Reclaiming my voice so my daughters can claim theirs

A couple weeks ago I went to Annie’s first official teacher conference. Miss Nancy and Miss Katie, Annie’s preschool teachers, wanted to check in to share how Annie was faring in her first couple months in the Panda Bear room. Given Annie’s … shall we say, exuberance, at home (ahead of starting preschool I pleaded with her not to talk about butts or farts at school, lest she taint the other youth), I was a little nervous about what the feedback might be. But as I settled into my tiny chair, they both immediately offered reassurance. 

They loved having Annie in class. She’s helpful, kind, and always willing to try new things, they shared. She went above and beyond in a recent leaf-art project, making both a leaf lady AND a leaf cat. She was an enthusiastic participant in a class play. They shared so many nice things about Annie. None of which involved her shaking her booty in a taunting manner at her classmates or leaving her socks in random locations around the classroom.

I breathed a sigh of relief. 

“She just has one area to grow in,” Miss Nancy went on. “We’d like to see her be more assertive in the classroom.”

Now I breathed a sigh of resignation. 

Whereas at home, Annie has no problem asking for what she needs repeatedly and at increasing volumes, at preschool she is hesitant to say what she wants. Whereas at home, if she catches even a whiff of injustice, Annie calls attention to it, at school If a classmate takes a toy or cuts in line in front of her, she doesn’t stand up for herself. 

“If she sees one of our ‘bigger personalities’ playing in an area that she might normally like to play in, she’ll just avoid it rather than play there.”

At this point I wished they were telling me they preferred she didn’t color her face with markers.

I’d received feedback like this about the older two girls. They were great classmates – kind and caring. But they struggled to stand up for themselves.

Hearing this is a gut punch. Because what it tells me is I’m failing. As their live-in female role model I have not shown them how to be confident. I have not shown them how to ask for what they want. I have not shown them how to stand up for themselves. To speak up when they are wronged. 

Instead, they are mirroring me. I am frequently accommodating and try to be easy going. I defer decision making and usually say I’m happy with what everyone else wants. I second-guess every decision I do make. I don’t make a fuss about the line cutters of the world. I’m not pushy. I try not to take up much space. I smile when I don’t feel like smiling. I step aside. 

Being this way masks a fear of being judged for being demanding or seeming too needy by asking for what I want. When I go with the flow, it’s less likely there will be friction in my relationships. I am afraid that when I speak up, people will like me less. I worry that my “niceness” is the only thing others value in me. If that facade cracks, I’m not sure who I’ll find under the ruins.

It’s only now, four decades into my life, that I’m realizing the flaws of my strategy. That, actually, I have not created perfect, frictionless relationships. That actually, I have a lot of anger and resentment hanging out just under the surface. 

When the girls are having Vesuvius-level meltdowns or refusing to take on basic household tasks without excessive complaining, I remind Brad not to worry. “We’re not raising them for ourselves, we’re raising them to be out in the world. And we know they are good people out in the world.”

In the world, I know they are polite, kind, well-mannered humans.

But also in the world, apparently, they don’t speak up for themselves.They aren’t using their voices. Which as a woman raising future women feels like a massive failure. Sure, they’re intelligent, hilarious, creative, brave, conscientious human beings. But what difference does any of that make if they aren’t true to themselves? If they don’t chase what they want? If they don’t use their beautiful voices to sing? 

I don’t want them growing up to be self-effacing, self-doubting pushovers. I don’t want them to race through life following everyone else’s expectations only to look at themselves one day and find a smoldering rage pile staring back at them.

When I shared the news of Annie’s preschool conference with my co-teacher, she immediately understood my fears. She, too, is a recovering people pleaser. 

“You’re going to have to model how to be assertive,” she told me. To which I replied. “I know” as internally I curled myself into a writhing ball of anxiety. As if after 40-plus years of being accommodating could be erased. Like I could just wake up and find my voice. 

My co-teacher suggested that even if I had trouble coming up with actual things to ask for, that I could come up with pretend scenarios to run through with Brad. Just for the kids. That seemed like not a bad idea.

Because at the moment, adding assertiveness training to the list of things to do seems daunting.

And I’m already drowning in chores.

I am finding that even to just be an OK special education teacher takes up so much mental space I have very little room for other joys in my life. I don’t do yoga. I don’t take walks in the woods or color the sidewalk with chalk poetry. I don’t bake cookies. I don’t catch up with my sisters on weekends. I don’t prank my neighbors by leaving upcycled household decoratives of questionable taste on their doorsteps. I don’t even make upcycled household decoratives of questionable taste for my own household. 

And I don’t write. And when I do write, I don’t share it. All these drafts lined up, but for some reason I don’t click “publish.”

And that feels like a shade being pulled down. A door being closed. A light being turned off. A creaky floorboard in a dusty, empty old room that was once filled with sunlight and possibility. 

It’s like a song in reverse.

I once was found, but now I’m lost.

Had vision, but now I’m blind.

The middle schoolers have recess now. Every day I take my little advisory class to the blacktop or the gym and for 10 or so minutes they play soccer. I love watching them. These kids who show up to my English room seeming so defeated by the prospect of reading and writing are like firecrackers. Whirling orbs of light and pure energy. 

This one kid darts around nonstop, his feet rolling over and around the ball, whipping it past his buddies, eyes always on the next open space, never on the ball. Never looking at all concerned or uncertain. His face split wide open by a grin. And all of it- his confidence, the way he cradles the ball at his feet, the dance with his friends, the smile, the singular focus and total disregard for anything else that might be going on in his life at that moment- all of it fills me with yearning. 

Not to be an 8th grade boy (No thank you, please), but to be that self-assured and competent and joyful. Just to have a minute of pure abandon. 

The past couple years have felt the opposite. A folding in. A tucking away. A quieting. Not retreating as to recover. But retreating as to disappear. The day-to-day demands make it easier to hide out. I’m constantly accounting for all that needs to be done. All that isn’t getting done. I have ready-made excuses for not creating. The job, the kids, the house, the classes, repeat. 

The voice I’d thought would only become stronger and more capable the older I got, suddenly feels horace. And because the rest of the world feels so loud, so full of discordant voices, I wonder if maybe it would be better if I just stopped singing. Like, why add my voice to the mess? We’re all so tender already. I’m so tender already. The awareness that sharing small pieces of myself – actually sharing my convictions- that level of vulnerability seems foolhardy in the world we live in right now. 

But I see those boys playing soccer. And I’m reminded of that small voice in me. Insistent in its desire to be heard. Even if it’s only heard by me. 

I’m often embarrassed by my own earnestness. By how much I ache to be seen, but by how careful I am about being known. I don’t know how people can walk around this planet without crying over a mockingbird in a tree or sisters holding hands or the awareness that today might be the last day your grumpy old dog wags his tail at you and licks your hand. I know that it can feel like too much. And saying it out loud can feel self indulgent. Especially when the world is already so noisy. Especially when we all feel so broken.

While listening to a favorite podcast (We Can Do Hard Things), author and teacher Alex Elle shared about healing from childhood trauma. How finding our joy and caring for ourselves is an act of community service. 

“When we heal ourselves, we heal each other,” she says. “We may get lost along the way. We may feel lost more times than we feel found. I think that’s a big part of the healing, too, is accepting when the journey takes us to a place where we are kind of disoriented- how do we come home to ourselves?” 

In trying to find my center, I came back here. To writing on this page. To considering the moments where I’ve felt most in my skin. Joking around with the girls. Getting a laugh out of Brad. Singing made-up songs to irritated middle schoolers in the hallway between classes. Crying. Crying over a poem, over a song, over a photo, over something my dad wrote, or a memory of my mother at Thanksgiving. Over my sister’s stories about sitting with an old woman with dementia  Over watching a student teach another student how to do a tricky soccer move- patiently offering encouragement and feedback. Over any time a person is beautiful in the face of ugliness. Over any time a person chooses to be real in the face of a world that only wants filters.

I have spent the last several years feeling lost in myself. About what I wanted out of life. My goals. Where I wanted to be. How I wanted to be. The move to Virginia was disorienting. Starting a new career, disorienting. Getting through 2020, disorienting. Turning 40, unexpectedly disorienting. I felt like I would know myself better by now, and instead, I feel like I have been fooling myself about the person I am and the person I should be.

Brad and I went to a Halloween party a few weeks ago dressed as Buddy and Jovie from “Elf.” Brad is a seasoned karaoke-er. He performs his go-tos with confidence and ease- “The Humpty Dance” and “Thrift Shop” with an unexpected turn into country with a duet on “Save the Horse Ride the Cowgirl.” On my end I hemmed and hawed about performing. The only people we knew at the party were the hosts and while I love singing, I am an expert at messing up the words. In a moment of uncharacteristic impulsivity, I threw my name in for Miley Cyrus’s 2009 hit “Party in the USA,” a celebration of feeling out of place and dancing anyway. Which is exactly what I did. A solo performance in a room of mostly strangers. Dressed as an elf. It wasn’t a life-altering sort of moment or anything. 

But it was the first time I felt brave in awhile. And rather than use my “I’m- in-the-on-the-joke-about-how-bad-my-voice-is” voice, I used my actual singing voice. Which might have been bad, but also felt really good bouncing around in my chest. Jovie the elf would’ve approved. And I think Jovie my daughter would’ve been proud. And had my girls been there, maybe it would’ve been one of those moments that stuck with them about what it looks like to find joy at the intersection of self. 

I have to be more assertive. I have to find my voice so that my daughters will use theirs. And this world needs their voices. I have to harness the same unapologetic bravado those boys have with that soccer ball and chase down both joy and justice. 

I have to do this impossible thing and look at myself and tell myself that what I want is important. That I get to take up space, too. That my worth is in more than just my ability to say, “yes.” That loving myself isn’t self-indulgent or selfish. 

In fact, it’s an act of defiance, an act of rebellion in a world that relies on women measuring their value against standards designed to control rather than to love.

If I can find grace for myself, I know I’m gonna be OK.