Before the news of Harvey Weinstein broke, a skeleton dog showed up in the lobby of our building. It stood waiting by the door to scare those who entered and those who left. It looked like it was mid-attack with a mean snarl across its face. My daughter Lucia, now 3 and a half immediately noticed this dog as it stood eye to eye with her as we came home one night. It was accompanied by a fake severed hand and ghouls dancing from the ceiling in preparation for Halloween. The wonderful super of our building puts a lot of time and attention into making the building festive. This was the first year this dog showed up.
As soon as Lucia saw it she ran past and yelled, “mama! I don’t like that dog!” I acknowledged that it looked a little scary and then we played with the rubber hand and looked at everything else. As we walked to the mailroom, she doubled-back to look at that thing.
In the elevator on the way up to the 8th floor, she repeated that she didn’t like the dog. This continued for a couple of days. She even remembered to ask in the morning as we put our shoes on to walk into the day, “But mama, how are we gonna get past the mean dog?” It bothered me that it was stressing her out. I explained that the dog wasn’t real and that we would just walk right past, and that I would be with her. She seemed relieved and we did just that -- in truth, her pace did quicken a bit as soon as it was in view, but she was starting to see that it would not bother her. That it wasn’t real.
On the third day, as we clamored into the building, laughing and out of breath from running hand-in-hand up the hill to our building, that dog decided to lunge for Lucia and start barking wildly as we passed by. So...there was an on switch that someone decided to flip. SHIT, I thought. I’ve never seen Lucia bolt so fast, running down the hallway away from me, away from the barking dog. I rushed after her and knelt down, taking her into my arms. She was hysterically crying and her eyes held so much fear and astonishment.
I hugged her tightly and whispered, “I know. I know. That was scary for you. It scared me too. I didn’t know that it was going to bark. I’m sorry you got scared, honey. Someone must have turned it on.” As I empathized with her, I felt her tense little body relax, her head nodding to my understanding of the situation. It was enough to help her stop crying. She pulled her body away from mine and said, with trails of tears down her cheeks, “That dog really scared me! I don’t like it!” And started crying again. And the cycle continued with me saying that I understood. With me seeing her. And then I thought - what kind of mom do I want to be for her? What kind of woman do I want to nurture her to become? And my answers were clear.
I want to be the kind of mom who acknowledges her troubles and her wins. Sees her fear and holds her through it versus telling her to drop it or that it is foolish to be scared. I want her to feel seen by me and held by me. Lifted up by me. Not scared to show any of her feelings to me. That even through the hard ones (fear, anger, resistance, sadness), she can expect me to be right there. Witness to it and breathing through it all. With her. To be real, this has taken some serious practice from me as my normal reaction to these has sometimes been frustration. These are never easy emotions to contend with in others (let alone ourselves) and I know that I don’t want to teach her that I can only deal with her when she is pleasant, happy and cooperative - a lesson that many women learn as girls. So, practice I must.
And -- I want her to grow into a woman who feels all of her emotions and is in touch with her body. Knows what makes her happy and secure and what makes her feel uncomfortable and unsafe. I want her to be able to speak her mind without fear of reproach. I want her to be able to protect herself and put boundaries down when others try to harm her. I want her to trust and believe in herself more than anyone else in the world.
So what did I do? I thought - what would *I* have wanted as a scared little girl in this kind of situation? And I thought - I would have wanted someone to help me navigate this. Help me to do something about the situation. So that’s what I did. I saw this as a moment to teach Lucia about self-advocacy. She’s not too young to feel hurt and scared, so she’s not too young to stand up and say that something doesn’t sit right with her. I told her that we should talk to Carlos, our super, with whom she has a really great relationship. They talk all the time and share updates about how school is going for Lucia and how his kids’ rabbits are. :) When I mentioned this idea, she started to smile. I saw hope and energy run the fear and hurt right off of her face. I managed her expectations and explained that ultimately, it would be his decision to remove or keep the dog (she nodded that she understood), but that it was good for her to say something if she was uncomfortable every time she entered or left her own home.
The next morning we happened to see him. Lulu started to run down the hall towards him as soon as we got out of the elevator. I told him that Lucia had a complaint for him and she immediately pointed to the skeleton dog and said “I don’t like that dog!” I told him that it had scared her and that Lucia knows it’s his decision, but that we wanted to tell him how it was making her feel. He said he understood, that he would think about it and thanked Lucia for telling him. As we walked away, I whispered, “Yessss!” and gave my girl a hi-5. She marched away proudly. It almost didn’t matter what happened next. I could tell that the experience of knowing that her feelings mattered and advocating for herself was the reward. She seemed satisfied and confident as we headed off to school.
When we returned at the end of the day, the dog was GONE. I was pleasantly surprised and appreciative, and Lucia was in awe. We started jumping up and down and celebrating with more hi-5s. I was yelling, “you did it! You made it happen!” And she was smiling her widest smile and jumping up and down. I will never forget how she looked in that moment -- it made me so proud.
And I am proud of myself too. It’s not easy to parent. And it’s not easy to always know what to do in the moment as I’m dealing with new situations every day -- situations that are familiar to me as I remember back to my own childhood, but new in that this vantage point (parent) is new and in that I’m aiming for certain things to be better for Lucia than they were for me.
Obviously, coming from another time, things were different. Hell, this year feels different than any other year that preceded it thanks to the Harvey Weinstein blow-up. While I am disgusted by the daily reports of the next man who has abused his power to take advantage of women, I’ve been thankful for the opening up of this issue. I’ve heard a lot of men wonder, why now? And my answer is - people are willing to listen and not punish the women who are speaking. Women have always spoken out. But they have been shut down, rejected, laughed at, called liars, made to feel like they were over-reacting or imagining things, retaliated against and subjected to violence. Many of the women have told stories of speaking about it before now too - but that there was no accountability. Finally, there is now.
All of this has brought back up for me the situations I’ve had to deal with and the pain that I have felt at the hands of a creepy teacher, strangers on the subway who took liberties or boyfriends that the younger me thought loved me. And what is most hurtful to me as I think back to the earliest incident is that I wanted to speak and was asked not to. Not to rock the boat. This trained me early to put my own feelings aside and to instead think about what was best for others. To try not to bring “drama” or trouble. To just deal. And get over it.
And so I right some of the wrongs of my past by fighting the patterns that generations of women have been subjected to. I am paving a way for Lucia that I have had to pave for myself (and am still working on) as an adult woman.
Lucia will feel all that she feels.
She will be encouraged to speak her mind.
She will decide for herself what is okay and what is not.
She will put boundaries down and she will fight for what is best for her.
And in all of this, she will be loved.
Comments