work Archives - Page 7 of 36 - So About What I Said

Monday, July 11, 2016

On the Myth of the Mean Girl

I have zero tolerance for Mean Girls — and mean guys, for that matter. They’re cunning and ruthless and spineless cowards, and honestly, who really has the time for that? Maybe I’m just getting old and my patience is wearing thin, but I’m just over all that dramarama — and yes, I did just use that word.

Like I said, I have ZERO tolerance these days.

And the more I ponder this whole freakish phenomenon, the more I realize just how scary it has become. It used to be that Mean Girls were relegated to the hallowed halls of junior high and high school, taunting us for the way we laugh or our supposed out-of-style fashion sense. Like a pack of really sad, pathetic wolves, they’d hone in on their target, make their lives miserable and eventually move on. Maybe they’d get bored or just eventually grow out of their taunting habits, but by the time we’d graduate, we not only earned our diploma — we also graduated from that petty world too.

I mean, that’s the way it used to be, at least. Not anymore, it seems. These days, bullies come dressed in all forms, from an aggressive driver to your frenemy at work.

But as a woman, there’s one thing I find especially troubling: Women bear the brunt of this seemingly never-ending trend. We’re taught that women supporting each other is a myth and that, when it does happen, there is some sort of ulterior motive involved. I mean, women just can’t be that nice, right? We have to have some angle, some goal we’re desperately trying to reach. And you can bet your bottom dollar that we’re going to walk over anyone who dare tries to get in our way — wearing the sharpest of high heels, of course!

Apparently, we’re our own worst enemy. We’re out to destroy each other — and quite possibly the world while we’re at it.

Men, on the other hand, are given a huge pass. A man helping another man is seen as a take-charge hero. A man standing his ground is seen as empowering, not to mention smart and forthright.Yet a woman doing the exact same things? She’s seen as troublesome, aggressive and mean. Oh yeah, and rude, combative, confrontational and that “B” word I refuse to say.

It’s 2016. You’d think we would have evolved by now, but sadly, we haven’t. In fact, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg recently penned a brilliant New York Times essay about this very topic. She says that the entire idea of the traditional Mean Girl is such a misnomer…

Queen bees exist, but they’re far less common than we think. Women aren’t any meaner to women than men are to one another. Women are just expected to be nicer. We stereotype men as aggressive and women as kind. When women violate those stereotypes, we judge them harshly. “A man has to be Joe McCarthy to be called ruthless,” Marlo Thomas once lamented. “All a woman has to do is put you on hold.”

So if women are expected to be nicer, just think what this teaches young girls. It teaches them to sharpen their claws and always be wary of other women. It teaches them to be unhelpful and not trusting others. At the most basic level, it teaches them that they’re really just fooling themselves if they think they’ll ever get ahead.

How sad of a legacy is that? Is this the last message we want to leave for the next generation? A legacy of hating each other? A legacy of fear?

I don’t think so.

Sandberg also gave an on-point call to action, which I found incredibly inspiring…

It’s time to stop punishing women and minorities for promoting diversity. In the meantime, there are many ways that women can help one another without hurting themselves. There’s no penalty for women mentoring women — and when they do, they’re more likely to be seen by their protégés as role models. They share advice about how to break glass ceilings and escape sticky floors, which helps the group and costs them nothing but time. When a woman’s accomplishments are overlooked, other women can celebrate them, showing that they care and giving public credit where it’s due.
And it’s time for all of us to stop judging the same behavior more harshly when it comes from a woman rather than a man. Women can disagree — even compete — and still have one another’s backs.

With everything going on in the world right now, these words ring especially true, don’t you think? It’s time to let people be who they are without judgment or shame or criticism.

Don’t be part of the problem. The world has enough of those already! Let’s redefine Girl Power, shall we?? xoxo

Monday, June 27, 2016

My Essay on The Establishment: “How To Support A Loved One With PTSD”

When I discovered The Establishment, the amazing women’s site that launched last year, I knew I wanted to be a part of it somehow. And as luck would have it, I got my chance today when my first piece went live. I wrote “How To Support A Loved One With PTSD” in honor of PTSD Awareness Day and even though this is a topic I’ve written about before, it was a great experience to think about PTSD at this time in my life.

How did it feel? In a word: empowering. It made me feel strong. It made me feel like I was facing an aspect of my grief head-on — not cowering or running from it or even hiding in the corner. I was calling it out, forcing it to face me and realizing that, for as much as I get frustrated and anxious sometimes, I really have come a long way since those early, dark days.

Here’s an excerpt of the essay, which is one of the longer pieces I’ve written lately…

I’d started seeing a psychiatrist and therapist shortly after his passing to help manage my anxiety and grief. But then the anxiety grew even more acute—with the power to transport me back to the most traumatic experience of my life, no matter how much time had passed. Especially in the direct wake of my father’s passing, when my grief was its most raw and jagged, anything seemed to set me off. The vivid scenes of the hours and days after my father’s death would replay on a loop in my head. Over and over. It was like a nightmarish home movie that I couldn’t turn off.

I would learn that these types of PTSD responses are common among those who’ve lost a loved one to suicide. I was suffering from what is known as complicated grief, the type of grief that occurs after “an unexpected or violent death, such as death from a car accident, or the murder or suicide of a loved one.” PTSD and complicated grief often go hand-in-painful-hand.

When my post-traumatic stress symptoms began, I felt helpless and totally out of control for the first time in my life. Until I learned about the disorder, I had no idea what was happening to me, which only intensified my grief and anxiety. Thankfully, I’ve seen some shifts in the public’s perception of mental illness and PTSD in recent years, and this move toward understanding symptoms and treatment—and away from stigma—has benefited sufferers.

Still, it’s been a battle. In addition to seeing a psychiatrist and taking antidepressants, I’ve been in therapy for the last decade. This has been life-changing in helping me confront my feelings and issues surrounding my father’s suicide. But although I’ve come a long way, I know PTSD is something I’ll struggle with for the rest of my life.
And unless you’ve experienced it firsthand, helping someone with the disorder can feel like trying to navigate a minefield without a map—especially given our society’s tendency to push people to “just get over it,” which can make those suffering feel the need to hide what they’re going through.

You can read the full essay here and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to email me anytime at mellow1422@aol.com and let’s chat! And of course, feel free to share my essay on Facebook, Twitter or even your local refrigerator. If you share on Twitter, be sure to tag me @melissablake so we can connect! I can’t wait to hear from you! Love you all… xoxo

In fact, The Establishment is running an entire series on PTSD, full of honest and informative stories from other women who’ve been there. Be sure to read all of them here!

Monday, June 20, 2016

My Essay on YourTango: “8 Ways My Disability Will Be Amazing For My Love Life”

I’ve been over-the-moon excited about sharing my new essay with you, friends! I’d spent so looooong (read: years!) thinking my disability would be this huge, negative elephant in the corner when it came to dating that I pretty much psyched myself out about the whole thing.

And then, like a lightning bolt of common sense, it hit me: IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THAT WAY! Where had this revelation been hiding all my life? Under a rock? How had I missed it all these years?

Well, leave it to me to write about that very subject in “8 Ways My Disability Will Be Amazing For My Love Life,” which went live on YourTango last week. Here’s an excerpt of the essay, in which I seriously use the phrase wing woman…

I’ll just cut to the emotionally revealing, music-swelling rom-com monologue right now: I’m a woman with a physical disability. I’ve also never been on a date or had a boyfriend.
That’s not to say I’ve never fallen in love because I have. Many times. I’ve fallen hard and I’ve fallen fast and I’ve also fallen somewhere in between the two. They made my heart want to leap out of my chest and do cartwheels down the street like a scene from one of those old-time-y cartoons.

But as I got older, something clicked. I realized that any sort of acceptance had to start with me. I had to learn to love myself — all of myself — before any man ever could. My entire life, I’d never thought of my disability as anything but a negative thing, especially when it came to dating and relationships.

But maybe it didn’t have to be so black and white. Maybe it could just be one more awesome asset on the road to finding The One.

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

My Essay on POPSUGAR: “7 Ways I’m Happier in My 30s”

Remember my surprise 30th birthday party? I know…it seems like ages ago to me, too! Where does the time go? As a writer, I’ve found there’s really only one thing to do about it — write about it!

I’m excited to have “7 Ways I’m Happier In My 30s” up on POPSUGAR Love (you can read my first essay here), and the surprisingly refreshing thing I realized? I ABSOLUTELY love being in my 30s. Seriously, I highly recommend this decade! It’s like you’re at a point where you’re still young enough to have fun, but you’re old enough to no longer care what people think. It’s a great time to be alive, I tell you!

Anyway, here’s an excerpt of the essay, which includes the one phrase that I’ve ditched from my vocabulary…

I’d known what to expect from my fourth decade for, well, decades — at least in terms of what I’d seen portrayed on television. Remember that show Thirtysomething from the early ’90s? As a kid, I’d watch it with my mom and think, “OMG, what if I get that old?”
The characters were in a perpetual state of being stressed out, overworked, and overwhelmed. That, I reasoned, is what getting old must be like. That is what I had to look forward to.

Fast-forward to 2011 and I’m at my 30th birthday party. It’s a surprise party, and the irony of it all is not lost on me: Surprise! How had this day come already? It just seemed to sneak up on me. What happened?
BBB
I’d spent so much time mourning the loss of my 20s, as if I’d just reached some sort of finish line and my life was over, that I’d failed to see the promise of entering a new decade.

This year, I turn 35 — that odd age where you’re too old to still say you’re in your early 30s but still too young to elicit sympathy when you complain to someone about how old you feel.

But nonetheless, there’s no denying this decade has changed me already. In ways I expected and ways I’m still learning about every day. Here, seven surprising ways my happiness has soared so far.

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

My Essay on Redbook: “After My Father’s Suicide, It Was a Cat That Saved Us”

In the midst of my to-do list work last week, I wrote “After My Father’s Suicide, It Was a Cat That Saved Us” about — surprise, surprise! — Harry! It’s not an exaggeration to say that he saved us after my father died, especially my mom, and I’ve always marveled at how one tiny kitty could bring so much love, comfort and joy into our lives. Cat people unite, right?

Here’s an excerpt of the essay, which was also picked up by Dr. Oz The Good Life…

As time went on, though, I began to notice a change—slowly and quietly at first, just as Harry himself had so quietly made his presence known to us when he first arrived. We settled into a comfortable routine, and it was the same routine every night: We’d eat dessert, watch an episode or two of Frasier and by the closing credits, Harry would be sound asleep in my mother’s lap, his head resting softly in the crook of her arm. I remember glancing over and just taking in the peacefulness of it all. There was my mother, a woman grieving the loss of her husband, calmly rocking our seven-pound feline friend. Back and forth. Back and forth. There was a sort of rhythm and cadence to it that made it almost hypnotic—a sense of order amid the chaos that had become our lives.

It was our new ritual. A moment of comfort after a long day. A time when the weight of grief could be lifted from our shoulders, even if only for a few minutes.
We were so worried about how we’d take care of Harry, how we’d make his life better, that we completely overlooked something equally important: He healed us too.

Even in the depths of our grief and with death all around us, we managed to experienced life again with a sense of renewed energy — a new sense of hope and faith in something that we desperately needed. Harry brought a sliver of light to our dark world at a time when we needed it the most.

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