There are days when - as much as I try to maintain perspective on what I am doing - I seriously feel like a person teetering on the brink, about to lose all contact with reason. I question everything. My ability to parent, my capabilities as a worker, manager, leader, and also, my role as a wife. Most days, I feel I can absorb a certain amount of impact with remarkable dexterity.
In a recent article in Cookie magazine, I read an article by a woman writer who ponders her ability to cope with stress. She says that she believes that a certain amount of her ability to absorb bad events comes from having grown up the daughter of divorced parents. Up until that point, I had always thought that my ability to absorb was simply a character trait - some people scream it out, while others press it down. I have always been of the latter ilk. And, as you would expect, every once in a while the sponge has reached it’s max, and I overflow. Then, once it’s out of me, I go back to soaking it up. I had never connected the dots - perhaps naively - to what my sister and I needed to be able to do as children.
Our mother did her best to care for us, and let’s face it, we lived a decent middle class life. No unusual hardships faced us, except that we were latch-key kids at what would now be considered an illegal age - I was 8 - and, perhaps more importantly, there was no warmth in our home that went beyond what someone could buy for us - a nice pair of shoes, a new pair of jeans. No emotion was passed from one person to another. It was quiet. Seemingly always so, unless we had friends over. And, while we had material things, we learned to work hard, to be responsible, to always over-deliver - and, we learned to do for ourselves emotionally.
Sunday lunches with Dad were a punishment through our teen years because no one spoke at the table. We ate in uncomfortable silence, sometimes playing hang man to avoid talking, and then drove home in silence only to bypass mom and go watch TV in the den. No one was there to guide us, or listen to us, through our teen trials and tribulations. And, you know what - suck it up. That’s how it was. I never considered it a gap. And, because I do respect to my mother, I have to say that she did the best she could. Now that I am married and have children, I’m not even sure how she did that much. She simply didn’t have anything else in left for us at the end of the day.
Not until much later in life, did I realize that my response to confrontation and stress was to - yep - suck it up, rather than rail against it or fight it. It’s actually what has made me an incredibly empathetic boss. I am tough, but fair, and I always want to see it the other person’s way before I pass judgment. This doesn’t make me perfect by any stretch, but my M.O. is to relate before I reject.
But even I, as capable as I am of absorbing, have days when the forces of Nature test me. And I sense I am nearing the brink…
