Ambition is not a Dirty Word

When Joining Mom and Pop Is Good Business

Last week we talked about the cons of joining the family business (review my CONS advice at www.AmbitionIsNotADirtyWord). Now let’s talk pros.

The Day My Son Almost Died

I make my living teaching women how to unapologetically own their ambition in a society that has a double standard. It’s our prevailing cultural paradigm: ambitious men are go-getters, but ambitious women are the b-word.

I define ambition as that which drives our creative existence, provides an outlet for our talents and passions, defines who we are, and allows us to earn our full worth without apology. I walk my talk.

But just like you I take hits.

In a moment of trauma, I too succumbed to those deeply ingrained cultural beliefs about how women are supposed to behave. It happened to me when my son almost died.

The S.O.B. Diet: Silda Spitzer & The Sisterhood

We women always try and look on the bright side. Case in point: a friend who was going through a painful divorce and custody battle said to me, “Well, at least I’ll lose a few pounds—I’m on the Son of a Bitch Diet.”

Her husband—father to her children, ages two and four—had been having an affair. She kicked him out. He begged her to try again. She took him back. Several months later, she discovered he was back with his mistress.  He couldn’t help himself, he tearfully explained to his wife, his mistress was “the best friend I’ve ever had.” (Not surprisingly, he didn’t end up with the mistress after their divorce.)

After all that stress, my friend had shed her Mom jeans and was back in her skinny jeans.  She was right—the so-called Son of a Bitch Diet is the one surefire diet that works.

Who Are Your Role Models? Reclaiming Our Roots

Forty-five minutes into a recent interview, the journalist I was speaking with threw me a curve ball:

"Who are your role models?"

Immediately I thought of Frida Kahlo. Then my mind went blank.

Why should this be tough to answer? It's a predictable question. Plus, one would think that I'd have people at the top of my mind, given that I write and teach about women and ambition, including what inspires us to make the contributions we were born to make.

We need wise role models to be at the forefront of our awareness. Without them, we're left to go it alone in a cultural wasteland that provides scant and misbegotten guidance.

You know what I mean. Look around us.

Today, pop culture media floods us with images of young women who are are, at first glance, famous—not for making meaningful contributions, but rather who become infamous for calling each other "Firecrotch." Or who make headlines because they seem profoundly lost, unable to find meaning for themselves or for their children, helpless to find wise interpretations for making sense of their own life experiences, and utterly ill-prepared to step up to the calling of role model for a lost in translation generation.

It's not just a girls gone wild phenomenon. We also see, in pop-culture media, highly-sexualized, objectified, dumbed-down,  violent, and stereotypical portrayals of boys and men: Abercrombie abs; a pop prince bringing back sexy in a video story that ends with his cheating ex- facing retribution by death in a fiery car crash.

Excuse me. When did we stop noticing that our true role models have gone missing?

To compound these socially sanctioned realities, pile on cuts in funding for the arts and music in our public schools, plus classes that are devoid of media literacy training. Add to the mix the fact that many people in today's junk culture no longer value frequenting the theater or museums or concert halls, or exposing our children to these influences. We don't read Shakespeare; we read People. We don't ponder Nikki Giovanni; we devour Us magazine. We no longer know how to be introspective; superficial narcissism has replaced consciousness and self-awareness.

It's easy to see how and why we've lost a vital, collective interpretive anchor. It's easy to see how we've come to devalue the quest to live consciously, with purpose and meaning. Sadly, using art, music, poetry, literature, and theater as a means of translating and making sense of our human struggles has become a lost art.

So, I ask you this: Who are Your role models? Is this an easy question for you to answer? Think about it.

Write down your thoughts, who comes up for you, and why.

Then ask your women friends, colleagues, nieces, sisters about their own role models. And ask the boys and men in your life as well.

This is an excellent exercise for deepening our understanding of who fires us up and why, and how we can find, through the lost wisdom of our culture, the guidance we need to make it through tough times as well as through thrilling life events.

Authentic role models act as guideposts, touchstones, and cornerstones to our experiential foundations. Studying their work and their lives helps us make sense of our own lives. Role models root us during transitions. They help us to stay grounded during upheaval.

After sleeping on it, I compiled my own role models list:

Artist: Frida Kahlo
Poets: Adrienne Rich—esp. The Fact of a Doorframe and Diving Into the Wreck;
Jane Hirshfield—esp. The Lives of the Heart;
Rita Dove—esp. Mother Love: Poems;
Louise Erdrich—esp. Baptism of Desire: Poems;
William Blake.

Singer/Songwriter: Sarah McLachlan for creating Lilith Fair;
Joan Armatrading;
John Lennon.

And then there is, of course, Eleanor Roosevelt—a powerful leader who was ahead of her time. I admire her speeches, her writing, her leadership role as human rights and civil rights activist and suffragist. Reading about and absorbing her values, causes, and beliefs deeply resonated with my own sensibilities, especially as a teen girl trying to define my identity while growing up in the South. Recently visiting her library as a 45-year-old woman with my parents and aunt in tow deepened my appreciation for her leadership role.

My role models have, over the years, bridged gaps in my understanding. Their works have helped me mindfully get through, for example: a scary high-risk pregnancy; an awe-inspiring birth;  loving a child even when I didn't have all of the answers;  a divorce;  deaths;  illnesses;  9-11;  multiple career transitions;  entrepreneurship;  betrayal;  isolation;  financial struggles I've faced as a single, working mother;  gender discrimination;  redemptive love—including contemplating how not to mess up a great relationship;  becoming "E.S.M." (a moniker I created, and a.k.a., Evil Step Mom) to a much-loved kid who loves me back; and even learning to take joy in well-deserved career and personal life successes. 

My role models have been a source for normalizing all of my experiences and for fueling my optimism, even occassionally rendering numinous those otherwise mundane, day-to-day non-events.

Properly alligned role models have the potential to impact women by providing us with illuminating works of art, music, poetry, tales of life, and widsom that serve as a container—and a mirror—for our uniquely female individual and collective experiences: birth, giving birth, love, loss, joy, abandonment, death, injury, health, pain, transformation, redemption.

Let's reclaim our role models. Let's dig up and nuture our ancestral roots; you remember—the good stuff.

Send me your own lists—let's get the role model dialogue going. It's time.

E-mail me at: debra@ambitchous.com.

Sincerely and ambitchously,
Debra Condren

Frida Kahlo:  Roots (The Pedregal)