Sitting - very uncomfortably - on a foam block, I looked out across the circle of women gathered in the glow of electric candles and dim track lighting. It was my familiar yoga studio, and yet nothing was familiar or comfortable about this situation. Instead of people waiting introspectively on their own mats, we sat looking out at one another, listening, and waiting for our turn to introduce ourselves and to talk. Speaking to group of strangers, introducing myself, talking about what I do like about myself and what I don't....it was basically my worst nightmare in many ways. I got more anxious as the talking stick, a pretty pink plastic heart on a wand that would be the envy of any four year old wanna be princess, moved closer and closer in my direction. It would be easy to say something flippiant, something that revealed nothing about myself, when my turn came. But, somehow, I felt like that would be cheating. I had listened to women reveal that they had been raped, verbally abused, afraid to return to life after a messy divorce, battled illness. It would have been cheap and wrong to make something up, or to gloss over why we were sharing.
I'd registered for the workshop, a women's empowerment evening, because the teacher is a friend and someone I greatly respect and because another friend was attending and I accepted her encouragement to come with. Yoga is what I do, when I have the time, to try and undo some of the damage my other activities do to my joints and my spine. Yoga helps me relax, but it's not as key to my life as it is to some of my friends. But I'm also always pretty game to try something new, and so yoga with all women to some music followed by wine was an invitation I couldn't resist.
So, I sat there, listening to these other women and thinking how incredibly strong they all are, and shifting around on my foam block, trying to find a position that it wasn't digging into my ass with every breath. They listened with open eyes, clapping for each person who shared, sometimes reaching over to give a hug. Everyone has a story, and all of these women, of different shapes and sizes and backgrounds and each carrying some pretty heavy baggage the world doesn't see every day, they all came together to celebrate who they are. Who we are. I'm one of them, though I'm not comfortable with being that open, and I've never been one to flaunt my feminism.
If I'm being really honest, girly stuff gets on my nerves. I hate to shop. I don't travel to the bathroom with a gaggle of friends - I'd rather pee alone, thank you very much. I wear make-up and heels, and I get my hair done, but it's not something I think much about at the end of the day. Some of my best friends have always been guys, because I better understand their directness, and even their occasional crassness is preferrable to the cattiness exhibited by some of my female friends in years past. Really, it's been that way since I was a kid, wanting to wear a baseball cap all the time, and wishing I could play football with the guys.
But, lately, something has changed. The women in my life have changed, or what I see in them has been altered. Really, I think something happens to women as they age - maybe we grow into our femininity, in a more graceful and less forced way. In the last five years, I have been priviledged to get to know some really incredible, badass, beautiful, and brilliant women - women from all walks of life, all ethnicities, and all types of lifestyles. Somewhere in their thirties, most of them have thrown off the giggling and the worrying what men will think, and they've made being a woman into an art. From my friend in Denver who dresses with class and grace, and whose sense of humor lies in the gutter with mine at times. She's fearless and changed her life because the one she had didn't make her happy. She's brave like that. Or another friend, who is a fabulous hairdresser here in Houston, and whose heart is one of the biggest I've seen. She sees good things in people that they don't even know are there. And she's a dancing diva of the first order - her moves put all of mine to shame. Everywhere she goes, it's soul train, all the time. There's another woman I've known for years who holds those around her in love and grace and will be the first to offer you a hug at any time. She loves my children as much as her own, along with many, many other children. And she will cry for you, when your own tears refuse to fall. I think, as someone who doesn't really cry in front of anyone, that that is incredibly brave. These women...they've survived so much, and yet they smile and they have the ability to take others by the hand and by the heart. I want to be that brave.
It's been said by someone in my life that I'm not much of a girl anymore, and I think they referred to the way I dress on the weekends - workout wear and running shoes, mostly, and to some of the things I do for fun. Yes, I put on boxing gloves and beat on grown men. Yes, I wrestle and I roll, and sometimes I walk around wearing the marks from those rounds - black eyes, busted lips, bruised shins. And I laugh outloud, say what I think, and drink my bourbon straight. But to me, this is just part of being comfortable with who I am and caring just a little bit less what others think. To me lately, those things make me more of a woman - not less.
Standing on the mats a few weeks ago, sparring, I overheard one of my training partners tell another that he was "hitting like a girl." I turned to him, arms spread wide, and asked, "what does that even mean?" He was quick to back peddle, stammering a little and saying, "I didn't mean you, I mean you don't even hit like a girl." "Yes, I do, " I replied. "I'm a girl - however I hit, or walk, or talk, I do it like a girl." In return I got a look that might have been sheepish respect or a silent cry of "you're crazy, woman."
See, I'm not my mother, having to fight with my father for the right to go back to work after marriage. I didn't have to stay in a place where I was unhappy just because it was expected of me. I have the right to work in any career I wish, even knowing that a man doing the same job would make more money. Progress - it takes time, and as long as we keep moving in the right direction, I won't bitch about the pace. But still I struggle with what does it mean, to be a boy or be a girl? After the new baby has been wrapped in pink or blue and bought the appropriate gender biased toys, where does it lead?
We're not the same, no matter how much some would like it to be so - men and women are gloriously different, but we're not two homogenous camps. No cookie cutter made all the women I know, each one their own unique creature with strengths and weaknesses that are theirs alone. Their beauty, in each, unique. Just as all the men I know have their own blend that makes them who they are.
Sitting there, I wondered about the men in the next yoga studio, having their own empowerment session, focusing on strength and power. Were any of them struggling with what it means to be a man as much as I was grasping at what womanhood might be? For a moment, I longed to be with them, partly because I didn't want to have to talk, and partly because mabye I could get off the stupid foam block.
When my turn came to share, I was a little blown away after just having heard a friend share something pretty soul shattering, and I found I first had to admit just how hard it is for me to share in a group of strangers, and how uncomfortable I really was. Then I found the words came more easily and I was able to say why I really was there - that I'd been born in to a family who had taught me that I was expected to be everything a girl could be - beautiful, smart, classy and, did I say beautiful? But it was considered wrong and selfish to spend any time on yourself, improving yourself, taking care of yourself, and how I had spent twenty years abusing my body in every possible way because I'd failed to fit that vision. Twenty years to figure out that someone might have been wrong, because I didn't fit their mold of what a girl should be. Twenty years to figure out that I'm not a bad person if I make time to exercise, or read a book, or do nothing at all, if that makes me happy. And I was shaking after I said that, passing on the silly plastic heart on a stick, and listening as the others around the circle shared their own stories. But I felt brave for, for the first time ever, putting those thoughts into words.
As the circle was completed, and we gathered our yoga mats to begin practice, I felt more at ease than normal in yoga. Our leaders stripped down to sport bras and bared more of themselves than just their thoughts, encouraging us to do the same in acceptance of our bodies. My friend to my right proudly pulled off her top, but I'm just not that brave. Some damage runs too deep, and I wouldn't have been able to stand there and not cover the scars on the outside and feeling the ones on the inside. But together we moved and celebrated the bodies we had been given, dancing to music, shaking hips and stopping more than once for sweaty hugs. The session ended with a dance party, and my diva friend rocked it out to "Pour Some Sugar on Me," as she was surrounded by others in freindship and kinship of the moment. Her incredible lightness of being draws in those around her like a tractor beam, and I watched as I danced on my own mat, smiling at her sweaty glow, and glad that I had a chance to be with these other incredible women.
Rolling up my mat and preparing to go home, I wasn't sure I could ever explain all of this to anyone, but I'm hoping that this decade I'll grow into one of these women. Their appeal goes beyond the false eyelashes and manicures, it comes from a sense of knowing they are increidble women and not being afraid to show that to anyone.
