Women Can Talk
I love being a woman! For all the struggles we go through to be taken seriously and embraced as equals by men we have been blessed with something most men can only stand in awe of, our love of communicating. Years ago, the media depicted this as an embarrassment or as a negative stereotypical trait. Edith Bunker types were portrayed as nonstop chatterers, filling the air with nonsense and silly words. Even get-togethers with other women were called hen parties as though we sat about and clucked at one another. Now we have more opportunities and fewer stereotypes, but women shouldn’t have to talk less to be taken more seriously.
A woman’s ability to talk can be the thread that weaves the family close together and helps them to share a life. Think of how family relationships would be changed without someone encouraging and imparting both silly and serious conversations. Dinners would be silent events where the main focus is to consume food. Car trips would be a group of individuals sitting together but traveling alone. Life would become more like a noun and less like an adjective as we share our day instead of our experiences. If we settled for saying less words, families would consist of people co-existing, limited to just sharing basic information.
I am not content to just tell the facts, I love to tell the story. What I did that day doesn’t consist of three sentences. I tell stories that invite the listener to walk through a day in my world. I am not content to say “I shopped at the store.” That is just the first sentence of a descriptive narrative of all I felt or saw. I tell of sweet moments, describing the helpful salesperson that made me smile. Or how I helped the crying little boy find his mom and how it reminded me of when my little one was lost and then found. I relate how grateful I am for our family when I walked by a homeless man, who obviously has seen better days. My re-enactment of the unbearable trauma of bathing suit shopping makes them laugh out loud. I see on their faces that my family loves it, this glimpse into my day. It changes dinner time from a quiet chorus of chews to a table full of laughing and teasing. When the story is over they may make fun of me and call me crazy but I know if I gave them a few days of just the facts, they would quickly change their tune.
I also push and pull the stories out of the ones around me. My love for communication makes me a good listener because I know how it feels to have someone pay attention, really pay attention and value my thoughts. I ask questions about details because I want the good stuff, how they felt, what they did, who they saw, and I am not content to hear their day was just fine. So I push, what was the best thing that happened today? And I pull, what was the worse? Experiencing their life through their eyes is important for me to get to know them as a person. I can picture their frustration with being betrayed by someone they thought was a friend, or celebrate with them the great tip they got at work. I can picture her smiling when she is asked out on a date by a guy she likes and then blushing with embarrassment when she tripped two minutes later. With my kids the stories we tell are stepping stones to communicating values. Once the door to sharing is open, we both are able to give and take the wisdom we have learned. Instead of handing them a lecture, we both learn by sharing our lives. Encouraging in this way is also how they learn to tell the story. With an audience of one that they know is their biggest fan I encourage by laughing in the right places and making noises of sympathy, so they know I understand. I give what I know makes me feel understood and we both walk away winners.
My husband will smile and laugh as I draw for him with words, a picture of the day I had. Different from him in outlook he gains insight from my experiences and enjoys looking at life through my kaleidoscope. How I see things and people intrigues him and his cut and dried outlook expands with my descriptive one. My verbal strengths compliment his quieter style and rubs off on him, causing him to see his day as moments and events, not just minutes and hours. Now and then I have even caught him increasing his word count for the day and elaborating a little on his own stories.
I think it’s important for women to enjoy this bounty of words that has been bestowed upon us. If I give into the common opinion that more words makes less sense I will have lost something that brings balance and color into the lives around me. My love of words and communication changes people both as they listen and as they respond. I build memories by reminding others of past events, I break down competition by sharing my own failures, and I encourage character by being brave or kind and talking about it. It is important that we as women celebrate our unique verbal skills. As an added bonus, the gift of words we give just keeps on giving because, you know, there is nothing like a good story to make you want to tell one of your own.
