No Longer Letting Words Fuel Our Self-Doubt
Words define us, they explain us, and, on occasion, they serve to control or isolate us.
— Pip Williams in The Dictionary of Lost Words
As a transformational coach and facilitator and as someone who strives to "walk her talk", I'm all about questioning deeply-held assumptions and beliefs. Reading Pip Williams' debut novel The Dictionary of Lost Words was a transformational (and enjoyable) experience for me. In this post, I explore some of that transformation and invite you to consider what words you want to redefine or invent.
I grew up being quite the rule abider, a perfectionist and a people pleaser. This was my mentality: Tell me the rules. I will follow them and I will do my best to excel. That worked well enough for me until my twenties when, as a newly minted corporate lawyer, I started to question everything and carried around a ton of self-doubt as I did so.
Fast forward a few decades. I’m feeling and behaving differently. I'm enjoying much of the freedom that comes from being a woman in her 50s and a very privileged one at that. I’ve realized that so many of the rules I diligently followed really weren’t very supportive of me growing into the woman I deeply desire to become. I’ve realized that so many people and organizations and countries are just "making this sh*t up" as they go along. I’m feeling more like a disruptor. I’m feeling permission to make up more of my own stories, rules and words. I no longer want to let words, stories and rules fuel my self-doubt. I’m noticing what builds my self-trust and freedom more and more.
Along with being a member of Coralus (formerly SheEO) since 2017, a few books I've read recently have been supportive of these realizations, including:
Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the StoryTellers the Human Story Changes by Elizabeth Lesser,
The Mother of invention: How Good Ideas Get Ignored in An Economy Built For Men by Katrina Marcal, and
The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams.
This last book, The Dictionary of Lost Words is a fictionalized account (based on real events) of the creation of the first Oxford Dictionary. In the story, the daughter of one of the senior editors, Esme, spent much of her childhood under the table where the all male team of editors worked. She quietly rescued certain words and phrases that fluttered to the floor, the little pieces of paper discarded by the men. Words that would not be included in the dictionary. Esme's behaviour was disruptive, very much against the rules. Not surprisingly many of the rejected words were women’s words and words of the most vulnerable people in society - words like "bondmaid", defined by Lizzie, a housemaid, as “a young woman bound to serve until her death”. (In “real life”, the word “bondmaid” really was excluded and its absence was part of Pip Williams’ inspiration for the novel.)
I can't get that image of the little curious and determined girl-disuptor out of my head! In fact I don't want to get her out of my head. Part of me wants to join her under that table. She inspires me!
Words are being made up all the time. But growing up, I never really took that in. I just thought of the dictionary as the “final word” on the subject, without inquiring further. Things were fixed. Looking back I can see this is consistent with my fixed, perfectionistic mindset, which is characterized by everything being set in stone.
At this point in history, so many of us are questioning so much of everything. And for very good reason.
And I’m finding we do need some new words and phrases and that we also need to feel free, to feel permission, to redefine some old ones.
Words to redefine
How about leadership, for example? Leadership for most people still conjures up an older white man. So many women I talk to don’t see themselves as leaders and yet they most certainly are, according to a more expanded definition of leadership such as this one from Brené Brown:
A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes and has the courage to develop that potential. Leadership is not about titles or the corner office. It's about the willingness to step up, put yourself out there, and lean into courage.
And what about…
success? Does it feel to narrow for you in it’s typical definition? What does success really look like and feel like for you?
work/life balance? (or just totally scratch it and start over? - that’s another blog post!)
networking? Can we imbue more meaning, connection and reciprocity into this term or do we need a new one?
power? Lately, I’ve been inspired by Katy Kay and Claire Shipman’s book The Power Code: More Joy. Less Ego. Maximum Impact for Women (and Everyone), where they invite us to add “to” to power - the “power to”, as opposed to the typical “power over” paradigm. Brené Brown writes about this as well.
What words do you think we need to redefine in order to create the freedom we need to create the lfe and world we yearn for?
Some New words and phrases I love using:
Ampliship - h/t Caroline Adams Miller who defines it as “the practice of sharing the stories of women doing amazing things, celebrating their achievements and supporting their goals.”
Walkntalk - this is my short form for a walking meeting. I love to walkntalk!
Big feelings - an acknowledgment of the fact that we may sometimes feel emotions that are overwhelming and/or deep, especially these days. I wrote a post about being smarter with our big feelings just before the lockdwon as I was anticipating what the pandemic was going to be like for us all.
What words are you inventing?
Thought-provoking quote
“...I realized that the words most often used to define us were words that described our function in relation to others. Even the most benign words- maiden, wife, mother - told the world whether we were virgins or not. What was the male equivalent of maiden? I could not think of it. What was the male equivalent of Mrs., of whore, of common scold?... Which words would define me? Which would be used to judge or contain?”
― Pip Williams, The Dictionary of Lost Words
Over to you
What words do you think we need to redefine in order to create the freedom we need to create the life and world we yearn for?
What words and phrases are you inventing?
