Friend #18 - Shawn

People are fascinating to me.  Every time I sit down with someone new, I never know what to expect and the conversation always seems to take on a life of its own. 

I met Shawn through a friend of mine who happens to be her hairstylist.  The three of us had hung out once before but this is the first time she and I had met one-on-one.  Some people you greet with a handshake because you can feel the emotional distance.  That’s normal.  Occasionally, you run into someone you immediately feel enough closeness with that a hug seems more appropriate.  And every now and then, you will run into someone you feel like you can immediately share your innermost secrets with.  A sort of love at first sight, I guess. 

That’s how Shawn was for me.  Maybe with her infectious smile and warm personality, she’s like that for everyone.  It was how she met her husband.

Immediately, we fell into a conversation of all the things we, as women, do to tear each other down.

We started with the mother/daughter relationship, which hasn’t been my strong suit.  Shawn and I are both children of Southern mothers, who raised us to be Southern debutantes in rural areas where there were no cotillions or fancy dresses or declarations of class.  There was only suffocating control reminding me of a line in a Miranda Lambert song:  “It doesn’t matter how you feel, it only matters how you look.” 

When Shawn’s mother became elderly, all the issues and responsibilities surrounding the elderly came falling down on Shawn’s shoulders.  She had always considered her mother to be a needy woman but when her mother’s health started to fail, Shawn had a difficult time keeping up with all of her mother’s demands.  She felt like it was her duty to help but the relationship with her mother left her feeling drained and overwhelmed, like she was never good enough.  Shawn began to resent her mother and became so emotional about it that she finally sought the advice of a therapist.   

Only then did she realize her feelings were valid.  The mother/daughter relationship always seems complicated but some people have an easier time navigating through it than others.  A mother seems to have the ability to either build up or tear down a daughter with a flick of a word on the tongue.  Unfortunately, not all mothers use that power for the good of the daughter.  There are mothers who tear into the daughter because of their own insecurities, not realizing the damage they leave in their wake.  Shawn had a mother like this.  So do I.  Yet it is the foundation of what a woman’s self-worth is based on.

I once attended a seminar where we talked about the things that make women most vulnerable.  Not being able to balance and be great at everything was at the top of the list.  Which is ridiculous.  Because who is great at everything?  Shawn never had the biological need to have children.  It just wasn’t a role she wanted to take on, but being childless myself, I can relate to how a group of women can make you feel inferior because you are childless.  In our society, being childless means you have failed at being a woman and inevitably, other women have the need to reach out and console you for your shortcomings.  “You still have time…” is a phrase I’ve heard a lot. 

In Shawn’s case, she is childless by choice.  It doesn’t make her less of a woman.  It actually makes her a more self-aware person to step out of society’s box of what a woman should be and focus on those things that make her uniquely her.  Instead of having children of her own, Shawn has worked on having a healthy marriage and has helped raise her stepchildren, both admirable aspects of life that she might not have been able to do so fluidly if she had children of her own.

And since we were on the topic of insecurities, Shawn whispered, “I’m not like you.  I know I would never feel confident in the workplace.”  First of all, that made me laugh because the implication was that I have my life in order, but it also opened up another area where Shawn has felt the judgment of other women.  For most of her married life, Shawn has been a housewife.  She knows all too well the things women whisper under their breath about her.  It’s probably the things you are thinking right now… 

I won’t print them here because I know how hurtful those sharp little words are to Shawn. 

And yet, as she was sitting in front of me, all I could see was an intelligent, seemingly happy woman who made me smile.  She made me think a little deeper about all the things we, as women, subconsciously do to each other to make us feel inadequate.   We perpetuate that myth that a woman must be good at everything when shouldn’t our purpose in this world be to nurture and be happy?  Shawn taught me a little about all of that.  I guess, every now and then, a person comes along who changes the way you look at the world and because of her, the paradigm of my world shifted…and I can’t wait to see where the rest of the friendship takes us.