From Cynthia:

The last thing I remember as I went into surgery was the fear of waking up alone and discovering the staples.  Because if you tell a hypochondriac that she’ll come out of surgery with either a stapled abdomen and a fresh cancer diagnosis, or unscarred and at the tail end of a false alarm, she knows full well what outcome to expect.

I’d been vaguely afraid of this moment for a long time—most of my life, actually—but if you’d asked me at my routine gynecologist’s visit on Halloween 10 weeks earlier if I could imagine myself heading into surgery with an oncologist on standby, I definitely would have seen it coming.

Hypochondria has always been part of my life.  My earliest medical memory takes place in an examination room at my pediatrician’s office during a standard annual visit.  My sister was sucking on a lollipop while my feet hung heavily from the exam table as I waited for our doctor to return with what I was sure would be grim news.  I was shocked to be sent on my way with nothing more than a band aid over a routine injection site, along with a sticker of the just-for-fun variety.

It would have been great if the good office visit had made an impression, but my fears—rooted in an anxious psyche and early exposure to my grandmother’s inspirational literature—were firmly fixed.  A steady diet of periodicals brimming with triumphant accounts from burn victims and limbless mothers does something to a kid. Invariably, these stories began in the midst of the most bland of circumstances, when the victim least expected it. It seemed only logical, then, that the only hope one had to avoid becoming the tragic hero of literature of this kind was to be on constant lookout for hazards.  If you expect disaster, it can’t blindside you.  Vigilance, then, became my mantra.

When it came time in my life to begin annual gynecological exams, I became even more vigilant. After all, these visits held no pretense: they were looking for cancer, period. The increased specter of bad news caused me to be extra cautious with my scheduling.  I was always careful to schedule my visits during ordinary seasons, when resulting tests and procedures couldn’t mar my favorite time of the year: the 10 week period bookended by Halloween and New Year’s Day.

But that year? I screwed up. See, at the visit just before Things Went Bad, my nurse practitioner noted my to-the-day punctuality in visits, and suggested that such vigilance was probably unnecessary.  Considering my good overall history, she felt that I could feel good about stretching things out a bit by waiting 15, or even 18 months between appointments.

Which brought me to October.  So chagrined was I at the thought of Holiday medical drama, I considered skipping the appointment altogether.  But, remembering my good overall history, I decided to make a Good Faith effort and showed up for my appointment with an air of confidence that should have been a big red flag, but masqueraded as Acting Normal. Without even realizing it, I had, by degrees, let my guard down.  Chatting merrily about my daughter’s Toy Story costume as I lay on the cold steel table, bad news was the least thing I expected, so the call I received some 10 days later blindsided me with a report I should have seen coming.

My exam result was no simple pap blip on a pap test but a full-blown-call-in-the-oncologist report that called for multiple biopsies, scans, and tests.  Which were difficult to schedule what with the holidays upon us and all the peace, goodwill, and festivities taking place in all the doctor’s offices.

So it became, then, a Difficult Time.  For all the reasons you can imagine, but also because the faith I claim as an anchor in my life, and that I was supposed to be celebrating during the Christmas season, was being challenged.  I was supposed to believe—and really wanted to believe—that God wouldn’t give me more that I could handle, and that no matter what happened in my life, He would use it for His glory.  I wanted to believe that trusting God with my life meant just that—trusting that He would take care of me.  But the truth was that no one gets that guarantee.

It seemed clear to me that I was about to become the subject of an inspirational write up, and I felt so ill-equipped.  Other than being blindsided when I least expected it, I didn’t feel I met any of the criteria, and didn’t look like it, either, as I sobbed my way into the operating room a few days after the New Year for a surgery with an outcome no one could guess, even with all that testing.  If all went well, I would return to my normal life with an excellent prognosis.  If it went bad, I’d wake up stapled, with an uncertain future.

I awoke to a chorus of voices wishing me a Happy New Year.  Even though it was the one of the happiest moments of my life, I came to realize, later, that my future is still uncertain, and that is actually OK.  Neither vigilance nor lack of same can serve as a crystal ball.  I can try my hardest to control my fate, but reality tells a different story.  See, the appointment that I put off to October—the one I almost skipped– caught a pre-cancerous lesion at exactly the right moment.  Developed just enough to be caught, but not to the point of being a threat. And 10 years later, even though my hypochondria is not gone, it is tempered by the knowledge that I may be playing a role in an Inspirational story, but I am not the Author.  And waking up to that has got to be enough.

The Pinnacle Moments series is taking a break this week for the Thanksgiving holidays, as everyone prepares to spend time with loved ones and consume delectable delights. For myself, I’d like to give thanks to everyone who has participated in the series thus far. It has been such a lovely conversation we’ve been having about the moments that have changed and defined our lives. This is one of my heart’s deepest interests about others: how they become the person they are, what shaped their thoughts and perspectives in life, what stands out to them as moments they can never forget.

And we have sure seen some unforgettable moments.

Cynthia started us off with a moment of inspiration, a moment where a daydream turned into a weekly communion of sisterhood and brownies, a communion that changed not only the girls she mentored, but Cynthia herself.

Queen Lucy showed us the power of a leap of faith, jumping into a whirlwind romance with nothing but her faith in Him to guide her.

From that peak, we walked with Brook into the valley of shadows, and learned what it took to get through to the other side.

Then I shared my tale, another abyss to traverse, where only a newfound understanding of weakness and courage gave strength to transcend the darkness.

And last week, Hyacynth encouraged us to confront our own humanity by sharing the moment in which she came face-to-face with hers.

If you’ve missed any of these, please do take a moment to hear the stories and join the conversation. These moments aren’t all unicorns and rainbows, but they do reflect some of the deepest parts of ourselves. There are some brave, brave women here. If there’s anything to be drawn from this series, I believe it is the indomitable power of our courage, to go where we might not otherwise go, because we decided we were more than our fears. I hope you’ll recognize a bit of yourself in some of these stories, draw strength where you need strength, find inspiration where you need to be inspired, and discover the tenderness of all our own vulnerabilities.

Then please don’t forget to join us again next week! There are more tales to come!

In the meantime, we give thanks.

From Brook:

I want to warn you this isn’t one of those warm fuzzy stories. When Jade asked us to dig deep and find our Pinnacle Moment, I just kept coming back to this moment in time, a time of hope and healing.

“Do you want to be a victim or a survivor,” my therapist asked me.

I couldn’t answer her.

This was my fourth suicide attempt. This time it was BAD. ER doctors, stomach pumping, a two-day stint in ICU, and a week stint in the psych ward kind of bad. I guess that’s what happens when you down half a bottle of your anti-depressants with a Captain Morgan chaser.

How the hell did I get here?

I met a guy and after a whirlwind romance we moved in with each other. Everything was great I thought I was in love and this was it “the one”.

Then it happened.

“You’re a fucking bitch.”

I stood there like a deer in headlights. Was he talking to me?

Then he said it again and laughed. “Oh, I’m just kidding, can’t you take a joke.”

Really…I was speechless. The warning alarm kept sounding in my head, but I ignored it.

For a while life was good. He would say how lucky he was that he found me, and we would talk about getting married. But then out of the blue I’d hear, “Stop eating your cereal like that you sound like a pig.”

As the months passed I spent my time walking on eggshells wondering what in the world would set him off. One day it could be that I wore too much make-up. “You look like a whore with that shit on your face.” The next he would be sweet as sugar talking about buying rings and spending the rest of our lives together.

“Whore”

“White trash”

“Fucking Bitch”

Words I began to hear on a daily basis.

To him I was a verbal punching bag. And while no one could see the bruises, they were there on the inside.

I was in a constant state of fear and self-loathing. My formally healthy 120 pound frame dwindled to 90 pounds, I cried at the drop of a hat and became needy and co-dependent. Everything I never wanted to be, in essence I was a victim. The only way to find relief was to find a way out. “The boyfriend” had isolated me from all my friends, so I didn’t have a support system to turn to. Instead, I decided I’d just “end it”.

And that’s what led me to this moment.

I sat in that office that I knew so well. In the yellow gingham overstuffed chair which was more comfortable than the couch and closer to the Kleenex. And with tears streaming down my face I said “Survivor.”

I met my husband a year after this incident and ten years and two kids later I have found joy. I would never want to go through that again, but it made me realize that I FINALLY did deserve to be happy. FINALLY…

I was sitting at the resource center and had finished up some small bit of work. I turned to the group of girls who had been playing together while waiting for me to finish working and join them.

“So you girls want to watch a Disney movie?” I asked.

Squeals of delight erupted and they clambered over to the couch while I pulled out the DVDs. “Which one do you want to watch?”

Without hesitation: “Cinderella!”

I chuckled over their love of an old Disney classic and was intrigued since I hadn’t seen it more than a couple of times when I was a kid. But as I watched it, it seemed to me to be such a stark contrast from my personal Disney favorite, “Beauty and the Beast”. “Cinderella” is a story that captured the imaginations of little girls of the 1950s and 60s and follows the traditional story line of an impoverished and used girl who must be rescued by magic and a prince to find love and freedom. Both Cinderella and her prince are thin on personality; they are primarily just pawns moved about by larger forces (some benevolent, like the King, some malicious, like the wicked stepmother). Slightly different from my favorite, where the heroine must overcome her own fear and prejudice to find love and freedom with a hero who looks terrible from the outside but has similar intelligence and sensibilities underneath.

But “Cinderella” is the one these girls want to see. And as we watch, the tiny memories started to accumulate into one larger revelation.

When I was at their families’ home on Saturday night, the girls were watching cartoons on TV and interspersed between the cartoons were popular music videos. These girls, all around ages 6-8 or so, were belting out the tunes at the top of their lungs. I laughed at the cuteness, though I felt a little disturbed because all (and I mean ALL) the songs were about two girls fighting over a man.

And then I remembered my cousins doing the same thing when we were teens: watching music videos and singing happily about betrayal and loss.

And I thought about all the popular Thai music videos I’ve seen, waiting in bus stations, sitting on the bus, playing in cafes and hair salons, and in shop windows…

Almost all of them feature a woman left behind by a man. A lover who moves on to be with another woman. Two women fighting over a man. Men make all the choices. The women are portrayed as scheming and over-crazed by emotions. And they haven’t the self-respect to walk away.

And as I looked at these young girls, the same age as my nieces, singing lovingly about heartbreak and affairs, jealousy and betrayal, I realize just how ubiquitous this theme is in Thai culture. How do we teach empowerment, when they’re taught to romanticize love triangles and inferiority to men at such tender ages? I’m not going to sit here and blame popular music for how these girls think. Rather, I believe that these songs strike such a chord with them because the stories are so deeply embedded in the consciousness of the culture.

In reality, most Thai women I know are actually incredibly strong. But they are also rather jaded on the whole idea of romance. I’d venture to guess it’s because what is portrayed as romance in the popular culture is really just women being weak.

I want love for these girls. When they get older, I want them to find joy in romance; stability, comfort and honor in marriage. (If marriage is indeed what they want.) I’d hope they don’t have to push away love to survive, for love and strength don’t have to be at odds with one another. In fact, they should support each other. What I don’t want is for these girls to sit around waiting to be rescued. I don’t want them to ever feel like they don’t have the power to make choices. It took forty years for the story of a generation to shift from “Cinderella” to the likes of “Beauty and the Beast”. I wonder what it will take to help even just one little girl see how much power she really has over her own life.

I wonder, if I ever have a daughter of my own, what story will capture her imagination?

What Disney film captured your imagination? What bigger picture did you see this week? Join in at This Heavenly Life!

I need a second cup because there’s something I want to talk to you about. Lean in close because I want to shout it across the skies. I’ve been overwhelmed with the positive words and support I’ve gotten since I first announced I’d be working with SOLD, and then especially since we actually arrived in Thailand and started doing it.

It was a year ago, I first read a book (Half the Sky) and got an idea and watched a summit and got INSPIRED.

And now that summit is BACK!

I really really wish we were meeting for coffee today, because if we were, I would drag you to the nearest computer and make you watch this summit with me. But since we are doing this virtually, I’m just going to pretend I have you by the hand and am tugging at you.

This summit is the Women In the World Summit. It involves women from all over the world…women including: Madeline Albright, Hillary Clinton, Christiane Amanpour, Melinda Gates, Amy Gutmann, Cherie Blair, Amy Chua, Aung San Suu Kyi, Barbara Walters…oh god the list goes on. It also includes amazing and inspiring women working in their own communities to educate and empower women to tackle some of the most difficult questions of our time.

Questions like: how do we get more women in leadership roles; how do we deal with gender equality in countries like China; how do we make sure more women survive childbirth; how do we stop the trafficking of young girls; how do we stop the use of rape as a weapon of war; how do we stop acid attacks & FGM; what (if anything) should be done about the use of the Muslim veil in European countries – and how does this affect multiculturalism?

What it is NOT about is wallowing in self-pity about the problems of the world. It is NOT about pushing the liberal elite guilt button. It’s NOT even about bra-burning feminism.

It is about our responsibility to empower and educate our young women, in ways that break the cycles of poverty and abuse. It’s about having the freedom to live the life we choose, whether that involves raising families and future generations or leading nations.

There is no Democrat. There is no Republican. There is no red or blue. (That doesn’t even make sense once you start talking global.) Just real world problems and real women coming together to offer their unique and local, grassroots perspectives on how to solve them. Most often, solutions don’t require more money. They require thinking about problems differently. These women have done extraordinary work, but to look at them you realize how very much like you and me they are.

If there is any one thing I can say about my experience living in Thailand and working for SOLD is that living abroad is like having the gauze ripped off you. Life in the States was safe…and numb. Sure there are problems and joys, but some days you really gotta’ dig deep to feel. And I’m a feeling kinda’ gal. Here, I experience everything as if there is no barrier between me and the rest of life. Watching the Women in the World Summit is much the same. It’s like living more deeply. It’s like discovering, ah, real life. The real world. There you are. For before now, I had only been dabbling in real.

Have you ever felt like you just don’t have the time or energy to look beyond our borders (however those are defined)? Like, gawddamn I have enough sh*t to deal with just trying to get my own stuff taken care of, I couldn’t handle even thinking about the problems half a world away. Trust me, if you’ve felt this way, I totally understand.

But I dare you to listen to these women’s stories and NOT feel inspired, and NOT feel more powerful about your own life: your capabilities and the wealth of choice that’s actually available to you. I dare you to watch for 10 minutes and not get sucked in. Even just put it on in the background as you go about your regular business.

If you’re willing to take my dare, here’s the info you need:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsmaker/women-in-the-world/

RSVP to watch the livestream here:

http://fb.me/BlmigHs2

And then can we get back together and talk about how alive we all feel?

* This doesn’t fit neatly under Bigger Picture Moments, but I’m linking up because I think it’s just the kind of thing you gals would be interested in. Then again…it was a simple moment that changed my life, so maybe it does fit after all.

* BIG HUGE CAVEAT * I’ve been here just a few days shy of a month, so these are first impressions and observations only.

One thing that must first be made clear is that Thailand is not a country built upon values of equality. There are very clear rules guiding behavior according to social status, and while not quite as rigid as the Indian caste system, hierarchy here is accepted and indispensible.

Men and women are not equals, but guidelines dictating their roles and spheres of influence are not straightforward either. For example, women are not allowed to touch monks. If a woman wants to hand something to a monk, it must be done indirectly, either through a man, or by placing the item on a special cloth for that purpose. Women may own property, but after they are married, any future property must be in their husbands’ name. However, in many marriages, the woman is the one to control the finances.

{Also, let’s not even get into gender equality at work. We’ll just say that when I looked at the faculty of the political science department at one of the universities the male-to-female ratio was not exactly 1:1. Or even 5:1. Perhaps not a representative sample of office politics, I will admit.}

Surprisingly, the tension between women who work outside the home and those who are housewives seems similar to that in the U.S. Women are often expected to help bring money home, and people may look a little surprised if you say you don’t work. However, many women are homemakers, especially after having children if they can afford to do so.

And then there’s the cattiness and the judging, of women and by women. One of the bigger issues I’ve bumped up against is dress. Thai people are considered to be very fastidious. They are clean and they care about their appearances to the nth degree. But to my eye, at least, their sense of fashion seems to be stuck in the 80s castaway section of Ross or Mervyns. I really don’t mean to be derogatory here, but the best visual I can come up with is that it is clothing we might associate with recent immigrants in the U.S. Bright colors, stripes, polka dots, ensembles that may or may not match and tops that often are just a tad too big for the person in question. I’m not even convinced many women here even wear makeup most days of the year. In America, I wear a more bohemian, artist style – something along the lines of what you might see in Anthropologie or Urban Outfitters. Not full on catalogue, but we’ll say “inspired by.” Here, many of my shirts are considered too low cut because they dip below the tops of my armpits, and the long draping lines appear slovenly.

You’ll definitely see girls in teeny, tiny short cutoffs and shirts that say ferocious and pornographic things, but these are not respectable ladies and the social price for wearing such things can be severe. Some of the hipster fashion is showing up here too, but it appears that the general line on fashion in Thailand, especially outside of Bangkok is “be fashionable, but not too fashionable”, which is ironic considering how interested Thai people are in fashion and being cool.

So for me, finding clothes that I can feel comfortable in but that still are appropriate for the various social and business occasions I find myself in is quite a challenge. As much as we’ve had a simply awe-filled time here, this seemingly innocuous problem contributes to – and maybe even in representative of – some of the many moments in which I feel completely overwhelmed. Moments where I sense I’ve given offense, but everyone is too polite to explain how or why. It’s simply up to me to intuit what went wrong.

There are times that, as a woman and a foreigner here, I feel that I am without power, without voice. There are moments in which I feel like I have to fight for myself against everyone else, and these are moments in which I feel very alone.

Through this challenge, I think my definition of feminism has not really changed, but I am much more inclined to call myself a feminist. I am a feminist in the sense that I care deeply about women’s issues and righting injustices and preventing harm from coming to the innocent.

BUT.

Though I call myself a feminist, I find myself increasingly disenchanted with a lot of feminist media these days. I’ve been following Bitch PhD and Bitch Magazine, and at first I appreciated their insight…until it started to seem as though “bitch” refers less to “empowered, self-realized woman” and more to the verb: for bitching seems to be just about all they do.

I have a problem with feminism when it says we need to break down societal expectations of what WOMAN should be – only to hiss and moan when women don’t choose their particular “liberated” vision of woman. It denies freedom of choice. It denies individual expression. It denies that there might be some value to the way some things have been done for centuries. And it denies the hard fact of biological proclivities. Women should not be forced to stay in the kitchen if their talents and interests push them into the office. But neither is it bad if a woman actually enjoys what she does in the kitchen. It’s stupid to pretend everything is socially constructed.

I have a problem with feminism when all it does is complain about the media. Bitch Magazine is one long series of gripes about some aspect of popular culture that did something to get their panties in a twist – interspersed with maybe a few anecdotes of examples that suit their ideal. It’s not a call to action; it’s a glorified tally sheet. It doesn’t inspire; it just hits the same button ad nauseum like a Pavlovian dog. It’s not forward thinking; it has become reactionary. Yes, there are problems with today’s media. Yes, there are elements of patriarchy dominating society (75 cents on the dollar, anyone?). But as far as I’m concerned, you can only push the victim button so many times before I lose sympathy – even if I’m in the same boat. There’s only so many times you can cry “victim” before I’m going to ask: Ok, but what are you doing to become a “survivor”?

I have a problem with feminism when it seeks to include minority voices – but then rejects the legitimacy of white, male voices. Far be it from me to be the vanguard of privileged white males! And I’m pretty sure anyone who reads my blog on a regular basis would know that. But I think it’s a false claim of “open, honest discussion” when white males are excluded. Yeah they’ve dominated the discussion for centuries, and yeah I’ll think some opinions are total crap, but that doesn’t mean they should be denied a place at the table when we discuss what we want of our society. (Maybe that’s because my husband is white and male, but I do value his opinion.)

So through a closer look, I’ve discovered that a lot of feminism is pretty much what I thought it was, and that is sad. However, through reading a lot of literature about strong women, I’ve come to remember once again what it is about the feminine voice that is worth listening to. Hearing women’s perspectives on the world and learning more about women’s contributions to society has animated me and activated me to do something more to help where it hurts. I don’t cry foul when girls wear pink, but I do take umbrage when girls give up on an education one week out of every month because they don’t have a bathroom separate from the boys. I don’t think it’s a travesty if women find role models from generations past, but I do shed tears when women are mutilated because it’s taboo to say “stop”. I don’t really care about the messages that pervade pop culture. I do care about the messages sent by parents, teachers, and church leaders, for these are messages sent every day by the people children love. They’re not something that can be shut off with a flick of a power switch. So, I haven’t become a feminist of the academic variety. Instead, I’ve become inspired to pursue my own brand of feminism, for whatever that’s worth.

The documentary is intense and emotional – once you hear the actual stories of these children, it’s impossible to turn a blind eye to the issue. When the documentary was released, people began asking how they could help…and thus a non-profit was born.

The SOLD Project starts with prevention and their aim is four-fold: they hope to 1) provide scholarships to children through individual donors like you and me so that at-risk children don’t have to pay for their education, thus easing the grip of extreme poverty, 2) provide mentors for each child with a scholarship, 3) build a resource center for the community, and 4) develop awareness programs in schools to help children learn how to protect themselves.

While I am there, I will be doing two things. I plan on volunteering time to tutor and mentor children at the resource center as well as lead weekly rotating seminars open to the community, focusing on various professional skills: computer literacy, basic accounting, college application/grant writing, etc. But my little baby is a project called “Operation Shackle Free”. I’m setting up an email exchange program between the sponsored children in Thailand and students in the US and other western nations. The goal is to give the kids in Thailand a chance to practice their English literacy skills – giving them an edge in the job market – and to motivate them to dream of a better life, one that is far away from the brothels. For the students here in the US, the goal is to raise global awareness and cultural sensitivity, and show them how one little action, as simple as sending emails has global implications not only in the lives of their Thai counterparts but also for GDP, national health – even reducing terrorism.

A lot of this will be happening at the resource center The SOLD Project is trying to build. Check out how it’s coming along! And feel free to browse The SOLD Project website to find out more about what they do. You can even host your own documentary viewing party!

The resource center is well under way, BUT WE NEED YOUR HELP! We need help raising funds for supplies like children’s books (we {heart} the Seuss), desks, stationary, computers, a security system (so no A-hole jacks our computers), and staff support (because, yo, we’ll need to eat too).

If you look to the top right of this page you’ll see a link to donate. I’ve created a profile through CrowdRise and I’ve set an {albeit ambitious} goal of raising $1,000 by June 1 to go to building and running this resource center. Do you think we can do it? I think we can do it!

Every dollar helps! I think it’s easy to forget these days just how far a dollar can go. But for these girls and boys in Thailand, $1 is all it takes to keep one kid in school one day more.

If there’s anyone who can be counted on for love and support, I know it’s the blogging community. Bloggers and blog readers alike, you all are such amazing people with such large, warm hearts. Every day, there’s an unbelievable outpouring of affection, advice, and well-wishes to friends in need. So I’m just asking for a little help for some very little friends in need: the young girls and boys in Thailand who want nothing more than to just be home with their families, go to school, and live a decent life. Let’s keep them home with their families and away from pervy men and brothel gangstas!

However, there is one point Friedan touched on and I wish she had developed it more: and that is the role of the men. The edition I have is an updated one with a couple of added introductions. The chapter I found most intriguing was one of these introductions, where she reflects back, two generations later and assesses the change. What I love about this chapter is that she doesn’t just focus on what changes have occurred for women, but also the impact on society as a whole. And as Friedan observes, the truth is, changing a woman’s world means changing the world of men too and a lot of the feminist movement does not really address that. Meanwhile, books that take on the masculine mystique and focus on the “men’s movement” have largely been copies in reverse of women’s lib and are thus inauthentic. Or they are an outmoded brand of machismo that reflects only an obsolete form of masculinity.

I believe the problem is that such a paradigm shift does alter the identity of men, but somehow they’ve never really had a larger cultural conversation about where to go and how to change in positive ways along with women. What the women’s movement has focused on is the reactionary man who bemoans the loss of job and income and retaliates through sexual harassment and violence. What it neglects to consider is the larger proportion of men who do have a desire to be positive contributors to society, but who have along the way lost a clear role model and are left to fend for themselves in navigating personal ethics.

My husband and I have been watching a lot of Mad Men lately and it occurs to me that Don Draper is a portrait of the all-American male: the man every other man wished he was. He has a lot of charm, smooth power, wealth, looks. He’s got a beautiful wife and family, home and car. When it comes to office politics, he exercises a lot of power and control, but he does it with finesse. He keeps underlings in their place, but he also does not resort to cheap jokes at the expense of others. He remains quiet – or occasionally puts others in check – when they smear another man’s honor.

But for the modern man, the old paradigm doesn’t quite work anymore for today’s society. Man’s relationship to women has to change as he shares earning power and household politics with her, as he shares more household duties and the gender lines become blurred. Blurring these lines necessarily call masculinity into question, asking society to redefine what being male truly means. Fathers have also become problematic role models because through problems caused by divorce or changing societal values in a whole slew of issues, men often face disillusionment with their fathers. Many have difficult relationships with their fathers in which they either become so disillusioned they draw away from them or they have to suffer through a period in which they try to renegotiate a new relationship with their fathers. A relationship in which they reconcile themselves to the notion that their father may not be the hero they once thought their father should be, but at least they can accept him for who he is.

Among friends, role models become even harder to find. Susan Walsh has an excellent blog on today’s hookup culture, and what I draw from it is that there is often an identity schism for male friends as well. In the past, men would have looked up to and admired the alpha males, the Don Drapers of society. But today’s alpha male often comes across as…well, kind of a dick. The beta males might wish they had some of the things alpha males have…but they don’t really want to actually be who the alpha male is. They have to compete with them, but they don’t admire them anymore. Likewise, women might fall head over heels for the Don Draper type in the past. But today many women feel they have to choose. They choose the alpha male to have sex with, but when it comes to marriage, they want the beta males – because the alphas are all just misogynist a-holes. (Actually, increasingly women seem to be more attracted to men with more feminine features!) Women sometimes do fall in love with the alpha males, but they often want to change them, redeem them, tame them – thus turning them into more of a beta male. In which case, they don’t love the alpha male at all. Rather they love just an idea of him. And the guys who are really great guys often end up feeling like they finish last.

Without clear role models, the result is many men are left suffering an identity crisis – one that seems to last longer and longer. And we have movies like Up In The Air and Greenberg about men well into their 40′s, still struggling to figure out what they want from life and who they want to be.

The thing is, many men do want to be good fathers, good husbands, and positive contributors to their work place and community. They do want wives they can talk to and respect. Ethics are important to them, but they have discovered they must figure out for themselves what those ethics are. Measures of success are personal – not compared to the Jones’s. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, as long as it authentic and they can respect themselves as individuals, it is a good thing. But it is problematic when 62% of men say they miss the day when a person’s word and a handshake meant something. It is a problem when men report feeling lost, confused, left behind. It is a problem when men begin to fall behind women in school, dropping out at higher rates and performing poorly in classes.

Women’s liberation does not work if it comes at the expense of their husbands, friends, and sons. We haven’t changed societal mores if we repress or scoff at honest fears and concerns, when men feel they are muzzled by political correctness. We shouldn’t accept misogyny, but that doesn’t give us license to repress men either: that merely reverses the roles, but keeps us locked in obsolete rituals of power. What I love from Friedan’s chapter is that, even though she did not delve into the intricacies of the role of man today, she did end with a beautiful summation of what we should be trying to achieve: “Grown-up men and women….become more and more authentically themselves. And they do not pretend that men are from Mars or women are from Venus. They even share each other’s interests, talk a common shorthand of work, love, play, kids, politics. We may now begin to glimpse the new human possibilities when women and men are finally free to be themselves, know each other for who they really are, and define the terms and measures of success, failure, joy, triumph, power, and the common good, together.”

In short: equal, but in a way that simultaneously celebrates individuality, personality, and working together for the common good. What she doesn’t say, but what I think underlines her words is the necessity for mutual respect and open curiosity to engage each other.

This book did take me a little while to get into. It starts off in a little bit of a nontraditional way, so it took me a little while to get my bearings. But I’m so glad I stuck with it. By about a third of the way in, I realized I was hooked.

The book is based on a true story that happened in Canada around the 1850s, about a woman who, at the age of sixteen was tried and committed as an accomplice to a double murder. But a lot of mystery surrounds the role she actually played in the murders because some of the facts don’t quite add up. There are competing versions of the story and Grace herself has no memory of the event. She has a confession, but it comes out quite quickly that her lawyer coerced her into giving the version of the story he liked best. Meanwhile Grace is prone to mental fits that no one understands so countless doctors and clergymen examine her and come to competing conclusions: some convinced she is guilty, others convinced she is innocent.

Then, Dr. Simon Jordan tries his hand at unraveling the mystery. He has new ideas about psychology that are ahead of the vogue. And he approaches her like a box to unlock, if only he could find the key. She begins to tell him about herself…but the more he learns, the more he wonders whether what she tells him is truth or whether he has been taken in.

If nothing else, Margaret Atwood does an astounding job at getting in the heads of her characters and showing us how people of the time really thought about human psychology, how much they didn’t understand…and perhaps, how much we still have yet to figure out.

Without spoiling the end, I think two important themes emerged from the book for me. The first is the notion of guilt or innocence and redemption when you’re dealing with someone who has no recollection of committing a crime. In our society we do grant some leniency for pleas of insanity, and commit them to institutions rather than prison – an answer which probably makes most sense considering the potential threat to society the person might pose even if not truly guilty or responsible for actions that can’t be controlled. But how many of us actually stop to think this through? I hadn’t – not really – before now. Can someone who has no memory of a crime they are accused of committing truly feel guilt? If they can’t feel guilt, can they really be redeemed? Are they really responsible, if they have no control? In that sense, if someone has certain mental disorders, does that mean that not only do they lose their freedoms when committed to a mental institution, they also have lost a right to forgiveness or redemption? Maybe it’s not society necessarily that takes away that right, but the person’s own mind. In which case, we think it is leniency, but in essence, they have more to lose than even prisoners do.

The second theme that emerged was the repeated attempts by others to categorize Grace, to put her in a box and make her fit. Whenever she didn’t quite fit, they ignored or fudged or discredited the evidence that didn’t support their beliefs. Was she the beleaguered and misunderstood innocent? Or was she the crazy psychopath? Was she timid and shy, or an powerful threat? It made me think: how much do we do this to others? How much do we do this to ourselves? We have a characterization of what and who people should be and try to stuff everyone into that box. The Professional. The Supermom. The Bleeding-Heart Liberal and the Right-Wing Nut. There are too many to count. But let’s take The Professional, for example. We have all kinds of things we believe about professionalism: things that a true professional would never do, say, or wear. But this vision of professionalism is creeping to include larger and larger aspects of life. Not only does it govern how you behave and appear at work, it now begins to govern how you’re allowed to think, what you’re allowed to say, and what you’re allowed to do outside of work. At home. With your family. With your friends. Online. Even when it has no bearing on how you actually perform your job at work.

This frustrates me to no end because I believe there should be a clearer distinction between your professional and personal life and that your boss has no right to dictate who you are on your own time. But beyond the personal freedom issue, I take umbrage at the notion that a true professional only says and does certain things – and that they cannot complain about problems that arise in the daily functioning of their job. Because what this creates is a wall of silence. Silence that perpetuates problems, prevents cooperation, and prevents people from really knowing each other as it quashes individuality. It’s the kind of silence that allows horrors to continue – because people are too afraid of how they’ll be seen if they cry out about an abuse or about their pain.

Likewise with the other boxes. Try to stuff people inside and ignore what doesn’t fit. It prevents truly understanding others and it inhibits effective problem-solving.

Do you feel you suffer from being stuffed into a box? Do you ever find yourself silenced?