As I told you in this post, my Italian teacher — Ciao, G! — mentioned my blog in class the other evening. Our Avanzato class was introducing ourselves to each other as we began the summer session, and I was happy to have the shout-out. G had discovered my blog independently last year when I took Intermedio classes with her. She’d asked me, before this latest class began, if I’d mind her mentioning the blog to the class. Honestly, I hesitated — it’s a public blog, but there are strange distinctions in how it feels to have unseen strangers reading it; to have good friends or family read it; and to have casual acquaintances or colleagues or, as it turns out, classmates reading it. But I’d just published that Canada Day post, and more readers might mean more donations to a worthy fundraising effort. And I’ll admit to feeling pleased with, and proud of, that essay.
By the time of the actual class, though, I’d just posted one of those “short and sweet” posts, the one with photos featuring the teddy bears I’d knit for my grandsons — more specifically, about how those grandsons love their little companions. Not a “thought piece” at all. Just a Nana, feeling the feels. And, as I said in last Friday’s post, while I would have felt pleased to share [the Canada Day post] (that 1400 blog visitors have read, that raised a decent sum for a worthy cause), I admit that I cringed at the idea of people whom I know in real life (but not well enough yet, perhaps) being introduced to my writing here at the more quotidian, more domestic — and, I always wonder, perhaps more banal — level of my “little bears and grandchildren” post.
So I caught myself wincing inwardly while smiling (and blushing just a bit) my Grazie on the Zoom screen. And I woke up in the early morning once again asking myself harsh questions about the blog. So many of them were of the “Who do you think you are?” variety. Designed to shame. Questions about why anyone would be interested in my quotidian, domestic pursuits; about why I want to take up space presenting myself as so “ordinary,” so traditional or conservative or bourgeois or even, one voice asks, so not-particularly-feminist. So safe, retired, older woman. Older on the way to old.
And there are questions about What If so-and-so read these posts. So-and-so often being, for example, my doctoral supervisor. The implied answer being that she’d find them banal, superficial, boring. I can be quite cruel to myself at 4 a.m.
Finally, though, I get out of bed, use my Morning Pages to answer these accusatory questions. I remind myself, in writing, that I represent these aspects of my daily life on the blog because they’re important to me. Because I believe they matter, because I enjoy them, I post about them in my attempts to represent my life with as much authenticity as I can muster. And I include them deliberately as my small resistance against the false binary that separates an intellectual life from our more corporeal daily pursuits. That falsely associates women with the corporeal and the quotidian and the domestic, men with the loftier “life of the mind.” Remember? I ask myself, You can be both. You can knit teddy bears for your grandkids and covet and wear motorcycle jackets and muse on liminality and not be badass and you don’t have to choose between lofty and earthy. And by you, I mean “I.” Or really, “we”. . .
By the time I get to the gym for my first in-person workout with my trainer in well over a year, I’m feeling a bit better. She’s intuitive and inspiring and would make as good a life coach or therapist as she does a personal trainer. I explain my mood a bit; she commiserates; and we talk a bit about the dips that often follow an achievement or success, whether grand or modest, as in the case of my Canada Day post. She mentions a Ted Talk by Elizabeth Gilbert on this topic, and later sends me links to this and to an article she’d recommended.
But our talk has triggered a memory of a podcast, a vestigial, impressionistic sense of something about vulnerability arising after having done something. I meet Pater for coffee and a pastry after class, and I’m a bit distracted during our conversation by trying to focus this memory in hopes of tracking down that podcast. Back home, later that afternoon, I finally have it: a podcast by French life-coach Clotilde Dusoulier on Les Courbatures de Vulnérabilité, (or “The Stiff Muscles of Vulnerability,” perhaps “The Aches and Pains of Vulnerability”).
Essentially, what Clotilde sets out in this podcast is that being open to vulnerability means relinquishing the façade we so often maintain between ourselves and others, putting down our armour. She acknowledges that opening ourselves to the judgement of others (which is, after all, out of our control anyway) can be uncomfortable. But, she counters, armour is heavy and can become a kind of prison.
She lists three benefits of vulnerability: 1) Showing ourselves to others is the only way to form relationships that are rich and authentic (although, she adds, yes, it requires courage. When you drop your armour, you don’t know how the other person will react); 2) Being vulnerable, she claims, is le seul moyen (the only way) to have a relationship with yourself that’s rich and authentic; and 3) By being vulnerable, exposing your authentic self to others, you contribute little by little to breaking down a society of façades. You are performing a kind of militantisme, of activism, towards a society with less armour, less judgement.
I press “Pause” at this point, to nod a bit, to connect again with my commitment to presenting the quotidian, domestic aspects of my life as a feminist act. . . This resonates, obviously. . .
I press “Play,” and the podcast rolls on, Clotilde speaking again of the courage it takes to lâcher la contrôle, but also pointing out, again, that we don’t ever really have control over what others think of us anyway. She acknowledges all the thoughts and emotions that so often arrive after an episode of vulnerability, the waves of discomfort, of questioning why we exposed ourselves — and she calls this unsettling the cost of exercising our muscle de vulnérabilité. She speaks of work she’s done as a life coach in group sessions, of the repeated phenomenon she’s noticed that at exactly the moment she has felt most exposed comes the magic: This is when she hears, again and again, that the others feel most connected to her and also feel a grand sense of relief — “It’s not just me!” — and of gratitude.
Finally, as the podcast approaches the last minute or two, I hear the prescription I’ve needed. Clotilde tells me (well, her audience in general, obviously, but I hear these words as aimed precisely at me in my current state) that when I feel vulnerable, the answer is not to once again don my armure. This is a protection that burdens with its weight, that traps and imprisons. Instead, she suggests, I can approach the discomfort I’m feeling with curiosity, asking, “What parts of me am I feeling shame about? Why do I not accept some parts of me? Why do I fear the judgement of others toward certain parts of me?
As soon as I hear the discomfort framed this way, I can see it as potentially productive, and I can also see a pathway to the work I have to continue doing.
I see the activism I consciously committed to from the inception of this blog: that against the expectations of academe, I represent the reality of my existence beyond the “life of the mind,” that I try to resist the coercive hierarchy of activities which has for so long meant that certain kinds of thinking and creating have been deemed more worthy, too often along lines of “women’s work” and “men’s work.” Such that, when women did, or do, make our way into these more rarefied or powerful spaces, we feel pressure to either stop or to hide away any of those activities that might compromise our hard-won membership.
Alongside my deliberate efforts to represent my domestic activities as part of my life, though, I’m apparently still uncomfortable with the idea of people seeing me as only or too domestic, only or too family-focused, only or too mother, wife, grandmother. I recognize my heavy investment from childhood in an identity built around being “smart,” — the compensation for being smaller and younger and later to hit puberty and shyer, less socially confident than my classmates. As well, since adolescence, I’ll admit to having maintained some distance, a barrier of some sort, with my mother, to having complex feelings about the way her introversion and shyness was exacerbated by her role raising so many children. And I remember my frustration, especially during those “Mommy Wars” years of the 70s and 80s, at being dismissed as a Stay-at-Home Mom, my part-time work as a piano teacher in my own home studio too often seen as a hobby by other moms with “real careers.”
Layers and layers, in other words, and I see that my activism is partly directed at myself. I also see that, as Clotilde explained, opening my self to the judgement of others, being uncomfortably vulnerable, is not only le seul moyen to have rich and authentic relationships with others, but it’s also the only way to have a rich and authentic relationship with myself. I have some work to do.
So I’m finished listening to that podcast, and I’ve begun outlining this blog post, shuffling the notes I’ve made, checking my comprehension, my translation. I’ve made a note to myself to listen to the Brené Brown talk about the Vulnerability Hangover. And I come back to the post that triggered my discomfort. An innocuous post about two little bears I knit and the response of the two small grandsons who received them. It’s a bit funny that my Canada Day post — on a clearly riskier, more political topic, revealing a more extended personal and familial history — didn’t provoke such discomfort. I’ve felt it regularly before, though, generally after posting “What I Wore” posts and, more often lately, when I feel I’ve been reporting too often on my everyday life.
These bears, though. As I thought about why I should feel vulnerable posting about those, I thought of an ex-colleague, a bold and adventurous and brilliant, often erratic, woman, who wondered, with considerable incredulity, why I would want to knit. If I’d been designing my own patterns, I might have convinced her that the work was creative, even artistic, but my satisfaction came from following a pattern, using a skill I’d learned from my mother and grandmother decades earlier, transforming yarn into a garment. Retrogressive domesticity was all she could see. (Lest you think I’m being overly sensitive about a single woman’s misguided opinion, other examples abound in academe, the general sense that you can’t really be a serious scholar and have other interests, particularly if you’re a woman.)
There’s the age factor as well, the kinds of “Not Your Mother’s Knitting” — or, more applicable to me now, “Not Your Nana’s Yarn Store” — so that even as knitting has become popular again in the last couple of decades, it’s hard not to see the cliché I’ve knit myself into: a Teddy-Bear knitting Nana. Hmmmm.. . . I don’t mind being seen as an older, even as an old, woman, but there’s no question we’re often reduced to stereotypes, when we’re seen at all. Still, I’ve knit all my life and I enjoy making those bears and my grandkids are very important to me. I also earned a PhD at 52, and enjoy travelling solo occasionally, and i use the F-word IRL more than I’ll ever let on here. Complexity of representation is what I’m aiming for here, and excluding the teddy bears and the Outfits-of-the-Day would be dishonest.
But I was still trying to figure out why the teddy bear post should have left me feeling particularly exposed when I finally had the lightbulb moment: those teddy bears my mom made, as she began to find her way out of the heavy depression she fell into after my brother’s sudden death at 19. Hers were sewn, of material she’d thrifted, generally, old worn fur or mohair or wool flannel coats. Cut from a pattern, sewn up on her old Singer machine or perhaps on the Pfaff she later replaced it with, these teddies were jointed. She attached eyes, embroidered noses and mouths, made little vests or bows.
I don’t know how many she made, but she sold some, gave more away, and had a small crew left to fill the couch in the living room and to sit on the table in her sewing room. She was self-deprecating about it, but we encouraged her creativity and enterprise and admired her skills. After the teddy bears, she took up vintage doll repair, collecting them from thrift stores and rummage sales and then following a mail-order course to rebuild broken limbs, repaint faded faces, replace rudely shorn locks. Next, a friend found her piecework stitching skirts, and there were boxes of fabric and frenzied hours of seams being whirred up with the homegrown occupational therapy.
For a while, I think my dad hoped she might pursue upgrading her teaching certificate and go back to the classroom, my little sisters in middle school by then. That was a hope too far, but she pushed herself to find housecleaning work and found more dignity than I could in getting paid for something we’d taken for granted.
And then three decades later, in the weeks before she died, her cognitive abilities fading, she picked up one of her homemade teddy bears from the couch beside her, looked searchingly at me, puzzled questions in her warm, brown eyes, and said, I made a whole bunch of these once. I think I was a little — and she made one of those unfortunate universal symbols for being mentally disturbed, index finger whirling round as it pointed at her temple.
I don’t need to unpack that connection here, now. But there’s something there about my mother, myself (isn’t there always, already?). And maybe something about the value of continuing to make space for teddy-bear making that doesn’t make some of us feel “a little” whatever. Room where we can hold complexity, be this and that.
I’ve been thinking that I need to follow the example of my six-year-old granddaughter, the one who punctuates our FaceTime conversation with the repeated request: Can I show you something? or Can I tell you something?
So far, she doesn’t feel any more shame (or shyness, or embarrassment, or vulnerability) about wanting to show me the pink sparkly top she just got than she does when she tells me about the rock-climbing she did or the new pool they have in their front yard or read me the latest reader she’s brought home from school. And if exercising my vulnerability muscle invigorates that childhood confidence that my impulse to share will be met with interest by someone — even as my adult self knows that not everyone will share that interest — then I guess I can put up with the occasional courbature de vulnérabilité.
No questions today for you to respond to, but I welcome your thoughts, recognizing that the post’s length and content may limit its appeal. Apparently, it was something I needed to write for myself, though, and I hope that some of you might find relevance here.
xo,
f
I hate to feel anyone being made to feel uncomfortable by following any type of craft. I loved your teddy bear post – knitted with love for littles that you love and that they’ll always remember – nothing could be better than that.
Come October I’m off to attend a brioche knitting course followed the next day by a crochet course. My grandmother (always very patient) gave up trying to teach me crochet despite teaching my left-handed sister to knit using a mirror. Am determined to master crochet.
Author
Thanks for being first to respond to this long post, Lesley. So odd the different things that can make us feel vulnerable. For me it’s more the writing about it than the doing.
Someday I should do a brioche class as well — I’ve done the easier versions of that stitch, but never the real thing.
Chuckling at the idea that your grandmother had the patience to teach a left-handed knitter, with a mirror as “tech aid,” but gave up on you! And it’s SO much easier to crochet than to knit brioche stitch, in my opinion (my grandmother managed to teach me and we passed many hours crocheting together in her living room during my teen years. I might have been a bit of a nerd 😉
The French life coach’s idea that vulnerabilty= scary, but on the otherhand armor against it =heavy is familiar. Brene Brown, who you mention later in the post has spoken for years about the very same concept. Have listened to her podcasts on this subject repeatedly and found them soothing and opportunities for growth. It makes a great deal of sense that the armor can weigh a ton, but vulnerability weighs quite a lot, too. This I know: it is worth the struggle questioning just how much the armor is actually protecting us, or are we just accustomed to the sore muscles that come from carrying that armor so often, or long?
The stories of academia, Frances, sound punishing. Hard to understand, as an “outsider”, that educated people could be quite so narrow in their definition of what are worthy pursuits and which ones may impact on one being defined fully an intellectual. Do so remember the “mommy wars” as you say of the 70s and 80s. Women can be so unkind to one another in judgment, and I watched my mother justifying, to herself and others, that when she had small children she preferred her life and efforts to be home -centered, even though she was out of step with a few of her peers. But, my wise grandmother often said, ( when she wasn’t busy protesting or working for a cause, earning money, volunteering or canning), “Feminism has nothing to do with who does the dishes after dinner”. And of the academic colleagues, presumably they had maids/help to clean up after them, do the laundry, care for their children, bake the birthday cakes? Sounds like cruel judgment to me.
Yes, it makes sense to me, too, that we can “hold” complexities in ourselves- be domestic for the pleasure of an orderly home, a beautifully set table, making a meal for those we love, being “in service” doing the nit and the grit in a family member’s life when they need it. And taking enormous pleasure in it.
As you say, ” coveting the motorcycle jacket, but not being badass”. We are so many things, to so many people in our lives. If creative expression is a need,we can do that by domestic tasks creating beauty and order and nourishment for others around us, and ourselves, or we can write a post exposing ourselves and enlightening others as you did with the Canada Day post which expressed your activist side,too. And is there one of us here who has not fallen in love with the knitted bears, as well as the idea that giving them to your grandchildren imprints a deep memory and connection with those children that will be remembered always? Sounds like a beautiful legacy to me.
A.in London
Author
Yes, Clotilde Dusoulier very clearly attributes Brené Brown as the source for her thinking about vulnerability — she also explains why she doesn’t use Brown’s term “vulnerability hangover” and instead likens the discomfort to the stiff muscles we have after working out: The French term for hangover, gueule de bois (wooden mouth, literally) while colourful, sounds a bit ugly to Dusoulier and she prefers to emphasis the discomfort as a result of training rather than of excess indulgence.
Thanks for a thoughtful, engaged response.
Frances,I admire you very much. Period.
And I hear you
This seems like a part of your novel (and you should publish it ),your memories about your mother and father,so poignant….
I’m so sorry that I can’t express myself in English in a way that this beautifully written essay deserve. You have now three magnificent posts in (almost) a row ,wow!
If all your posts were only intelectual and deeply emotional-how could I know what my friend is doing or wearing right now;)?
How rich and multidimensional is a person who does all those things? Who is kind and clever and authentic and beautiful! And,sometimes,vulnerable and beautiful!
I prefer to be as I am,trying not to think what others are thinking about me and don’t allow that their opinion affect the way how I live my life,what I wear,think,do….. But,I’ve chosen not to show all aspects of my life (some of them are the best :),but,never mind,I like them to be hidden),as well as you,I guess
But,it is sometimes not easy ,meeting new people,who don’t know who I was,ten or twenty or thirty years ago- but,this is what I am now and I accept it
Dottoressa
Author
Such a kind and encouraging response, K, and you express yourself very well in English, always!
Your last sentence really shines another light for me on what I’m working to accept. It truly, sometimes, is not easy, meeting new people who have no idea who we were.
Well! Having been mocked by friends for my interest in historic embroidery, or having to be be proactive in discussing the binary and mathematical nature of knitting…blah blah.. I’ve come to the realization that I am very complex multi layered and inconsistent…that I believe is the nature of many women ( maybe men but they rarely let on). So today, I enjoy my nerdy reading, making pasta sauce, garden planning (c.f. Vita Sackville West, if I had more land and gardeners!) my historical embroidery, some knitting and a swish Japanese apron….and maybe some Latin grammar. This is who I am now…and tomorrow?
Author
Nerds unite, is all I can say to this! Hurrah! Complex, multi-layered, and inconsistent — where’s the problem?!
Long time reader, second time commenter. This essay is so beautiful to me. Your writing really inspires and gives me strength. I’ve been reading your blog for years, from the states and since 2009 from France. In fact, reading your posts on Paris would give me the push I needed when I’d be dreading another transatlantic flight alone with three little kids, returning home to France after visiting American family…Look how beautifully she describes your city , I’d think and your writing reminded me that I was really fortunate to live where I do. The fact that you obtained your PhD at 52 is also another point which inspires me. Heck, I don’t even know you but when I start to think the years are passing by and I still haven’t gotten to that point, I think of you and it gives me hope! Please keep writing, I’m really glad you’re here.
Beth
Author
Beth, thanks so much for commenting a second time (and for reading what I write all these years!). You have no idea how much I appreciate knowing that my words here matter to you. (Plus, I see you, strong woman, those long flights shepherding three small children back home to France, all the mixed emotions of leaving American family again. This is part of you that you may someday mind that others can’t see — ask me how I know! 🙂 — but by then you’ll be doing something else important, I’m quite sure. Building all the layers. . . )
As I begin to write here, four comments (A in London, Dottoressa, Laura, and Beth) have already eloquently expressed my feelings. I so feel you about judgement…as a Japanese-American born right after WWII and now as an active Christian, I have felt the pressure of stereotypes. I have done my best to break out the real person within…despite my physical appearance and my strong faith. At 72, that vulnerability has turned more into transparency…a kind of truth. I am thankful for these years that are more peaceful within myself.
I smile as I remember moments of shattering those preconceived ideas of who I am/was, opinions or postures I should hold. People now know the “liberal” attitudes I hold from the experiences of the God-given life I have.
I thank you, Frances, for the freedoms you share with us to express and experience these things together here in your post. We are the richer for it.
With much appreciation, Charlene H
Author
Another thoughtful response, another example of the complexities one of us can hold. I can only imagine those moments when you shattered others’ preconceived ideas of you, but I love the image. And I start to think that maybe, in these days when too often factions seem to form and harden and social divisions become more entrenched, more hateful, it can be our work as elders to share our own complexity. To say that one can be “this” and “that.” Vulnerability becoming, as you suggest, a kind of transparency, pointing toward a kind of truth.
Beautifully expressed. It strikes me that our generation of women is now moving forward into later life and reviewing all we learned and experienced – putting it into context as we age. The contradictory expectations of our youth, the pressing onward of our adult lives, finding our way in a world driven by speed and progress and productivity and here we are, reviewing and finding our place. It isn’t easy and it can sit uncomfortably at times. Still, here we are. And here we think.
Author
Thanks, Annie! I find your comment really helpful, pushing forward what Dottoressa said, and Charlene. It’s not easy, and it does sit uncomfortably at times, this “reviewing and finding our place.” But maybe there’s a strength in it as well. As you say, here we still here. And here we think. . .
Others, like Dottoressa, have said already expressed my thoughts far better than I could.
But I will leave you with this: Think of how multi-dimensional and talented you are compared to those ‘intellectuals’ who merely rest against the letters behind their names. You are vastly more interesting and life-giving. Much rather have you as a friend. 🙂
Author
Thanks, Mary. On their behalf, though, I have to say that there are pressures brought to bear, in academe (and especially for women, still) that I had considerable immunity from, having arrived there much later in life (so equipped with perhaps a more solid sense of other measures of self-worth) and with a second income in the family.
You know what just occurred to me? Isn’t your multi-faceted exploration of teddy bears, First Nations, pink oxfords and the self essentially modern Montaigne from the place of women? At the very least, one could make that argument, whether it prevailed or not. So, in that case, what does “academe” mean, symbolically, in your life essay? What does accomplishment signify? And surely these questions, or at least questions similarly structured, are important for us all. I only wish I could walk down the block to your place and curl up on your sofa with you to discuss!
Author
Oh, you’re very kind to compare my wonderings to Montaigne’s essays! And yours are good questions and I would love to curl up in my livingroom or out on the terrace if the weather cooperates and think them through together. xo
As a retired female professor, I can certainly empathize with the “armour” needed to hold our own in that particular workplace. The casual dismissal of our contributions in those 70s meetings still stings, as does the careless assumption that, as females, we’d be willing to clean up those dirty coffee cups left on the table at the conclusion of the meeting. As others have noted, though, that “armour” can trap, as well as protect, us. We become the stereotype in the eyes of others.
I used to love skiing at our local hill because my students often had no idea as to who was sitting next to them as we rode the slow chairlift up to the top of the mountain—until I raised my goggles to smile and wish them a good ride down the mountain! I think that moment did alter how they saw me when I was behind the podium in the lecture hall, but in a good way. Tearing holes in the facades we employ in our various roles reflects our complexity as human beings.
And that is why I read your blog because it reveals a complex, interesting woman who can easily slip between being a Nana, a scholar, a homemaker, an artist, a reader, a gardener, a bike rider, and so much more. I guess, to me, it’s refusing to be pigeonholed by others’ expectations about our roles. Loving to spend my weekends on the ski hill did not diminish my pleasure or abilities in my academic life—both were as necessary as breathing—but punching holes in a stereotype was something which I always thought was important for both me and my students.
Author
Yes! “Tearing holes in the facades we employ in our various roles reflects our complexity as human beings.” And what a good thing that was for your students to glimpse! I think the more of that we do for each other, the better.
And thank you for the kind words. I’m pleased and encouraged to know you find the blog worthwhile.
A beautiful thoughtful “vulnerable “ post. I admire you so much and have often told my husband and friends of all your accomplishments, activities and talents. I say my friend in Vancouver because that’s how I feel. I can’t begin to convey how much your posts mean to me. Thank you ♥️
Author
Thank you for taking the time to let me know this, Kathleen. It’s much appreciated.
As Annie commented at this age I am reviewing my life and my interests, now aware that my time is limited. Where I spend my time and attention is an important decision. That hesitation over vulnerability is still a struggle for an introvert like me so I thank you for your thoughtful and inspiring post. Love the other followers comments too.
Author
These questions really do get heightened now, at this age, don’t they? I’m glad you find this post helpful — the vulnerability is a recurring issue for me, also an introvert. And yes, isn’t it a good conversation overall? I’m always so happy to host these comments here and watch the dialogue build.
This resonates so strongly with me. My working life as an international tax specialist was spent in a very male environment, fast moving, high adrenaline, intensely competitive. Often I was the only woman in the room and in the later stages of my professional life both colleagues and clients were often ten or twenty years younger than I was. I never mentioned cooking or knitting or my children and eventually grandchildren except to a tiny number of close friends. I needed to be taken seriously and I made sure I was. I retired early about ten years ago mainly because I just wanted time for myself. Since then I’ve had a different sort of struggle in that new people I meet see the four children and the ten grandchildren and assume that my life has been domestic in a way it has not. I did find that hard to adjust to for a year or two. Gradually I’ve managed to let that go and admit that it’s mainly ego and I try to just live the life I want right now. So in my working life my love for traditional female endeavours was invisible and now the knitting and cooking and childcare is what people see and it’s my professional life which is invisible. I’ve come to terms with that mostly. I’ve come to see that many of my new friends who have lived much more traditional lives for women of our generation are quick and funny and keenly intelligent. Indeed I’m a bit ashamed of my own stereotyping. But it’s interesting. I don’t believe men have the same trouble with their complexities. Maybe train spotting and wood carving are high status ways of spending time? But my cooking and knitting are just as important to me as my Spanish and running so at least life on the outside is a better match for life on the inside. I hope that this will be easier for my daughters and granddaughters. I wonder if it will.
Author
thanks for this thoughtful comment, Elizabeth. I know that women in many fields experienced this pressure to keep our domestic/personal lives to ourselves in order to present “professionally” — it certainly wasn’t confined to academe. I’m not surprised to find that people who see your four children and ten grandchildren make those assumptions about you. I’ve had those assumptions made throughout much of my adult life — having “paid work outside the home” seemed to make the difference. Now that I’m retired from that work, the stereotyping is compounded by my age. So much of it is about ego, it’s true. I think that might be where vulnerability comes in, and the supporting “muscles” need to be exercised 😉 Like you, I hope it will be easier for our granddaughters. . .
I don’t have time at the moment to read the other comments and replies (which I always find as interesting as your wonderful posts themselves), but I did want to say that it makes me sad to think of the mental energy you have to put in to overcome doubts about the “worthiness” of writing about some of your activities, and even about the activities themselves. What is more wonderful than a handmade gift to a child – or anyone? The connections you made to your mother’s emotional life and the last interaction with her about the bears are so interesting and poignant, and how awful that your family lost your brother at such a young age!
I was so moved by your Canada Day post (and will donate). I wanted to mention that yesterday’s episode of “The Daily” podcast from the NY Times was on the topic of the residential schools. It was excellent.
Author
Thanks, Marie. I agree with you that the comments here are always at least as interesting as what I write.
Please don’t spend time feeling sad for me, personally. I don’t like the feelings of vulnerability and doubt I experience in the early morning, it’s true, but the “mental energy” is well spent from my perspective. As Clotilde explained in her podcast — and as I’ve often experienced in my university classrooms — whenever someone overcomes her sense of vulnerability or ambivalence or even shame to raise a question or to admit a thought or emotion, others will inevitably feel freed to disclose their own related ideas or feelings or doubts. And for me, trying to think analytically and critically about what and how and why I’m feeling something — particularly if I can make connections with more general social, perhaps historical, structures or phenomena — is a useful path to understanding and integrating. In fact, I find this work as worthwhile as knitting those bears, although they belong to rather different registers of my life overall 😉
Thanks also for the recommendation of that podcast.
I love this post, and the idea of building up our vulnerability muscles. We contain multitudes, and some of those multitudes knit bears (like you do), or misidentify birds (like I do).
Author
Thanks, Tanis! It’s been too long, and I hope I might someday get to spend time with birdwatching Tanis. I think she’s emerged since we last met (to walk the seawall here in Vancouver? or was it to eat tagines in Paris?). xo
We are complex creatures! I often think that I am considered “odd” or “quirky” by some family members. But I have friends who support me in my “eccentricities”. It is only through being vulnerable that we can be
“known” by others and that we can develop our supportive network of friends (online or in person).
Author
It’s So important to find those friends who support or perhaps even share our eccentricities, with whom we don’t have to maintain a façade. Perhaps the best reason for risking vulnerability.
Hello from yet another retired female professor. I am so glad I found your blog. What a wonderful post and perceptive comments. Like many others I have struggled with the last 2 years since I retired–and especially since pandemic and lockdowns. What am I? At my core, I am a teacher and I am fufilled by inspiring others to love what I love. I’d hoped to do this in voluntary roles, but the pandemic ended that. Not only have I lost my reason for being, but I’ve lost my hard won status and respect. I understand that many retired men feel the same losses, so it’s an interesting take on feminism, now women are players in a male world. However, women of our generation (the ones retiring now) may have had a special battle to get where they were. I seem to remember Hillary Clinton saying that she found it hard to show emotion because for so long she had stifled her emotions in the workplace. Women could not allow themselves to be seen as emotional or vulnerable. This may have changed for younger women (because of us) and they may enjoy different retirements. But, meanwhile, we are trying to re-ignite our feminine selves, the emotional, nurturing, crafting, creating, homemaking selves that we dared not show in the professional world.
Author
Thanks for adding another layer of thinking to this conversation, Elaine (and I’m glad you found your way here — it’s a great community, as you’ve noted in your reference to the “perceptive comments”). I do feel that the pandemic exacerbated my feelings around this (as did my move away from the community where I’d spent my career, built a network). I suspect I’m luckier than many women of our generation retiring from careers they battled to build — by the time I was full-time at my uni, I’d mostly raised my kids (a work-from-home mom) and many of the toughest struggles had been fought by others. But there were still many constraints, if more subtly policed, on women in the workplace around the millennium, as you are sure to know well. (And I know that younger women may speak up and say that at least we can enjoy retirement; given the reality of precarity, that seems an unattainable luxury to many.)
So interesting to read Elaine’s reply above and your response. I do agree that women of our generation may have had a particular battle to achieve in the workplace, not that I would underestimate the difficulties that remain for the generations which follow us. And I also recognise the sense of having lost my place and my hardwon status. Now, ten years on from my leaving my work, I feel entirely happy with the pleasures and privileges of my retired life but it took a little time to get there!
Author
Reassuring to know, Elizabeth — thank you! I haven’t yet found the community I’m hoping for here — I get the sense you’ve built yourself a great network.
It’s taken a while Frances and really it’s one very close local friend and a looser collection of people connected with my yoga and Spanish classes and book group. That produces a sense of comfortable connectedness to community along with some perhaps more like minded connections online!
Author
Thanks Elizabeth. I was beginning to build these kinds of connections before Covid-19 restrictions and I’m really looking forward to in-person classes starting up again. Not quite as easy in the city, I’ve found, as in a smaller place where you can bump into people often enough to move a nascent friendship beyond the immediate context of a class, but I know it also takes time. And meanwhile, yes, I very much appreciate the “like-minded connections online”! xo
I really enjoyed this post, Frances. Training your vulnerability muscle is difficult. Questioning our ability to be worthy to post on social media, to write books, or even to write letters is something that I know many people struggle with. It can even feel intimidating to write in this space, but I know that you are a kind and generous cousin who has created a safe space.
Shaming can be a silent, insidious, invasive, and disruptive force. We shame our bodies, our inactions, our opinions, and sometimes others without really considering the harmful effects. It can stop us from visiting others, taking action, sharing opinions, and writing without fear of rejection. I even find myself posting less on social media in fear of being shamed by others.
When I was young, I spent a great deal of time writing. I was a major introvert in a world where I rarely made a peep in the company of others. I had a wonderful Grade 8 English teacher who encouraged me to get involved in extracurricular activities, including theatre. Before I left high school, she told me, “Keep writing and do something useful with it.”
I remember my first letter to the editor that was published by a Prince George paper and how surprised I was by the proud feeling that swept over me. (I had taken my children to the Hunchback of Notre Dame and I didn’t appreciate how Quasimodo was portrayed – I laugh about this now as it seems so silly to submit this to a local paper). I also remember the trepidation I felt when I presented my first article to a Prince George newspaper (about the wonders of the Prince George Sexual Assault Centre where I had been volunteering for six months). I was so surprised when the editor liked my writing, published the article, and asked for more. I was astonished that someone valued what I had written and even considered it worthy for public consumption. The editor explained that writers are simply story writers, and there are so many stories waiting to be told. He assigned me to people interest stories for the next two years and I enjoyed every minute of it.
I have learned that my view is unique, my opinion is my own, and my story is written as an attempt to touch someone in any way that I can. It may not be written perfectly, but it is written with my voice. Not everyone will agree with its content and there is no shame in receiving negative feedback, which can lead to thoughtful discussion for all parties involved. However, no one should be shamed for sharing their thoughts, opinions, etc.
Brene Brown recommends building shame resilience through several methods including questioning the source of why we feel shameful and confronting those who have made shaming remarks and revisiting positive compliments helps. She has some wonderful advice about shame resilience in her books Gifts of Imperfection and Dare to Lead.
Author
Thanks for stopping by and letting me know how much this post resonated with you, Deborah.