“Maria Shiver’s women’s conference really opened my eyes to how hungry women are to learn from each other, and how the business and the personal intertwines in a way that it doesn't for many men,” a journalist colleague who attended wrote me in an email.
His comments gave me another reason to finish my memoir. He added, “I’m struck by how the audiences - not just for the big speakers, but also in smaller forums - really listened so intently. It was as if people aren't really talking TO them in other contexts.”
I want to add my voice to the discussion. I believe my book, with strategies about navigating the dubious path to “having it all,” might be of use. I hope my story will validate the experience of other women: the freaky girl moments around a love-life tragedy, the frustration of constant pressure at work and the ever present worry that with so many demands nothing gets done well and my kids will reap the consequences on the couch of a therapist.
Suddenly the need to finish my book is clear. My tears, despair, schemes and triumphs may corroborate those of my readers, equally alone and confused about how to make it work. I can’t allow it to always fall behind the tyranny of the urgent. I see where my voice fits and connects to women who were and are me.
It reminds me of afternoons I spent as a child with our RCA Victrola (for those younger than I, it’s a record player that had “stereophonic” sound.) My sister and I enjoyed countless hours listening to the 33-rpm-demonstration record that came with the turntable. A tag line on the record label claimed, “Hearing Is Believing.” As we listened to the music we could see monsters conjured up by a symphonic movement, dance out Herb Alpert’s Tijuana beat and, for a contemporary jazz piece, we moved like a locomotive around the room.
Sound, the voices of other women in this case, gets me on a visceral level. The women speaking at the conference reminded me that I have to get a move on. Wanting to connect to other woman and encourage them gives an urgency to my own story-dance. It strengthens my resolve to move forward on getting this completed and finding an agent!
Comments