#2 Origins
I was five when I first recall hearing it, the seven words that had such stinging impact on my life.
Standing small amongst a group of adults from my extended family, I have no doubt that I was annoying, a child bursting with curious ideas and questions, with no real audience inclined to engage with me.
I spoke up wanting to ask a question, what I can’t be sure, but what I remember vividly was being abruptly shut down with “little girls should be seen and not heard.” Vicious.
Burning with shame, the type that burns your soul and makes your face so red it acts as a lighthouse alerting all those in your vicinity to your shame and self-hatred. Unable to comprehend, I went and hid under my bed. A five year olds version of wanting the ground to swallow you up.
Those seven words, unknowingly, seem to have set the tone for my life. I certainly haven’t lived a quiet life, sometimes I wished I had, but more it was that the constant conditioning that my voice didn’t matter. That it had no right to have a place, has made me feel inadequate and never quite good enough.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t a one-time thing during my formative years, often trotted out, quite interestingly by my older female relations, it was a way of ensuring quiet and avoiding my embarrassing behaviour, especially in public.
As a child born into 80’s Australia, there are many of us of this vintage that would have a similar tale. Women conditioned to believe that we were just there to look pretty and be obliging to an older generation who had zero interest in really raising children, especially girls, to have independence and their own sense of power.
So, I did what any fire sign, first born child did. I rebelled, then regretted it, so tried to become small and obliging but piece by piece that jigsaw fell away to get me to here, in my mid 40’s and feeling like I have see-sawed my way through my own life.
And it has certainly had an impact.
In my corporate life there have been significant times where I have been told versions of the be seen and not heard theme that have knocked me for six, breathless in meetings where either my gender or age have been held against me.
One specific occurrence I was sitting in a meeting, a big meeting, where key decisions were being made, I had a legitimate, earnt seat at the table and my boss turned to me and said he’d run (my) meeting as it “needed authority”, for the record authority is not a skill I have an issue with. So with that gut punch, I excused myself went into the bathroom and cried, composed myself, swore a little and went back to my office where sitting with it hurt but ultimately, I realised it said more about them than me. For those interested, the meeting was a deal, the deal fell over, and I had the opportunity to bring it back to the table. Result.
I have a tonne of examples of where these seven words have left a scarring imprint on my soul, but it will make this read extraordinarily long, and the point is that now three decades later I recognise even though the foundation dried so hard, like a Maybelline mousse foundation in the 90’s, that no matter how many layers I place on top of it, the remnants remain BUT it is not what defines me. I am here, I’ve got the stories, and I will be seen and heard.
Just don’t tell my family.