Built to Fly: Overcoming the Weight of Expectations

Let me tell you a story…………

“I’m so tired. Tired of this life that has been an uphill fight to be loved, liked, good, smart, quiet, happy, and everything else people want and expect of me”.

I have uttered these words many times, in one form or another, as I’ve travelled life’s roads. Rutted roads, gravel, potholed, flooded, washboard, blocked, iced, snowed in, dangerous and smoothly paved roads.

In the years of my growing up

during the nineteen-fifties, the subtle, subconscious and overt messages to a girl from parents, family, schools, society, books, magazines, media and anyone in authority (all grownups) basically came down to “Be quiet, polite, smile and don’t do anything to upset anyone. Do what you are told, don’t speak until you are spoken to, dress to be pretty and don’t cry.” She was praised with, “Don’t you look pretty today” and “You’ve been  so quiet and well behaved today.”

I’ve spent my life unconsciously,

but deliberately fighting to meet these criteria and in the early years, earned nothing but failure. You see, these expectancies are impossible to meet, but I didn’t know this. Later in life, even when I did, I still subconsciously looked for love by making others happy, not upsetting them, doing what I was told and always looking pretty. I took complete responsibility for other’s unhappy reactions to me and thus, my lifelong feeling of ‘guilty’ was manifested.

As a teenager, I became very shy,

had one or two close friends, was quiet and did ‘okay’ in school and graduated. I did not know how to say ‘no’ and was an ideal ‘people pleaser’. I tried, once or twice, being the rebellious teen at home, but the results of breaking the rules were disastrous.

As soon as I could read,

I constantly had my nose in a book, escaping into delightful stories. Loving to learn, share knowledge and be independent (not ‘what I was told to do’) was a passion. I asked lots of questions (not ‘being quiet’) in order to understand things and be clear. Learning my independent nature, my questioning and ‘my voice’ were frowned upon. As I became a young adult they did not bode well in relationships, and, in fact, were dangerous.

Boys were not raised

with the same ‘expectations’ as girls. Independence, education, questioning and raising their voices to be heard were God-given rights. They were encouraged in their natural abilities and to find their own happiness rather than dedicating their lives to the happiness of others.

What I have thus far written

is very general, basic and there are exceptions everywhere. But all buildings have foundations from which an infinite number of variations in structure arise. The ‘foundations’ I describe here, were the bedrock for children born in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Then came the tumultuous 1960’s: the Viet Nam War, Women’s Liberation, Racial Equality. It was the decade of fighting for freedoms and I’m a wife and mother in my Twenties with my attention focused on these.

The architecture I was building

on my ‘foundation’ of the past two decades did not fit. My structures were destined to collapse. It did. I built another one. It collapsed. I was to erect several new structures over the decades and they all collapsed. The reason? They were all built on the same foundation. What I was taught as a little girl is deeply ingrained in my subconscious mind. It is said that we, as adults, are 97% motivated by our subconscious mind and only 3% by our conscious mind. Food for thought.

To this day, I do not, with rare exception,

feel keenly heard when I’m speaking. By not ‘heard’ I mean that a listener looks everywhere but in my eyes or is waiting for their turn to speak when I stop. I seldom feel empathy emanating from ‘listeners’. They  interrupt me, seldom say “I understand”, or try to ‘fix’ me. I’m guilty of the same thing at times. This is a direct result of learning, as a little girl, that I was to ‘be quiet’ if I wanted to be loved. Love wasn’t an expectancy, it had to be earned. And so I waffle between knowing I have the human right to speak and be heard and the, sometimes painful, rejection when I exercise that right. I must add, this mostly occurs when I’m speaking to men. Women are better listeners, understandably.

Therefore I betray myself

when I don’t say what should be said, but fear of rejection keeps me silent. Then I convince myself that I do need to speak up because it’s the right thing to do only to have the rejection again. I’m deemed guilty either way.

I now realize that this is the reason

the three businesses I created and operated over my working life, were ones that supported and educated women. Some of my work required me to be a motivational speaker to not only reach and teach women, but to have my voice heard and appreciated.

Thank goodness I chose

a second husband, to whom I was married for fifty years, whose answer to anything I wanted to do was, “Fill your boot!” and “What can I do to help?” His support was important to me being able to get my businesses off the ground and free to fly with my independence and successes. One of my dearest friends told me one day, “I know how much [your husband] loved and adored you simply by watching him watching you.”

And so, the little bonfires

my husband said he could see in my eyes, also burn fiercely in my heart. In spite of the overt and subtle messages branded into my young brain, I was able to overcome the ‘stigma’ of being ‘just a girl’, spread my wings of independence and FLY.

 P.S. Today I am an author and “Emotional Recovery” Life Coach. My lengthy life is filled with grueling life lessons during which I suffered greatly and, alternatively, gained considerable  knowledge and wisdom. I share all of it in my book “Born to Bounce Back” – Regain Zest for Life After it Knocks You Down. Available on Amazon.