What It Feels Like for a Tomboy

I took my son to a new climbing gym this past week.  Over the years, I've climbed with him a few times, but in the past 6 or 8 months, he's really gotten into it and it seems like it's a sport that is sticking.  At the different places we've been in the past, there are various 'rules' about who gets to belay and what is required.  About half the time somebody who wants to belay can get a demonstration from an instructor and take a 'test' immediately after and then belay that day.  The other half of the time, you have to already know and pass a test without demonstration.  The main thing about being a belay is to tie the appropriate knot to keep your climber safe from falling.

To set up the story further - I suck at mechanical stuff.  Tying a knot, though ridiculously apparent for some people, is not at all apparent for me.

You might see where this is going; I wrongly assumed that this would be one of the more 'lax' gyms. Here I am... getting ready to take my belay test, with my impatient almost 14 year old son standing there, probably not exactly thrilled to be with his mom anyway.  And the gym manager is standing there too.  Then, the manager calls over two trainees - both male.  They are all standing around staring at me waiting for me to tie a knot.  And I don't remember how.  And oh, did I mention? I have this weird harness thing strapped around my thighs and groin.  It's getting more humiliating by the second.

I feel myself starting to get flushed, upset. I say, "Guys, give me some space.  I can't remember with everyone standing around staring at me."  So they walk away, leaving me in a mental fight with a rope for about ten minutes.  Feeling embarrassed, frustrated with myself, overwhelmed.   Yet, I know when to give up.  So, I do.  I return the equipment to the guys.  And I say, "I totally get that safety is first, but you have no idea how overwhelming it is as a woman trying to do something that I'm not good at with four dudes, who know what they're doing, staring at me.  It was just too much."  And I started to cry.   Not sob, but tear up.  And they were so nice about it - "You're right - we could have been more sensitive to that. "

And for many people this might have been a totally embarrassing moment.  But for me it was total progress.  I felt so good about it.

I don't know what it's like to be a boy/man, but I do know what it's like to be a tomboy.  I know that I was raised to be tough.  To be valued for being tough.  To bait my own hook, to run the fastest mile and do the most sit ups, to brush off any hurt as 'no big deal.'  To swallow my own fears and feelings to take care of my baby sister, to successfully fight off a potential child molester and not tell anyone, to not make anything a big deal, to not inconvenience anyone.

Many choices and circumstances in my life since I was a kid reinforced this thing of me not feeling my own feelings.  Or moving really quickly through my feelings.  It's some combination between my innate personality, the way my significant relationships reinforced these qualities, and it's a muscle that's fully developed in my vocation.  My work, whether in hospice or private practice refines this because a great skill in my work is to totally imagine myself in someone else's shoes - it's not so much how I would feel about my client's life, but imagining how he/she feels about their own life and beginning our work from that place.  And in hospice, I even prided myself on not really crying - I'd let myself get teared up, but I was incredibly cognizant that 'this was not about my feelings.'

Some of my girlfriends, are what I could call 'princess girls'.  I'm guessing that from childhood they have been valued as the precious people they are, and doted on.  And when they said, "I don't like it" or "That won't work for me", they learned that people will listen and change to accommodate.

Earlier in my life, I think I might have been hard on princess girls.  Kind of like, "can't they just power through it?" Or "must be nice to have someone clean your car off when it snows."  But truthfully, I guess I was a little jealous.  It is a sad thing to have to be strong all the time.  To not feel that it is ok to ask for help and when you ask for help not expect to receive it.

When my son and I drove home after the climbing gym (he still climbed with an auto-belay and he and I both bouldered too), I told him about talking to the guys at the gym about my experience.

My son said, "Mom, you felt micro-aggressed."  He's kind of judge-y about that, being a sort of emotional libertarian and almost 14 years old and knowing everything.

I said, "No."  And I paused for a long time because I tried to think how I really felt.  It was both about being female and about being specifically me and the way I have walked through this world.  "I just wanted to tell them how I felt.  I don't want to pretend like things don't hurt me anymore.  Pretending that has actually started to hurt me more.  Maybe guys feel like that all the time.  If that's true, that's not right."

I guess there is a good side and a down side to possessing either quality.  Someone who holds or hides their feelings, suffers - sometimes you get separated from your own feelings and don't realize you have any anyway, sometimes your expectations of others are so low that you don't know a good relationship from a bad one, sometimes you just feel silenced.  But the other extreme is isolating as well.  If you always expect others to accommodate you, do you really know what it's like to be in a relationship?  Perhaps it's hard to take pride in yourself because you don't develop a healthy amount of toughness and stamina.

Isn't it funny that you can live with yourself your whole life and not know things about yourself?  I actually didn't even know that I held my feelings inside or didn't ask much of others until the past 5 to 7 years.  As I've been starting to share this with friends, they say, "that's so weird!  You are a therapist!"  or "I would never think that about you."  But I know it's very important, because when I talk about it, it makes me feel really sad and at least half the time, I start to cry.  I actually grieve for the time I've spent not sharing or always putting my feelings on the back burner.

One great thing about my job though, is that it helps me understand that in whatever places in my life that are painful or where I am growing and changing, many other people share some of the same struggles.  And I think that's why I write about it - maybe you are a caregiver, a tomboy, a tough guy.  Maybe you got the message to suck it up or that your feelings were not as important was someone else's feelings.

Here is a challenge from me to you - try something different.  Be willing to be a little embarrassed.  Be willing to look not exactly tough.  What you will find is that it feels really good to feel that other people care and want to listen or help or even put your feelings first.  I'm finding that just speaking up makes me feel different, a little better somehow...not exactly like a princess, but maybe something a little like that.