I recently presented at a Women in Leadership conference. I've presented enough now that I don't get terribly nervous; I prepare, I review, I gather myself, and I go do it. It's fine. Fun. I really like it.But this time, I was really, really nervous.
Why, though? This was supposed to be my tribe. The group most welcoming and forgiving. Being surrounded by my own kind should have given me a sense of you-can't-mess-this-up, a confidence so strong I could almost touch it.
Instead, I wondered if I should have found the time to get some gel nails. Why I hadn't gotten my hair done? I wished I'd picked a different outfit. Was my mascara smeared? Had I even remembered to put it on? What about deodorant? I wished I looked more put together, calmer, less oh-my-god-where-are-my-keys and more I-have-this-all-figured-out.
The source of my anxiety wasn't in dispute: I didn't want to let them down.
Because, I mean, what could I say? What hadn't these women already heard, felt, dealt with, considered, read? I could talk about all the versions of mental illness I'd grappled with in my life, but they'd probably already lived through their own versions of that story, and besides, this presentation wasn't about me: It was about them. Okay, then. Maybe I could give them a giant pep talk about being a woman in leadership. The problem with that approach? I was actually feeling pretty crappy and lonely as a female leader right then, and I didn't want to be inauthentic or dishonest. So. Perhaps I could just bust on men. That was easy, and seemed something I could get away with: Empowering women by diminishing men. But—ugh!— I didn't want to do that, either, because I don't believe women should think about their place in the world in terms of the men in it.
What, then?
I thought about the well-adopted myth that women who live or work in close quarters will find their menstrual cycles begin to sync. I've always loved this idea. In college, in a house on Locust Street, my five female roommates and I would do the eye-roll-giggle, conspiratorial and team-like, at how we all seemed to get our periods at around the same time. It felt good to think of our bodies working together, talking to one another without our knowledge, lockstep and moving forward together. It was comforting and safe, a biological nod to our one-ness. Here's the problem: It's not true. Turns out the statistical likelihood of some sort of menstrual cross-over, in the course of twenty-some-odd days, with a group of women, is why it feels we're all doing it together. But that's all it is. A feeling. "Period Drama," Act 4 of this episode of This American Life, explains all of this. Give it a listen if you don't believe me.
So that's what I talked about with these women. Not about our menstrual cycles, exactly, but instead about how it feels when women come together, not as verified by science, but as a product of being ourselves and believing we are better together. About having an unspoken alliance and loyalty to one another. About lifting one another up instead of tearing at the throats and jugulars of other women. How competition between women can kill our best parts and leave us diminished, lonely, and without a safety net.
In the end, despite all the pre-angsting, the presentation was probably one of my best. My message felt delivered and received, the intent achieved: We, as women, collectively, have a choice. We can choose toxicity or we can choose positivity. With one another, I mean. Hey, girls. Hey: We don't have to feed into stereotypes created for us, about us. We can work together to be our very best versions of the women we are.
So let's do that. K?
