Role-Playing

Sometimes we women get stuck in a role. Older women can get stuck in mother and wife, long after the husband is gone and the children no longer need us in healthy ways. We can indulge immature behavior in adult children as if they are twelve or over-involve ourselves with opinions and judgments without being asked—something we wouldn't do with our adult friends, but think is our right with adult children. When it doesn't work, and it almost NEVER does, we are stuck in disappointment.

Younger women can get stuck in the career wheel, masterfully learning what the boss and the company want and forgetting what they want. If and when those wants clash (and at some point they do) we think we are crazy or missing something that everybody else gets.

Why do we get stuck? Because we might be making choices from an incomplete picture of ourselves--not right, not wrong-- but fragments of Self making choices.

This is not to say that we take on these roles without great enthusiasm and optimism—We do! I exercised my freewill, I made the choices to be careerist AND mother, nobody forced me into these roles. I experienced great success and satisfaction along the way: jobs and colleagues I love and two beautiful children who are my favorite people in the world, to name just a few.

While I say nobody forced me into these roles, society and culture have their rules, their norms, and everyone around you is speaking and forming expectations from that culture. What our friends think, what our family's traditions are, what our bosses think, our company culture—it is all decisive. Then there's the media bombardment doing a shame dance on our body image and defining success for us. Yes-nobody is actually holding a gun to your head, but it sure feels that way.

During most of my life I compartmentalized myself into roles. I brought fragments of myself to different roles and then wondered why something felt missing or wrong in each role. Playing mother was laced with guilt at not loving it more. Playing wife was a futile exercise in being someone I was not. Being a workaholic eclipsed all of the above, as did full-blown alcoholism at one point. Friend, public servant, exerciser, maker, spiritualist didn't even make the cut..for DECADES.

Eventually, by aging or desperation or intentional self-awareness, we seek full expression. If we are lucky and persistent, we let all our Selves speak. We learn to self-validate all of our inner beings, and we listen to those blessed angels more than we listen to the external voices from our various roles.

At the root of the work/life balance conversation is learning how to bring ALL of our inner selves to whatever role we are in, in this moment. Bringing the spiritual, creative, physically active, servant leader to being a boss. And bringing that same integration of Inner Selves to being a mother or grandmother or friend.

I believe women of all ages are seeking other women of all ages to connect with in meaningful ways about how to be in the world as a complete woman, not just playing a particular role. We are all seeking completeness and integration. Let us find the way to ourselves through each other.