Women of Excellence

The good news is that my daughter’s COVID test was negative yesterday. We all sighed a big sigh of relief. She works at a local credit union. It started as a summer internship and they asked her to stay on and work part-time during the school year, which happens to be her senior year of high school. I was hesitant about this, for time management reasons, but my daughter loves working there, so my husband and I acquiesced. Recently, one of my daughter’s female managers got promoted, and she was moving to a different location. Upon leaving, the manager wrote a hand written thank you note to my daughter, in which she wrote that my daughter is “a woman of excellence.” I love that terminology, and this is not just because I am a proud mama. One, I love women who support and mentor other women. This is a rarer phenomenon than it should be. Second, I have honestly never seen that terminology in writing before. “A woman of excellence.” What does that mean? I want to be one. I want to be called “a woman of excellence.” I want to believe that I am “a woman of excellence.”

I looked up the word “excellence” in the dictionary. It means “the quality of being outstanding/extremely good”. That’s pretty general, right? I think that we all have things that we are extremely good at, and we all have areas that we could probably work on. Maybe we don’t care enough about certain traits, to work hard enough to become excellent at them. There are certain areas that I do believe that I am “a woman of excellence” and then there are other things in my life that I believe that I am more likely to be called “a woman of sub-standards.” To be “a woman of excellence”, does that mean you have to be good at everything? That feels like a lot of undue stress and pressure, and perhaps, a lesson in frustration and futility. Perhaps being “a woman of excellence” means knowing yourself, knowing your values, and your priorities, and your purposes, and being excellent at these things. I’m not really sure. All that I know is that I would like to be one. I would like to be known as “a woman of excellence.” And I also know that I am grateful that another woman acknowledged and appreciated this quality of excellence in my daughter, besides just her adoring mother. That was an excellent thing for that woman to do, for a young woman coming up in the world behind her. And this vital encouragement is something that all of us “women of excellence” are more than capable to do, for the future generations of excellent women, for whom we are paving the way. If this encouragement and inspiration for young women is the only area that we choose to be excellent at, I am convinced that this will be more than enough.

“Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence.” – Anonymous (probably written by an anonymous person of excellence and humility)

“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.” – Vince Lombardi

“Excellence is not a skill. It’s an attitude.” – Ralph Marston

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Way Showers

I went to an “event” yesterday and I actually woke up feeling like I have things to write about. When you actually go and do things, you end up having stories to experience and then, stories to tell. Life felt a little “normal” again, for the first time in a long time, yesterday.

Yesterday the “event” that I attended, was my daughter’s first high school tennis match, of the season. And she won it. But it was a complete nail biter. She was down 3-6, came back 7-6, but then she and her very worthy competitor, ended up tying 8-8. They had to play a tie breaker, which my entirely exhausted daughter ended up winning, 11-9. My nails are bloody nubs. When the match was finally over, I was reminded of the author Glennon Doyle’s most famous quote, “We can do hard things.” I told my daughter what I liked best about her victory, was that she will always have the memory of it, in her back pocket. When she is struggling with any difficult situation in her life, she can think back to this moment, and know for a fact, that she is full of fortitude, perseverance, and calmness under pressure. She can do hard things. She has proven it to herself.

Yesterday’s tennis match wasn’t exactly “normal.” We have good winter weather here in Florida, therefore the matches are held outside. There was no communal snack table, no hugging, no high fives, nor any handshakes after the matches. Each competing duo was handed a fresh can of balls before their games. I was starkly reminded that it was during tennis season last year, when the reality of the coronavirus pandemic was truly setting in for all of us. At the last high school tennis match which I attended (in March of 2020), the coach told the players that the rest of the season had been cancelled. He also told them, that after spring break, they were not likely coming back to school. Unfortunately, he was right.

While I was at the match yesterday, I also partook in one of my other vices – eavesdropping. I have mentioned on the blog before that I like to eavesdrop. I am not proud of that fact, but I own it. As I was watching my daughter play, I overhead a group of high school girls talking. One girl said, “I have this condition called ‘anxiety’.” That statement started a chorus of statements: “Anxiety! Oh yes, I have that! My therapist says I have that, too. I hate anxiety. I can’t sleep! I can’t drive.”

Wow. At that moment I wanted to run over and group hug all of them. But of course, I couldn’t do it, because 1.) Covid and 2.) I was eavesdropping, which is a rude and hurtful thing to do. So, I just sat in my deserved little cloud of sadness, and I reflected a little bit. And I thought about the blog that I was going to write today.

I would like to pretend that these girls’ anxiety issues were all concerning this awful pandemic, which has a lot of us people, all wound up in tight little balls, these days, but I would be lying to myself. Quite honestly, I am sure that I could have overheard that conversation, at any time during all of the years which my children have been in high school, starting around the year 2010. Three of my middle son’s classmates committed suicide in high school. My daughter’s class just lost a classmate to suicide a couple of months ago. I know for a fact that my own children experience anxiety. I’ve witnessed it, first hand.

I believe life is mostly meant to be savored and enjoyed. I truly do. But do I live that? Am I an example of that? Do I model a life that is mostly “peace and joy”? Do I take any responsibility for my own peace and joy, or do I act as if I am a victim of circumstance? These are hard questions. The answers are hard to face sometimes.

Over the years, the women before us have fought hard for the rights which we women have today, such as the right to vote, to serve in the military, and to become vice president of the United States. It is easy to take these gifts for granted. In our “Declaration of Independence”, we were all promised the right to “the pursuit of happiness.” The women before us, worked hard and tirelessly, to make sure that we women had the equal right to “the pursuit of the happiness.” Are we doing our part in that quest?

I believe that happiness is a by-product of what we do. Is what I am doing on a daily basis bringing me happiness? Do my relationships with the others in my life, bring me happiness? Does my relationship with myself bring me happiness? Am I living to my own standards, or am I trying to live to the impossible standards of “fake world” as depicted on social media? Do I have a strong connection with my spirituality, a faith that makes me feel whole, not one that separates me from others with the sense that I am “holier than thou”?

Why are these questions important? They are important because I am a model to my daughter, and I am a model to your daughters and to your granddaughters, and to that beautiful group of girls, discussing, in earnest, their shared condition of anxiety. Kids listen to what we do, not what we say. Kids are excellent at honing in on hypocrites. After raising four almost grown children, and having made many an eloquent lecture (that I myself, was pretty impressed with), I learned that those loquacious words fell mostly on deaf ears, especially if I wasn’t walking my talk.

What are we modeling to the women of the future, friends? If I am honest, that group of girls, could have easily been me, and any one of my group of friends, in any of my various stages of my life. And that’s okay. It’s good to have friends to lean on for support. But it is also good to have friends to savor life with. It is good to have friends to laugh with, and to sit with, in awe of the pure beauty of each other, our friendships, and of the incredible, nature all around us. What are we modeling to the women of the future? “Don’t feel anxiety, girls, but I just changed my outfit fifteen times, because I feel so insecure about how I look. Don’t feel anxiety, girls, but it is important that you look lovely, have a great job, raise amazing kids (because if they aren’t amazing, it is all your fault), and sustain a romantic, exciting, successful marriage through it all. And if any of these areas of life are faltering, I judge myself mercilessly. But please don’t feel anxiety, girls. Seriously, life is fun, once you are doing a perfect job at getting good grades at school, getting into a good college with an athletic scholarship, landing a cute boyfriend who treats you well, and still being able to fit into your skinny jeans. Then, you can be just like “me.” Isn’t life fun? Why do you have anxiety, girls?”

Our daughters, our nieces, our granddaughters, our friends’ daughters will learn to have less anxiety, when we are the way showers of life lived with less anxiety. Our daughters will practice self-care, self-acceptance, and self-love, when we are the way showers of self-care, self-acceptance and self-love. Our daughters, our women of the future, will learn to have meaningful, purposeful, interesting lives of love and wonder and peace and calm, when we show them that this is possible. Our young women of the future will learn to love and to savor themselves, and to savor the very act of just experiencing life, when we teach them that they are lovable just because of who they are, not for what they do. When we show our girls, that life is a wonderful journey to be experienced in awe, in hope, in joy, in peace, and in exhilaration, our example gives them permission to live life the way it was meant to be lived. Will they still experience some anxiety? Of course. We all will. Anxiety is a part of life. But it can be a small footnote. Anxiety can mostly be experienced as a flutter in our stomachs, as a sign of exciting things to come. And let’s remember, when we are living in the fullness of the gift of just experiencing the astonishing miracle of living a human life on Earth, anxiety is easily noticed and then it is just as easily let go, as nothing more than a passing sensation.

Think of a young woman whom you love with all of your heart. Think of how joyful you want this young woman to feel, most days of her life. What does that look like? Do want her to think that she has to have a Louis Vuitton purse, work in a job which she hates, to make the money to purchase that purse, have her stay in toxic relationships that make her feel terrible, just for the sake of having relationships, and to spend hours of her precious life, photo shopping her real life into a fake online picture, to make her life appear “perfect”? Is this what we believe will bring our future young women happiness? What are we modeling to the women of the future, friends? Let’s choose to be the way showers of the wisdom we have obtained. Love and happiness is an inside job. Life is mostly meant to be enjoyed. Savor life. You don’t have to win at it. There is nothing “to win.” Life and love is given to you freely. Happiness is yours, as a by-product of doing and experiencing what uniquely brings you joy. You are an important piece of this tapestry called Life, and so is everyone else. You know this fact. I know this fact. Let’s live it. Let’s be the way showers to our young women. Let’s make the path easier and lighter and brighter for our young women, as it was made easier for us, by the mighty women who came before us. Let’s let anxiety become a barely noticeable footnote, in the otherwise amazing adventure of living Life. It will be good for our future girls. It will be good for us. Let’s be purposeful in our duty. Let’s be Way Showers.

Are you passing on love, or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.