On Being a Girl...

What do I mean by "Girl?" Take a look at this TED Talk by Eve Ensler for International Woman's Day 2009. Her definition is the one I mean to use, as it applies to all humans - male, female and everyone else too. (If you feel you are tight on time and want to get on with the rest of the article, please skip ahead to minute 15:40 and watch it to the end. Be sure and come back and take it all in as soon as you can, its pretty great stuff.)



Could it be true? Could we all be ready to embrace our Girlhood, our Emotional Creature-ness? I know I've been working up to this one, getting better at it all the time, for some very many years now.

I am the fifth of seven children, I had two brothers just ahead of me to keep up with. I loved to run, chase, fall, kick, throw and every now and then punch, if given the opportunity. I liked gross stuff, fast stuff and anything that might be difficult to manage. Add on to all that, that I am pretty sure I'm originally from an alien human species that doesn't really know why one would need to react a certain way to certain things. For example, as a baby, I didn't cry when the nurse stuck me with a needle. My mother says I would just look curiously from my arm, to the nurse, to my mom then, back to my arm for the duration of the experience. Its not that I couldn't get worked up. I learned how to do it for its effect on others. What my tears could do in support of me getting my way with my Father was pretty obvious, even if it was unconscious. That was about all I could see this Emotional Creature inside being good for, since otherwise She seemed to get in the way. At points of overwhelm and exhaustion in life when the tears would start welling up in my eyes, I found it just frustrating as hell. The belief that my feelings are indispensable in developing a healthy relationship with myself, endearing myself to myself, helping me to remain in love with me and therefore capable of being in love with the rest of creation didn't exist for me until a few years ago.

I opened my first retail venture, or better put, adventure, a cocktail lounge. Yep, at the ripe old age of 27 I was legally responsible the dispensation of a regulated substance, a legal drug, throwing a party every night of the week and managing a crew of my peers to boot. With all the issues this choice brought to the surface, its like I ran smack dab into the mirror of self reflection at full speed. Nearly broke my face. Finally, there was no escaping me and the phrase my mother loved to quote, that used to piss me off whenever I heard it, "wherever I went, there I was." And there She was, that Emotional Creature showing up on a daily basis, instead of once in a while, since exhaustion and overwhelm had become my signature circumstance. Cracks in my hard ass shell were beginning to appear. My response to this? Go get help quick. Help came in the form of group therapy, cutting-edge-of-evolution type group therapy, facilitated by a true therapy goddess and certified Girl, Yvonne Marie Bryght.

As we unraveled this tightly wound little package that I had been calling me, I found a veritable storehouse of unused, unaddressed, unacknowledged, under appreciated pieces of my own brilliance. Every one of them in the form of "feelings." This initial opening of the flood gates was not, I can admit, always a pretty picture. I remember going through an entire fifteen minute hearing with my state's tax collecting agency, the judge and agent uncomfortably reading the affidavit and me simply crying, all on record. Just crying and crying and crying. I remember being so nervous prior to a final meeting with a no longer needed employee that I thought my heart would stop. I recall admitting to myself that I was "falling in love" with someone new every few months, including, much to my dismay, some employees. Talk about embarrassing, talk about foolish, talk about unprofessional, talk about down right silly. This is what being an adult is?

Well, it turns out that yes, it is. By being willing to walk through terrifying door, after terrifying door of actually feeling my way through life I learned how to tell my Truth. The only Truth I can know about anything is how I feel. Its the only thing I can be absolutely sure of. It will change, yes, it will evolve and it will be fleeting. Still, its not something anyone can really argue with. It simply is. And its is-ness makes it a reliable and undeniable outline of my True Self. Who I actually am in any given moment, what I have learned and what I still don't know. It, as Eve Ensler puts it, makes me responsible. Now, instead of having a veritable torrent of stuffed down emotion, threatening to break all the dams and crush everyone in its path, I have an ocean of knowing, deep, powerful and ever present, at my beck and call.

And more excitingly, through this new heart-out-of-the-box lifestyle, I also get to have at my disposal an incredibly intelligent, stunningly radiant and intractably tenacious version of me. That Girl makes it possible for me to be unconditionally adored by all the men that love her, loyally supported by all the women that know her and well respected by all the humans she has the honor of working with. Makes the Universe more like a playground, life a journey where I may not know exactly what's coming, still I know its gonna be good 'cause I'm gonna feel it, I'm gonna experience it, if nothing else. It makes LOVE a possibility and an absolutely reliable eventuality.

So yes, I do. I really do love, love, love being a Girl! How about you?