I recently read an article announcing that Melissa Rauch, an actress from The Big Bang Theory, is expecting a child with her husband after suffering a miscarriage.

Through my own struggles with infertility, I appreciated a comment that she made in her announcement.  I am a woman in my mid-thirties and have been married for quite a while now, so people frequently ask me the “when are you going to have kids” question.

I am not a sensitive person.  And my struggle with infertility and the ability to come through that struggle stronger are all topics for a different blog post.  However, some people are very sensitive about it and it just strikes me as an incredibly rude, personal question for anyone to ask about someone else’s plans to have children.

For example, a friend of mine has been married nearly ten years and they don’t want children.  But if she’s asked and answers honestly, people are shocked and look at her a bit disdainfully.  You don’t want children?!?  But what business is it of theirs?

For the first few years when people would ask me why I didn’t have children, I’d sidestep the question with a laugh and say, “Maybe someday.”  But now I answer honestly, too.  “I won’t be having children, but thank you for bringing it up.  Unfortunately, after years of trying I have been deemed unable.”  They become uncomfortable, of course.  But perhaps it will teach them a lesson in how to treat others.

I do not cry, and I am not offended when I am asked.  I harbor no sadness, resentment or regret over the cards that I have been dealt in my life.  But not everyone has reached that point yet, and there is something to be said about the nosy rudeness of people asking this question.

And the problem isn’t the small talk questions you ask when getting to know someone.  “Where do you work?” and “Do you have children?” are fine questions.  But I recall when I first started my job, I had been married for nearly three years at that point and when my coworkers found out how long I had been married they immediately asked, “Why don’t you have children?  Don’t you like kids?”

What a thing to ask someone who is struggling!

The worst is when I am standing with my mother and chatting to someone she knows and then they look at me and say, “When are you finally going to give your mother a grandchild?!”  I always feel like responding, “Well, I will when you learn not to behave like a jackass in public.”  People!

The key here is to be a socially competent person.  It’s not that hard.  Don’t pull a disdainful or shocked expression when you find out someone married for fifteen years is childless.  Regardless of the reason, whether it is an inability or lack of want, no one wants your opinion or mine.  

I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could!

This is a sentiment commonly expressed by transplanted people that currently reside in Texas but were born in other states.  It applies to me as well, and in a most literal way!

During my parents\’ Great Adventure, one of our most prominent destinations in my memory was west Texas.  We celebrated Christmas one year in Del Rio, on the banks of the Rio Grande river.  Living in a motorhome forced my parents to be creative about Christmas presents, and I still have no idea how they pulled it off, but on Christmas morning that year I woke up to my very first two-wheeler bicycle!  I was thrilled!  I was tooling all over Del Rio before long with my little training wheels wobbling around behind me.

After this, I grew up dreaming of living in the American southwest, especially Texas, and was convinced that someday I would end up here.  In the tenth grade, I told two of my classmates that before I turned 22 years old, my goal was to be living in Texas.  They both scoffed at me. I was enraged!  While still in high school, I sought out and met a sweet Texas boy that became my husband years later – I was so sure I would end up here someday!  And then, at the age of 18 during my second semester of college, my mom got a job offer in Houston that changed all of our lives and made my dream come true!  How I would have loved to tell those two classmates all about it!

I have now lived in Texas for almost sixteen years and it has become home to me.  I never realize it more than when I have been away.  When I go out of state, I miss everything about Texas, even the things that annoy me when I am here! 

The people here are truly the friendliest.  While I found Texas a little behind the times in technology upon my arrival (they were so excited about getting direct deposit and it was amusing to me that it was new to them!), they also have an old-school charm about them, a politeness that is customary from both young and old.  The cost of living is incredible, the variety of food is outstanding, and there are so many things to do.  The airport here is a major international hub, I am not terribly far from the coast and despite my highly metropolitan lifestyle, there is an acreage with goats and horses less than two miles from where I live.

Texas isn’t for everyone, perhaps.  But one thing I have learned is that there is somewhere for everyone if you’re willing to take the risk and go find it.  I have classmates from high school that I have since learned live across the United States and Europe, and I have relatives living in New Zealand.  One of my pet peeves is listening to someone complain incessantly about where they live.  Life is short and no one who is living their dream got there without making a choice and setting about the task of getting there! 

When you get there, you find your own home sweet home!

Perceptions are a funny thing.  Everyone has them, and everyone is entitled to their perceptions.  But as we all know, they can be incredibly difficult to work through as well.

This has come up for me in various jobs.  The perceptions from coworkers that I am having too much fun and the conversations my managers have had with me about those complaints.  But then I ask, “Am I getting my work done?  Do you have a particular issue with my performance?”  The answer is no, but that there is a perception that I’m just having too much fun.  Well, my sincerest apologies to the rat who is trying to ruin my day, but I am one of the few blessed with the ability to slog away through a work day and make the best of it while I do!

We have all been hamstrung at some point in our lives by the false or unfair perceptions of others.  And we know we do it ourselves, too.  How often do we, based on some very cursory knowledge, make a judgment about someone else before we really know anything about them?  And now those people are going to have to work twice as hard to overcome those perceptions as anyone else.

We see it in the workplace often.  A new member joins the team, and the others are on their guard immediately.  If she is too young or too old, they assume she won’t be able to perform the necessary functions.  If she is too pretty or blonde then people assume she may not be smart enough.  If she is overweight, they assume she might be too lazy.  If she laughs too much then she’s annoying, but if she’s too somber then she is ruining their good time.  

I’ve spent my whole life trying to overcome perceptions.  When I was young, people in one circle thought I was silly and giddy, and were surprised to discover I was also an honors student.   In other circles, some thought I was too studious to be any fun, and were surprised to find out how silly I can be when I’m relaxed.  We put people into boxes, and it is stifling!

Before I worry about what the world is thinking of me, and how wrong they probably are, I should focus on my own ability to cast my perceptions onto someone.  We all should.  To ensure that everyone gets their chance to be themselves and become known before we start putting labels on them.

Some people are lazy, some people are boring, and some people aren’t very smart.  There is no getting around that.  But when we ascribe those labels to others before letting them prove themselves, we set ourselves up to be disappointed by them.

Which makes sense, because of course we don’t want to be wrong!

One of my favorite episodes of Frasier is the one where they mistakenly report him as being dead, and he is disappointed when he reads his obituary in the paper.  He feels like he didn’t do nearly all of the things he intended to with his life.  Roz, in her characteristically direct way, says, “Well, what’s stopping you?  You’re not actually dead.”

This then leads Frasier to write his obituary as he would like it to be read to help him streamline his vision for his life.  The end result, of course, is hilarious.  He has himself running the Boston marathon and tracing Lewis and Clark’s route, to which his father cannot help but laugh.

The idea for this episode probably came from the real life story of Alfred Nobel, a wealthy inventor in the 19^th century, who was mistakenly presumed dead and his scathing obituary made him reflect and take action.  What was first said about him (probably due to his invention of dynamite) was this: “a man who made it possible to kill more people more quickly than anyone else who had ever lived.”  In the end, however, his name is forever associated with the Nobel Peace Prize and other Nobel prizes in medicine and literature and so on.

This all leads us to consider what our obituary would read like if we died today.  And at least for me, that is a disappointing thought.  But it allows me to consider what I hope it will say someday down the road when the time comes.

I hope my obituary will relate the dreams that I achieved and, more importantly, that there were dreams that I helped others to achieve.  I hope it has a few monumental challenges listed as being checked off of my list, such as running a marathon or running a successful small business.  I hope it lists numerous charities that I worked for and supported and that there is solid evidence that I helped my community.  I hope it says that because of me, someone else lived a better life.  I hope it says that my influence awakened faith and hope in someone else.  I hope it says that I eventually got around to traveling the world, that I was a cheerful wife to my husband and that regardless of whatever age I am when I die, that I lived my life to the fullest.

 Our story is not over, and there is still time to adjust our priorities to accurately reflect the legacy we want to leave on this world.  We can choose to take whatever we can get, do as little as we can, and just hope that no one gets hurt in the meantime; or we can do something different and make an impact.  Literally, the only thing stopping us is a single choice in this moment to make that change.

“We are our choices.”  – Jean-Paul Sartre  

It is amazing when I think back on the life lessons I learned as a kid, and how those lessons stick with me today.  Here are five examples of lessons I learned very young and the stories that are behind those lessons!

1. I need to get a decent night’s sleep.  I homeschooled grades 6-9, which allowed for some leniency in my schedule compared to other kids, but I was still expected to be at the desk and ready to learn come 8am.  And the funny thing about having a parent as your teacher is that they aren’t afraid to slap you upside the back of the head (à la Uncle Phil) if you start acting like a fool.  My dad didn’t have to catch me with my face down in a book more than a couple of times before I started getting myself to bed at a decent time.  To this day, I have a set bedtime and I wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed!

2. Teach others how to treat you. I referenced this in another blog post, but I learned very young to set an expectation with others of how to treat me.  It was a long lesson learned because my adolescence was littered with times where I got bullied, but in many of those cases, it was simply because I wasn’t yet sure how to express how I wanted to be treated.  Even now, there are people I work with who are rude and abrasive to others, but are polite and professional with me because I insist that we treat one another with respect.  And as Forrest Gump would say, that’s all I have to say about that!

3. How to fight my own battles.  Oh, how lucky I was to have the mother that I do.  I recall a time when I got into a scrap with another little girl, we must have been about 8.  The little girl was mad at me and ran home to tell on me to her grandma.  Her grandma came over and tried to talk to my mom about the situation, and my mom told that lady to let us work it out ourselves.  I have no recollection of ever running to my mom to intervene in the conflicts between my friends and me.  She wouldn’t have done it; she’d have given me a pep talk and sent me on my way to deal with it myself.  This is why I don’t tell on my coworkers to my boss nowadays (and that’s a lesson we could all learn from!).

4. The pitfalls of buying cheap crap. I had a small allowance as a little girl, and my parents always let us spend our small sums of money however we wanted.  I may have been five years old when my mom took me to the store with my little allowance and I was going to buy myself a toy.  I was excited when I learned that if I got cheaper toys, I could buy two, instead of only one of the nicer ones.  So, my mom said nothing when I bought the cheap toys.  By the end of the night, both toys were broken.  As a teenager, I had learned from this lesson.  One of my first major purchases I made after I started working was a video camera.  My dad helped me pick one out and I bought the best one money could buy, and it still works (though why would you need one nowadays?!).

5. Don’t worry about what other people think of you.  I was attending a youth group at a church during the years when I was homeschooled as part of my extracurricular activities.  I have also always been someone that people feel pretty comfortable sharing their opinions and feedback with.  One even at the group, the leader asked everyone to anonymously draw a name and send a complimentary note to that person.  I was eleven at the time, and scrawny and gangly and awkward looking, and was not surprised or pleased to see my note: “You look okay today, but you usually dress pretty stupid.”  I took that note home to my dad and told him I didn’t want to go back to that group anymore.  My dad said, “Piss on her!  Why would you care what she thinks?”  Well, that posed a good question.  I didn’t care what she thought, and I wasn’t going to let her rude comments ruin my otherwise good time!

I have been fortunate enough to have strong female role models in leadership.  It has never occurred to me that women weren’t as strong, competent and skilled in leadership as men are.  It helps that I have grown up with the example of strong female leaders that have been role models to me.

My mom was the first of these and was the reason that I grew up believing leadership is a quality and not a title or position.  It wouldn’t matter if my mom was running a bake sale or an organization, she has a natural ability to lead; she takes accountability, takes responsibility for decisions and gives credit to the team as a whole for success.  She creates a vision and communicates it to others in a way that makes them want to follow her.

My mother is currently a respected leader and manager over many processes.  I believe she encapsulates a lot of what John Quincy Adams said about leadership: “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”  A testament to this is not only the children she raised to do all of these things, but the countless employees she has had that she has empowered to reach their potential as well.  There are many people out there who would gladly credit my mom for nourishing those seeds of potential.

In elementary school, my fourth-grade teacher was another example to me of someone who inspired me as a leader.  She was kind and compassionate, but firm and fair, too.  She had a knack for making us all behave better than we otherwise did, and for bringing out the best in us, and at such a difficult age. 

At work, there is a woman who supervised a team of her own but was also the chairperson for various company celebrations for recognitions and holidays.  She led by example, putting in the effort, leading with great integrity and managing to get others on board to help her even when it was well outside of their responsibility to do so.  I often volunteered under her, simply because she was inspiring to be around and I was happy to help someone like her succeed.  And she fully understood that leaders need their teams to be successful in order to succeed as well.

All of these examples are from women who understand the value of others, and of themselves.  They see people as their true resource, not the things.  They agree with the sentiment that when you take care of the people, all of the objectives will take care of themselves.  Success, in their eyes, was not measured purely in the metrics, but in the development of others and developing a team of people working together to achieve something bigger than just self-interest.   

Leadership is serving others, and I have been blessed to have such wonderful real life models of this.

Back in the days of film cameras, I was an avid “photographer.”  I got my first camera – it was a sturdy little purple thing and used 110 cartridge film – when I was eleven years old.  I had well-documented photographic evidence of every friend, every flower and every tree.  It is a lucky thing I started babysitting so young because much of it went into paying to develop those blurry pictures!

As I got older, and at some point eventually gained use of digital cameras (though not often, and I didn’t own one until I was married!), I still had this weird urge to print my digital photos.  After all, I’d been storing my photos in albums for years and it seemed like the right thing to continue.  Just because the camera had changed I didn’t see why my method of saving photos had to as well!

I grew out of that eventually, and thankfully, though in the end, I had a dozen of these photo albums to contend with – all of them taking up valuable space.  I decided to remove the photos, ensure everything was available to me on my computer, and then keep some good ones, and toss the rest.  I discovered a wonderful photo storage container on Amazon that has helped me shrink a literal shelf of photo albums into a small box to preserve and protect my photos.

As I went through my pictures, I relived a lot of old memories that I hadn’t thought about in a while.  Fashions from the early 90s came back to haunt me a little and make me laugh.  After an hour or so, I was struck by an observation – many of the girls in these pictures were women that I am friends with to this day.  The same smiles appeared in many photos, from the pictures on the playground, through graduation and even beyond into wedding photos.

One picture struck me and I set it aside to look at again later.  I am standing between two of my oldest friends on the riverbank.  I have known them now for over twenty years, and in that photo I must have been about fifteen years old.  We were looking pretty sassy in our cut off jean shorts and me in my prescription sunglasses!  It made me reflect on the years since then.  The girl on one side of me is now a nurse and a mother of two.  The other does social work and has a compassionate and poetic soul.  It is a funny thing to look back and see how far we have come, and laughing to know the three of us would never have suspected where we would be in our thirties (or that we’d ever actually grow up)!

It did my heart some good to see that regardless of other mistakes I have made over the years – and there have been many – that I have held on to some of these special women.  Women who remind me where I come from and how far we have come and don’t need me to explain who I am.  Women who were the girls that remember my parents fondly, who could come in without knocking, who even when we went to different schools passed notes at the bus stop.  I am honored that these women grew up as well as they have and still call me a friend! 

And I am grateful I took the time to clean out those albums and rediscover how much they all still mean to me!