by Heather Plett | Apr 17, 2009 | me
I struggled with whether to post this or not. It wasn’t really written for public consumption because it is so deeply personal and drags up so many insecurities and hurts. But in my quest to be more authentic and open my journey up to others who might gather comfort and support from it, I’m offering it to you, begging you to be gentle with the wounded little child in me.
“Undress from the waist up and put this on. It opens to the front and is fragile at the shoulders. I’ll be back in a moment.”
Everything he says comes out like a memorized script. He’s been here so many times before. I’m just another woman, just another surgery, just another pay cheque.
When he returns, he flips open the front of the paper gown as casually as one might open the newspaper. A quick set of measurements, from neck to nipple. A grab, a tug, a lift.
“This one sags much lower. Definitely need a little extra work on this side.” He lifts them as he speaks. I nod. Of course I know that – have always known that. Have always been painfully aware of that every time I’ve had to find a way to surreptitiously tuck the bulges back in on the left side. “We’ll do an incision around the nipple, move the nipple and areola up a few inches, make a couple of incisions on the bottom, and cut the excess fat and skin from the bottom.” With his pen and finger, he makes the appropriate motions, then wraps both hands around one breast. “This is about the size they’ll be when we’re done. I’d also recommend a little liposuction under the arms.”
The tone of his voice hasn’t changed since I first walked in and he recited the list of risks and precautions that his legal advisory told him he had to. It sounds more like he’s preparing a cut of meat for tonight’s supper than handling something as sacred as my breasts.
Just a couple of pieces of meat. Not the pieces of me that make me a woman. Not the vessels that have nurtured my three daughters and carried the weight of grief and unused milk when they couldn’t nurture my son. Not the objects of so much shame, hatred, resentment and pain. Not the reason why I wear baggy clothing and can never find a bra that fits. Not the part of me that caused me some of the worst pain in my life when yeast infection threatened to interrupt breastfeeding. Not the parts of me that have been so lovingly caressed by my husband and have been the cause of both pleasure and frustration in the bedroom. Not the reason I can barely look at a picture of myself in a bathing suit. Not the source of back ache, neck ache, and deep shoulder indentation where the bra strap struggled to hold up the weight.
When he leaves, I pull on my double H bra, tuck in the left side, and wait for the nurse to tell me when to expect surgery. Nine to twelve months – lots of women waiting for the same thing.
Fighting the tears, I leave the medical office. The tears are not regret over my decision but sadness over the impersonal clinical feel of it all. Nobody has really bothered to ask why I want this done or questioned whether it’s for the right reasons. (What ARE the “right” reasons?) Nobody has tried to talk me out of it or wondered whether there’s something deeper than breast level that needs to be dealt with. Nobody has asked me about the years of agonizing struggle to come to this place. Nobody has asked about the shame, the insecurity, the ugliness, the sadness. Nobody has asked whether I can cope with the guilt over cutting off a piece of myself. I’m left to deal with that on my own.
Back at my own office, I pull a poncho over these pieces of meat and try to focus on the report I need to write for next week’s deadline. I lose patience with a few people and try to hold it together for the rest of the day. “Dealing with it” will have to wait for tomorrow.
This is the first and last time you’ll see a picture of me in a bathing suit on this blog. I can barely stand to look at it, but for some reason, I feel compelled to share it. I remember the deep cringe of shame I felt at the time when I noticed Marcel pointing the camera at me. For obvious reasons, every other picture I’ve posted of myself does a fairly good job of disguising what I see when I look in the mirror every day.
by Heather Plett | Apr 16, 2009 | Uncategorized
I’ll probably be a little saddle sore tomorrow, but OH MY GOSH it was good to be back on a bike again this morning! We’re having lovely weather around here this week (hopefully we’ve finally bid adieu to winter), so I took advantage of it to start biking to work again. Unless you’ve lived through a long hard winter, I don’t know if you can understand just how good/refreshing/invigorating/like-getting-sprung-from-prison Spring can feel. Wow!
And all that exercise I’ve been doing all winter? All that exercise that felt like it was doing no good because I wasn’t losing weight and it didn’t seem to get any easier to run on the treadmill no matter how long I stuck with it? Yeah, well, apparently I’m in better shape than I thought, because I did those 11 kilometers without barely breakin’ a sweat AND I did them 5 km/h faster than I usually do at the beginning of the season! Sweet!
Last night we were outside until almost 9:00 at night, and Maddie and her cousin were still in t-shirts. By the end of it, they were both soaking wet and sloshing around in rubber boots full of water (finding puddles that were a little deeper than their boots seemed like a good idea at the time), but, other than one unfortunate “swimming” incident, they were both deliriously happy, and when they climbed into bed together, they were in dreamland almost before I could leave the room.
I heart Spring.
by Heather Plett | Apr 15, 2009 | Uncategorized
Last night, Maddy and I went to see Monsters vs. Aliens in 3D. What a delight it was to watch her sit on the edge of her seat in wonder, wearing her 3D glasses and trying to grab the things that came flying off the screen at her. At one point, she turned to me and said “you’ve gotta reach out, Mom! It’s more fun!” So I did. I sat there with her, near the front of the theatre where everyone could see us, our arms stretched out in front of us, grinning from ear to ear. We didn’t catch anything, but we sure tried.
That little piece of wisdom has stuck with me since then. “You gotta reach out! It’s more fun!”
by Heather Plett | Apr 14, 2009 | Leadership, things I've learned
A few weeks ago, I was in Toronto for a three day workshop on leading remote teams. My staff is spread across the country, and that has been REALLY challenging, so I’ve been looking for inspiration on how to be more effective at it. Unfortunately, though, this was not the right course for me. Although I tried to make the best of it and struggled to find some takeaway knowledge that made the rather significant investment worth it, in the end I had to admit that it didn’t move me any further in my journey as a leader.
For one thing, it was targeted at leaders who are newer to it than I am (I’ve done this for 10 years already), and more specifically, leaders who work primarily in technical and production fields (task-oriented leadership – very different from my line of work). On top of that, throughout most of the course, “remote teams” referred primarily to teams that you’re leading in other countries because your company has chosen to outsource to places where there is cheaper labour. That was a particular struggle for me, because some of my work (and personal passion) involves seeking justice for some of those people providing that cheap labour who are unable to feed their own families. (The last day of the course, just before catching an early flight, I couldn’t stand it anymore, and let flow a fairly strong response when someone implied that ‘we are saving the poor downtrodden masses by giving them jobs and teaching them the value of OUR culture over their own’.)
As I sat and doodled my way through the workshop, I realized that there was a deeper reason that none of it was resonating for me. I just wasn’t connecting with the instructor. It wasn’t just that he’d spent most of his career in the technical field and spoke a different “language” – it was deeper than that. On the last day, it finally occurred to me – he just wasn’t raising my level of trust, partly because he seemed to have less leadership experience than I do, but mostly because he didn’t seem REAL enough to me. Most of his stories were about general leadership ideas – few of them were about his own grappling with tough situations. He hadn’t even written his own material for the course – he was regurgitating someone else’s work. The bottom line was that he lacked authenticity.
When I got back to the office, I found a package on my desk. The book I’d ordered (based on my friend Susan’s recommendation) had arrived… THE AUTHENTIC LEADER! How appropriate!
This past weekend, I devoured the book like an addict looking for a fix (or a frustrated leader looking for inspiration). It was EXACTLY what I needed. I can hardly describe what this book did to me. It fed those hungry places inside me. It inspired me, yes… but more importantly, I think, it affirmed me. It made me stop and realize that “Damn it – I’m on the right track after all! I don’t need expensive workshops to teach me new techniques! I just need to keep going deeper in my path toward authenticity.”
“Simply put, being an authentic leader is synonymous with being oneself. It is that simple, but it is also that difficult. When deciding to lead, be true to self. Being true to self is being in a most powerful place. The power in leadership is not in being right, but in being real.”
I’ve read a lot of leadership books, and I’ve used many of them in teaching leadership workshops, but this is one of the first that I’ve read that made me feel so affirmed while still inspiring me on to greater heights. Often, when you read a leadership book, at first you feel inspired and excited, but then reality sinks in and you realize “I can NEVER meet those unrealistic expectations! I’ll NEVER be an effective leader!” I remember teaching a workshop once, based on “The Leadership Challenge” (a great book, but with some REALLY high expectations), and saying to the participants “this part right here? Ignore it. It is basically impossible and unrealistic and borderline STUPID. Don’t even bother trying it because you will set yourself and your team up for failure. Set more realistic goals than this if you want to succeed.” The workshop participants breathed a collective sigh of relief. I don’t think anyone had every told them to “ignore something the book/authority says” before.
This book is very different from that. It teaches that the road to more effective leadership is the road to authenticity. Spend LESS time trying to figure out the right techniques and skills for being a good leader and MORE time trying to figure out how to be authentic and how to inspire others to do the same. “An authentic journey is a path to finding your voice, to discovering your highest aspirations and purpose, to living an honest life, and to bringing your passions and gifts to the world in the form of service of others. … We see the ultimate purpose of leadership as finding and following one’s own authentic voice and then inspiring and supporting other people to find and follow theirs.”
This is the kind of book that everyone should read. If the term “leader” scares you, it shouldn’t. It’s not about positional leadership, but more about people who feel some kind of calling to inspire others and make a difference in the world. (One of the authors, David Irvine, has written another book called “Becoming Real: Journey to Authenticity”, which I assume is equally good and less about leadership, if that’s what you’re looking for. I’ve also read another book of his called “Simple Living in a Complex World”, which had a pretty profound effect on me 10 years ago.)
Though I recognized it at the time, it was good to have further affirmation that my bold step a couple of months ago was EXACTLY what my team needed. Now I just have to keep plugging away at it to make sure I don’t lose the momentum.
