Requiem for a Superhero
When the cape starts to choke…
I became a superhero at the age of 10. Maybe even a little younger, as I witnessed the gradual deterioration of my parents’ marriage during many late night fights when they thought I was asleep. I remember asking my dad one time when we were alone if he and mom were getting a divorce. He just knelt down beside me, drew me into his arms, and cried. That is a frightening power to discover as a child: the power to make your father cry.
On a day not too long after that, when my parents sat me down beside my sister and brother, I knew what was coming and tried to be strong for my younger siblings. I knew the “d” word was coming but I didn’t really know how it would impact our lives, other than dad was moving out. I found out pretty quickly though.
My parents were teenagers when I was born. Just barely adults by legal reckoning. They hadn’t had much time to explore who they were as individuals before they became a married couple. And not even a year passed as newlyweds before they became parents. A lot of responsibility was yoked onto their young shoulders, and after 11 years those shoulders broke.
Dad moved out. Mom went back to school and got a job. At that point they were both turning 30 and trying to figure out who they were as individuals. A whole decade of their lives was gone — the explorative, formative, evolutionary years of early adulthood — lost, as they dove into marriage and parenting, perhaps before they were mentally and emotionally prepared.
After they divorced they were free of each other, no longer a spouse. They started to reclaim their “me,” now that they were no longer a “we.” And yet there were three little reminders that they were not completely free. They were still parents, with all the attendant responsibilities of caring for three children aged 7–10. Most of those responsibilities fell to my mother since we lived with her most of the time and saw our dad every other weekend.
I pause here to consider the ironic choice of words when I wrote that the responsibilities fell to my mother. Because my memories of this time are of things falling apart. That’s where the true reality of divorce kicked in for me. And kicked even harder when my father died in a car accident two years later.
So by the age of 12, for all intents and purposes I had become my mother’s domestic partner. I made meals — often making my mother’s lunch for her to take to work. I washed dishes and did the laundry. I made sure my sister and brother got to school because mom was long gone in the mornings. I called friends’ parents to arrange rides for us to soccer practices, sleepovers, Cub Scout meetings. And as soon as I could drive, I became the family chauffeur.
I assumed the responsibility of household management because it was more than my mother could handle and it needed to get done. I don’t remember being asked to do it, I just did it. It came naturally to me and I was good at it. And it cost me the last precious years of my childhood.
I made peace with my lost childhood ages ago, but it’s only recently that I’ve discovered a longer term and perhaps more insidious impact of those years. I learned at a young age my ability to manage, to lead, to take on out-sized responsibilities, to identify what needs to be done, and to make things happen. Learned it all so well, in fact, that I’ve believed leadership and management were my True Calling, my gift to the world, and I built a 30 year career around them.
Until now.
Now, when I allow myself to admit that I’m tired of always being in charge. Tired of being the one who everyone looks to for solutions and ideas and strategic plans and what’s for dinner. I find myself fantasizing about quitting everything and getting a job as a server at the restaurant down the road. Nice and defined: you tell me what you want and I’ll get it for you. But, of course, that might make me happy for about a day, then I’d realize that like so many other things — building financial models, leading teams, playing the piano — just because I’m good at something doesn’t mean I want to build a career around it.
So…recently I started thinking I need to hire a career coach to help me reinvent myself and redirect my career. Before I got too far down that path, however, I stumbled upon a blog post by Rachel Macy Stafford who wrote about experiencing similar career angst (her fantasy was to abandon her writing career and don an apron in the gardening section of a home supply store). I discovered that maybe it’s not so much about reinventing myself but more about recognizing there’s a role I’ve been playing — for decades — that no longer serves me and needs to be let go.
I made a list of What I Love To Do, followed by a list of What I Dislike Most. From there I identified roles associated with each list…and that’s when I came face to face with Make-It-Happen Girl.
Make-It-Happen Girl: the superhero persona who first emerged when I was a kid and my mom needed help. Without realizing it, I pulled on a superhero cape back then when I stepped in and took charge of running the household. I got so good at playing the role of Make-It-Happen Girl that I parlayed it into a career — and the world loves her. As the name says, she makes things happen, she gets things done. She’s efficient and resourceful and powerful, even. She’s good at leading.
But deep inside her it’s a different story. She’s unfulfilled. She feels underutilized and misunderstood. She’s BORED. Can’t anyone see that she’s capable of so much more? Does’t anyone recognize and appreciate her real brilliance? No, not quite yet. Because she’s kept her other talents and ideas and dreams hidden deep inside her Make-It-Happen Girl cape for so long she’s lost sight of who she really is, who she can be.
Make-It-Happen Girl served a purpose 40 years ago when she was desperately needed. And now it’s time to say thanks and retire her from service. Time to shed the superhero costume and discover what’s underneath: the strong, experienced, visionary, creative, scarred-yet-resilient woman — a girl no longer.
It’s time to acknowledge and unleash those parts of me that have been waiting in the wings while Make-It-Happen Girl overplayed her role on stage simply because it was easy and expedient. How freeing it is to think about letting her go, to put the superhero cape in mothballs and discover who is standing forth in her place.
I look at my What I Love To Do list and discover new roles defined by both subtle and significant twists on my former superhero traits:
Visionary; not Problem-solver.
Iconoclast; not Manager.
Leader; but not in the traditional sense.
Now the trick is to make sure this new version of me stays on stage. It’s all too easy to default back to Make-It-Happen Girl when something needs to get done. I remind myself to flex my newfound muscle and say NO. I remember to stop looking for the cape and to stand confident in the freshly exposed skin of the real me.
I call her wild-wise-woman, in small letters because she’s not a superhero, although she is certainly a force to be reckoned with. Time to let wild-wise-woman be seen and heard.
It’s scary. People are used to the old superhero and they liked her. Maybe they won’t like this new version of me as much. Doesn’t matter. I like her and that’s what does matter. Because that’s what makes her so much stronger and more powerful than Make-It-Happen Girl could ever hope to be.
Wild-wise-woman draws her strength from integrity, and cultivates her vision from experience and empathy. She makes space for others to implement her ideas and models so that she has space to keep innovating. She plants the seeds for others to tend and grow. She lets others do the doing — and guess what — there are folks out there who are really great at doing the doing. They’re the true make-it-happen heroes and they need the visionary-seed-planters to get things started. When wild-wise-woman remembers to let them do their thing instead of jumping in and doing it just because she can, she creates opportunity for all involved to be their best selves.
This is what self-actualization feels like: not doing more of what you do well, but loving what you do. Period. When you love what you’re doing, the “doing well” piece follows naturally.
So…rest in peace Make-It-Happen Girl and all the other outdated, overworked, misaligned superheroes who may be holding you back from being your true self. Who’s waiting to emerge once you’ve laid your superhero to rest? Wild-wise-woman is eager to meet them.
