Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts on motherhood in the legal profession, in partnership with our friends at MothersEsquire. Welcome Claire E. Parsons back to our pages. Click here if you’d like to donate to MothersEsquire.
I have a necklace from my husband that I don’t like but still wear. It’s oddly shaped and a bit too large. What I really don’t like, though, is that it reminds me of a terrible day and my deep-seated shame.
Why would I be ashamed about a necklace? Aren’t diamonds (or, in this case, a peridot) a girl’s best friend? Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? Friends are important. My husband bought me the necklace on the day I realized I had no friends.
If you are thinking that this makes no sense, you’re right. About 10 years ago, I had a really bad day. Over a long weekend, loneliness attacked when I had no plans except to hang out with my beautiful 1-year-old daughter. Normally, that would be great. But that weekend it wasn’t because I was craving connection and support from people my own age.
The problem was that I didn’t have any friends, at least not any who lived nearby. That weekend, I also had no work to distract me from these feelings. Though I had unwittingly harbored loneliness for years, I had just started meditating, and that allowed the skeletons in the closet of my mind to come out and dance. Did I greet these feelings with kindness and calm like my teachers had told me to do? Absolutely not.
Instead, I did what any self-respecting lawyer mom trying to deal with too much on her own would do. I threw a fit. Almost systematically, I picked fights with everyone in my life. When my daughter had a blowout meltdown to top it all off, I ended up ugly crying in my home office. My husband came in bewildered, gave me a hug, calmed me down, and told me he had to go out.
I assumed he needed a break from me and would go watch football somewhere. Instead, he came back with the necklace as if to say, “I have no idea what is going on, but if it is my fault, I’m sorry.” I was shocked and mortified. In no way had I done anything to deserve a gift, but one was staring me in the face asserting that gifts, and the love behind them, are mercifully not about what we deserve.
On seeing this necklace, reminiscent of a snake around a rod — an ancient symbol of healing as it turns out — I broke. I told my husband it wasn’t his fault and apologized. For the first time, I admitted that I was lonely and didn’t know what I could do about it. I told him I was too busy to make friends. I sobbed that the very idea of trying to make friends meant nobody liked me. He said he didn’t think that was true, but I may have to try to find people that I really liked. I broke again, but this time in a different way.
I broke wide open. The crying upgraded my attitude from hopeless to “eff it” and I decided that if I was already a mess, I could try being a mess in public. Like a middle school girl searching for people to sit with at lunch, I set an internal goal: to find out if there were other anti-social weirdos like me who wanted to hang out. After 10 years of extensive research, I am pleased to report that there are tons of anti-social weirdos out there, and some of them are my best friends.
What research methodology did I use? It was not a sophisticated approach. I started small and arguably lazily by first scouring the internet. Meetup was active at that time, so I found some promising groups and started showing up. Some events were awkward. Some were painful. But nobody was mean or intent on excluding me. To my surprise, people were welcoming even if we were different. A few people were awesome.
One of the groups that helped me the most was a moms group composed largely of stay-at-home moms. They didn’t mind that I showed up only occasionally and skated on their social planning skills. The fact that these women weren’t like me was nice because, no offense, you can get sick of talking shop with lawyers all the time. It was also nice to see how, despite our differences, these women were like me. Just like me, they felt exasperated and like a failure as a mom sometimes, too. Holy crap! Maybe it wasn’t just me. I quickly learned that venting and laughing about motherhood with other moms made parenting a small child much more bearable.
Next, I started showing up more at work. Even when I was not feeling it, I went to happy hour. I gladly forsook many a sad office salad and went to lunch with anyone who invited me. I took opportunities to get involved with my bar and other trade associations. After a while, I was bold enough to start a peer-mentoring group of women lawyers. This investment of time and energy paid off and not just because venting and laughing about law practice made work much more bearable.
The final thing I did to face my loneliness was to learn to be a friend to myself. This sounds cheesy, but it’s truly essential. Even when you have friends, a good job, and a full life, bad feelings still happen. Each day, it’s not abnormal for a typical lawyer mom to cycle through frustration, doubt, anxiety, anger, resentment, being overwhelmed, and alienation. Friends certainly help hold and process the mess of emotion, but that assumes you are aware and trust yourself enough to share what you are experiencing with them.
Aha! And now, coming back to where I started: the challenge of facing the feelings that are there. The truth is that this really sucks. It’s painful. It’s awkward. There are so many enticing ways to avoid your feelings, like fighting, Amazon, wine, Netflix, or billable hours. Though my meditation practice led me to experience a truly miserable day 10 years ago, I stuck with it because being there for myself felt so much better than pretending like every day was “fine.”
Now, when I feel lonely, I sit with the loneliness. I can hold it, acknowledge it, and decide whether I need to ask for support. Bizarrely, this act of sitting with my loneliness makes me feel far less alone because, at least, I know I will be there for myself if things go wrong. Over time, this has created freedom for me to pursue the things I care about, stay open to new people and situations, show more vulnerability, and take risks.
After all these years, I see loneliness like that ugly necklace which I now love. Loneliness is a feeling that nobody enjoys, but there’s a beauty in it if you take the time to understand. It’s hard to separate loneliness from shame, especially for lawyers, because connection is essential to our survival as humans and foundational to a successful law practice. But, if you are willing to greet your own loneliness with some kindness and maybe even an “eff it” attitude, you can experience some amazing things.
There’s this great quote from Maya Angelou — a working mom who went looking for love and connection all over the world. It goes, “You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.” I paid a high price in facing my own loneliness and accepting that I belonged no place.
The reward I experienced and now get to share with others, though, has been great. What I learned was that loneliness is not something to be ashamed of but instead an unmistakable sign that I was human. That feeling, awful as it was, pushed me into the world to be with other humans. Now, regardless of whether I fit in, I belong every place, and I wear my ugly beautiful necklace with pride.
Claire E. Parsons is an employment, litigation, and local government attorney in the Cincinnati, Ohio area. She’s also a mindfulness and compassion teacher, and a frequent speaker and writer on the topics of attorney well-being, mental health, stress management and more. Claire shares writing, resources, and meditations on her blog, Brilliant Legal Mind and she’s the author of two books, How to Be a Badass Lawyer, and Mommy Needs a Minute. To get to know Claire more, follow the blog or connect with Claire on LinkedIn.
