: caring for our parents.
Need to connect
We need to reconnect, and deep down we know it. But it’s hard when you’re juggling the number of tasks we’re juggling, and trying to do them all perfectly. When we’re home for the day, we just want to burrow in.
We need to laugh – and not just LOL at Youtube videos.
We need to share our stories and to listen to other peoples’ stories.
We need to reach outside our favorite 30 minute sitcoms, our cutthroat reality shows and our dramas of crime and punishment – but we still want to be entertained while we learn.
And we need to feel that deep contentment that making real, personal connections brings to us.
Sharon K. Brothers has worked in the field of senior care for the past 3 decades, leading support groups in person for many of those years. She is currently EVP of Caregiver Village a new virtual community offering support and encouragement, aimed at reducing the feelings of isolation of baby boomer women and others with caregiver responsibilities.
Tags: career transition, Caregivers, Professional Woman, Work/life balance
Where Can a Woman Find a Room of Her Own?
By Liza Donnelly
Tags: liza donnelly, room of my own, woman cartoon
Beat graduate unemployment! Head to China
Being summoned (not invited) to the head table is an honour
I recently left Britain to try my luck in China, knowing that my homeland will only benefit from having one unemployed graduate fewer. Three weeks ago, I came to Jinan, a city of 5million about 200 miles south of Beijing, to begin a teaching job. Before moving here, I was told by one expat that, “You cannot describe the Chinese way of doing business. You can only experience it.” It has certainly been an experience.
We Need Most of You
I work at a privately-owned chain of language schools, all run by a single manager. Companies here are very hierarchical: there are strict divisions between the staff and the management, and between the Chinese and foreign employees. Good manners are considered hugely important. There are days when I feel physically drained by the effort of being polite to so many people. My boss is very friendly, but there is no doubt that the business is his own personal fiefdom. At the first meeting of the semester, he gave a short speech about the code of conduct, ending with a rather downbeat pep talk for the teachers: ‘I hope you will be very happy here, because we need all of you…well, most of you’.
The Head of the Table
It was probably an empty threat, but in theory he has the power to withdraw all our work permits and force us out of the country. However, he seems quite fond of me, and refers to me as ‘beautiful Alice’ when introducing me to colleagues. He doesn’t mean anything inappropriate by it, but it makes me feel as if I have failed some sort of feminist initiative test. At work dinners, which are common and quite formal, I am summoned (not invited) to sit near him at the head of the table – a sort of decorative prop, as the youngest white woman on the team. I believe it is considered an honour.
Guanxi
Guanxi means having connections
The success of a Chinese business depends on the owner’s guanxi (pronounced gwan-see), a term which could be loosely translated as ‘connections’. It’s perhaps best described as a mild form of corruption: backscratching rather than bribery. It’s about having friends in high places, and treating them to expensive meals until they owe you a favour: my boss seems to have quite a talent for it. Guanxi is the mysterious voodoo by which the entire Chinese bureaucracy is powered. Foreigners in China know it exists, but we can’t accurately judge its strength. The guanxi is exercised on our behalf by our employers, and so the exact workings of it remain a mystery. If a visa application comes through unusually quickly, we believe it is thanks to the guanxi of our new boss; if an application is delayed, it may be due to a hex laid by a disgruntled former employer. The most useful thing I have learned during my three-week crash course in in local labour relations: the guanxi can be thanked or blamed for anything which happens.
by Alice Bell
Tags: career management, China, Gen Y, graduate unemployment, Professional Woman
Failure: The other "F" word
Failure, the other "F" Word
Failure. I’m not much of a fan. And, I defy anyone to put up a hand and volunteer if asked, “Okay, so who wants to fail today?”
The fact is though, unless we live in a bubble and do nothing, we are going to fail at something. Failure is part of living and, often, the very thing that makes success so exhilarating, if only by contrast.
So if you can agree with that, the next question might be, “When we fail, what can we do about it? Well, when it happens, I think we have two choices. We can make it a glorious failure or a pointless one.
Randy Pausch, author of The Last Lecture, talked about glorious failure. As a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh PA, he regularly put out challenges to his students and then gave an award to the team of students that failed to meet their stated objectives. He gave the award in acknowledgement of their dedication to new ideas; their willingness to take risk and; the effort they made toward achieving something that no one else had dared to try.
Tags: challenges, development, leadership, Professional Woman
Marching Through Change
Porch in Texas
Work Life Merging has been a critical focus of my life this past year.In May, 2011, this Kansas City, Missouri, ‘home girl’ pulled stakes, and in partnership with my adventurous husband, Rob, moved to Gordonville Texas.
A tiny, rural lake town 90 miles north of Dallas has captured my heart, and I’ll stretch that to say, imbued my soul.
Without hesitation, with every breath of my being, I avidly assert that living life on my own terms is centermost in my existence. At 47 years old, with several decades of womanhood under my belt and a roadmap of successes and failures marking the lines in my face, I can no longer steep in sadness nor languish in stress that often arises from continuing a life path that no longer fits.
Boots by the straps, bull by the horns, Rob and I took charge, despite many outside, competing and obstinate forces creating potential roadblocks to our goal. With the shedding of Rob’s six-figure job (a dynamic, take-no-prisoners sales leader, he resigned a role that had the potential of sentencing him to many more years of living on ‘their’ terms), we fully took the plunge of joining writing and corporate intellect and passion to build a business and personal future on our terms. Read more »
Tags: career transition, communication, Work/life balance
Jam and Jersusalem
Grandma Hill and Bike!
Friendship and community. Keeping us going when the going is tough.
I work a lot with people, often women, who are moving on from the damage of being bullied at work. Ask them who can help them recover, and without exception they say their friends are hugely important.
Three years ago I moved to the Isle of Wight in Southern England, and was immediately enveloped in a warm fluffy blanket of community. Just thinking about the wonderful women I know, on the Island and beyond, brings a huge silly grin to my face. Let me share some stories with you.
A picnic table and some soup
When we acquired our house, we left our belongings in store so that we could have essential work done. On our first day at the empty house, there was a knock at the door – my first meeting with one of my namesake neighbours (there are two Anns, an Anne and an Annie in close proximity). She’d noticed we didn’t have our furniture yet. Would we like to borrow her garden table and chairs so we had somewhere to eat? On the day we moved in, she appeared with bread and home-made soup.
That first evening we shared champagne with her and her husband in our kitchen, the only box-free room. Her love and generosity set the tone for our new neighbourhood. It was novel to us – we’d lived for 35 years in a street where no-one knew anyone.
A song in my heart
Ann persuaded me to join the Women’s Institute (WI). I was unsure at first – was the ‘Jam and Jerusalem’ image really me? But ‘Jerusalem’ and the Jam are really the icing on the cupcake. The cake itself is a community of fabulous women of all ages.
Through WI I was invited to join a choir – something I had wanted to do for decades. And here was another community, supportive, challenging, meticulous and fun. With it came more friends.
Continuity of community
It seems to me that women hold community as our gift. My great-grandmother (pictured) was midwife and healer for her village. For help with every birth or death someone would be sent to ‘fetch Lizzie Hill’.
My grandmother, her daughter, befriended prisoners of war held at her local air base. When the men were repatriated, she met Mary and Alex, the Scottish couple who billeted them on their way home. We stayed friends with Mary until her death two years ago – three generations of friendship from one gesture.
And now, cyber-community
I know 3Plus International Women through Twitter and LinkedIn. I’m daily inspired and encouraged by a whole body of friends I would never have ‘met’ otherwise. Opportunities both to offer help and to share my work have come from the most unexpected places. And the same supportive generosity is its foundation.
And by the way, the Jam is delicious…
by Ann Lewis
Ann Lewis coaches new and experienced leaders wanting to develop their relational skills, and supports people recovering from bad experiences at work. She was previously a charity HR director and now uses her OD experience to help SMEs create great workplaces.
Tags: Recover your Balance
