self-esteem Archives - Ann Hedreen, Writer Teacher Filmmaker

Raised to Please

therestlessnest2012-04-03T20:12:48-07:00Categories: midlife, politics|Tags: feminism, self-esteem, VIDA count, women's rights, writing|

We are raised to please. We are raised to attract. We are raised to decorate, divert and delight. We are raised to invite attention, not to seek it. To never, ever risk rejection. And when I say we, of whom do I speak? It must be a group known to include me. Might it be… people over 50? Seattleites? Speakers of English? Of course not. You know who I’m talking about. Women. And what, you might ask, is so wrong with being raised to please? Nothing at all, if you are born and remain a lovely-to-look-at, ornamental sort of a woman. Nothing at all, if ornamenting the world brings you great joy. But what if what you long to do is build tall buildings? Play basketball? Conduct high-risk scientific research? Or—in my case—write? And in order to achieve that writing dream, you have to lob your precious words out into the world so they can be rejected over and over and over again until at last, you get lucky and what you’ve written is accepted and printed? Briefly, you are filled with joy—until your freshly published words are actually read. And not everyone likes them. And you want to die because you have displeased a few people. Men, on the other hand, are raised to risk rejection or die trying. They’re raised to understand for every ten girls they ask out, one might say yes and hey, that’s great! They grow up understanding they won’t get a good job unless they apply for 100. They learn [...]

Thank you, Mary Tyler Moore

therestlessnest2012-02-09T10:15:36-08:00Categories: midlife, Uncategorized|Tags: divorce, Mary Tyler Moore, self-esteem, women's rights|

“Girl, you’re gonna make it after all.” Can’t you just picture Mary Tyler Moore, beaming and tossing her beret in the air as the whole world sang along to her theme song every Saturday night? Thirty-five years ago, when The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended its seven-year run, Moore was a “girl” of forty. And yet she was every girl. Every 15 or 25 or 40 year old girl who has ever panicked and thought: who am I without him? Who am I by myself? Can I really make it after all? Yes, you can, Mary told us. I did, and you can too. When The Mary Tyler Moore Show debuted, she was 33. I was 13. The wacky, cozy world of her first big TV hit, The Dick Van Dyke Show, was so over, for both of us. My parents had just divorced. Moore’s character, Mary Richards, was divorced. Women like my mom and Mary were suddenly popping up everywhere, trying to make it on their own. Meanwhile, girls like me were letting go of our babyish fantasies involving princes, castles, Barbie and Ken. But we were uneasy about where to take our daydreams next. I wasn’t old enough, yet, to embrace what Gloria Steinem had to say. But Mary Tyler Moore? She was so—real. So still wistful and a little shaky about the dream she’d given up, the one involving a NEVER-discussed ex-husband. So clearly competent yet still lacking the self-confidence to go with it. So easily rattled by the men who held power [...]

55

therestlessnest2012-01-18T09:30:12-08:00Categories: midlife, Uncategorized|Tags: faith, forgiveness, middle age, self-esteem|

I’m turning 55. What a great opportunity to flagellate myself for all that I’ve not done or done wrong. For all the ways I’ve fallen short! This is how the habitually self-bashing person thinks. Maybe I’m not alone: Maybe it’s how a lot of us think. A wise man about a decade older than I am once said to me, when I made some routinely self-deprecating remark at a church meeting: “Hey Ann, you know that stuff we hear every Sunday about forgiveness? That’s supposed to start with yourself. That famous line about loving your neighbor? It’s ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ remember?” Many’s the new year I’ve vowed to be kinder to myself. And in many ways, I have, over time, learned to be much kinder to me than I was as a teenager. Back then, the way I treated myself resembled the way Jane Eyre is treated at that awful orphanage. You’re ugly, you’re not a good person, you’re terrible at sports, you’ll never be popular because you’re just a big loser, went the script that ran in my Orphanage Headmistress head. Things have improved considerably since then. One of the ways in which I now try to treat myself more kindly is to accept my lack of self-confidence, rather than trying to make it go away. I used to think I shouldn’t talk about it, but talking about it can be a way of getting a little help from my friends, or at least getting them to help me laugh at myself. For [...]