From Here to Autonomy

Acknowledging the Professional IS Personal

"We Are operating above the neck whenever we assume that what we think is more important than what we feel. We are operating above the neck when we emphasize data over personal experience. We are operating above the neck when we deify logic and denigrate intuition."  

                                                --Maggie Craddock, The Authentic Career

I was introduced to Maggie Craddock by a mutual friend. We hit it off immediately, and she send me her latest book, "Power Genes" which I ate like it was chocolate mousse. I saved little bites for plane rides and hotel stays and ended up reading tub-fuls in a sitting. When I finished I felt full, but realized that I'd eaten dessert before the meal. I'm finally getting around to the main course and reading her previous book, "The Authentic Career".

Maggie is that rare combination of experienced business leader and psychologist (she left a successful career as a financial industry superstar before receiving clinical training. I love her work, not only because it's a rare example of both real-world corporate experience and clinical expertise, but because it reflects what I see in the best of entrepreneurs--the ability to create a profession from strongly held belief in what is missing in the world. Before becoming an expert, Maggie searched for executive level coaching that could also address the underlying subconscious elements that contribute to professional shortcomings and burnout.

I'm a fan of both therapy and coaching, but never have I been able to "talk shop" with a therapist. Nor have I been able to get past more business oriented solutions when addressing career issues. And yet I've always held a strong belief that the professional IS inherently personal. We are supposed to keep our personal lives out of the workplace, and yet we barf our personal lives onto people unwittingly when we don't address stressors in our lives. Actions ranging from a cruelly castigating an employee to awkwardly fumbling your way through a harmless inquiry by your boss are results of deeper experiences. Perhaps you always struggled to be heard when you were a child in a house of more aggressive siblings. Perhaps you harbor deep-seated resentment of someone who is junior but whose ease with other people triggers you. All of these issues are game for discussion in Maggie's book. In fact, these issues are superficial compared to others that stem from unquestioned beliefs around money and love that we absorbed as children.

I'm just starting to journey in and am intrigued at what I am discovering.

Am I about to end the season of my discontent? Working at 40

Like a moth to a flame I clicked to a story on Knowledge@Wharton Today entitled "The Discontented Thirties." I didn't do so because I consider myself discontented, but like any type A about to turn 40 (I have a few months), I question. I look at all that I accomplished in my 30s, like turning a life passion into a business, getting married, and having a daughter, and I say to myself "why couldn't I have done that in my twenties?" Of course reading stories like this about young media influentials in their teens and twenties doesn't help to contain the self-criticism.

My ridiculousness aside, the KW article says that of all of the working-age cohorts, those age 30-39 report the most work dissatisfaction. This is the time when many in that cohort are starting families and experiencing work-life balance issues, and when their work responsibilities are increasing. Later, in our 40s, experts opine, we "can get their minds back in the game". And by our 50s, we have more work satisfaction because we are enjoying the benefits of the upper echelons of the corporate ladder.

All of this makes me think of whether I have even more to look forward to in my 40s. My 30s was a mixed bag. I recall entering my 30s gainfully unemployed, meaning the start-up I had worked at went belly-up, and I was enjoying the life of free agency. Enjoying, at least, until I ran out of money. Then I found a job that paid rent but did little else for me. I almost went to grad school and decided to stick it out for another job, where I was paid little, but got to explore a new industry. It was also the decade that I took up blogging, and met my business partners, and started a company. I don't think I could ever look at work the same way again. Work changed from a series of jobs to a mission.

My 30s were fraught with change, and concern about my future, and hard work. And this was the decade that I became an entrepreneur. I don't feel discontented; I feel quite satisfied.

The Imperative of Being Uncomfortable

I've always ducked into and out of my yoga practice as I've made time for it in my life. It's one of the few things about which I'm not ambitious. I don't do it to get to level three, or to one day stand on my hands with my legs crossed. I do it because it's one of the few things in my life that has grounded me. And when I lose grounding I seek it out.

I've been threatening to go to the yoga place in my new neighborhood, which isn't so new anymore. I'd taken a very practical approach to my fitness and joined a gym, where I could work out when I wanted to, how I wanted to. Since having a baby I'd worked my way back to my regular routine of treadmill and weights. The same one I'd developed for myself nearly 20 years ago.

This weekend, after a week of travel, I simply decided: It's time to take a class. I'd glanced at the schedule for one of the two yoga studios near my house and committed to going to a Hatha Level I class Sunday morning.

The studio seemed nice enough--nice light and plenty of room. I took off my shoes at the door like everyone else and placed my mat next to a man in a T-shirt and shorts who was meditating. I did the same, more to fit in than because I was compelled to meditate. More people arrived and the room started to get warm--really warm. Most of the men in the room had taken off their shirts by now. They looked different then men in other yoga classes I'd taken. Most noticeably, they were ripped. Men and women started taking turns at a chin up bar hanging in the center of the room as a warm-up. I don't recall experiencing this … intensity at the beginning of a Hatha Level 1 class.

I noticed a schedule posted across the room and took a quick peek--shit, I was in the wrong class.  I'd already paid and been acknowledged by the instructor. I reasoned with myself that I couldn't just leave. I'd have to spend the next 105 minutes pretending to belong.

The yoga instructor told jokes that most of the people in the room laughed at. I didn't understand them. I was the odd person out, the one that in another context you would turn to and say, "You just had to be there," to understand.

Class officially started with a chant. I felt like I did the few times I went to Church and had to mumble a psalm I didn't know. It seemed to go on forever. The instructor mumbled the name of an asana, and immediately people in the room responded. I only knew the basic poses and stayed in downward facing dog until I could grasp what I was meant to do. Many of the asanas were far beyond my skill level.

I felt stupid, noticeably inept. And I made a realization: It had been a while since I'd felt this way. And for good reason; I usually avoided situations where I was a newbie. But instead of walking out I stayed and performed the asanas as I could, even blatantly stared at the people in poses next to me, then tried to mimic them.

The instructor was gracious, not correcting me any more or less than anyone else in the class, but occasionally helping to refine my posture so that I could get the most out of the pose.

The final pose--Savasana, or corpse pose--was a welcome one. As I lay there I observed that for years now I've spoken to women who have just started blogging who have demurred at attending our conferences, and I say to them, "You have nothing to worry about." Or encouraging new bloggers and companies to simply embrace new ways of being, saying it from a position of already being "an expert". But I forget how hard it is to put faith into something you are not yet the boss of. How hard it can be to generate momentum at the beginning when the end seems as impossible as standing on your hands with your legs crossed.

My body has been hurting all week. I pushed it in ways it hasn't been pushed in a long time. When I left the yoga class I patted myself on the back for surviving and insisted to myself that I wouldn't put myself in that position again. Next time I would go to a beginner class.

But once you've attempted something harder, it's difficult to go back.

Baking Meditation

I've been on vacation all week, spending time with family, doing not much. Wednesday I embarked on baking a pie.

I was proud of myself. I spent time researching recipes the week before. I prepped ingredients in advance, which I've never done in the past. I took more than a second to think about things that have gone wrong in previous attempts--I have chronically weak pie dough--and chilled my ingredients accordingly. I even bought a Kitchen Aid mixer so that I could better beat the dough.

As I was peeling apples I realized I had been spending hours working on this one pie. I don't recall having spent hours doing anything in a long time. Even with work, I do things in pieces--a few emails before jumping on a call. Or pulling together a deck while I wait to board a plane. I don't recall the last time I actually MADE something tangible--something non-digital.

I noticed, while I was rolling dough that I was actually nervous. I have a general anxiety around making things--food, crafts, anything requiring sewing. I don't know which came first, my ineptitude, or the fear of ineptitude, but I get more nervous making things than I do about, say, doing my taxes.

But on Wednesday I took the time--as much as was needed--to do the job right. I dug in as if making this pie were the only think that needed to be done, and it had to be done well.

The Artist as Entrepreneur

Apologies in advance to Lisa Milgram, who told me this parable. I have embellished a bit:

There was a man who used to love to fish on his boat. It was a small boat--no frills, a rowboat. He fished every day for his supper. And every day, he caught something to feed his family. One day, an Old Man floated by on his rowboat and observed the first man fishing.

"You know," The Old Man said, "You're really good at fishing! Have you considered starting a fishing BUSINESS! You could buy three more of those boats, train some fishermen, and make money."

The fisherman thought about it for a while. He loved fishing and wasn't sure he knew how to start a fishing business. But perhaps he should make more money doing what he loved by starting this business.

A week later he caught enough fish that he could sell them and buy a second rowboat. He rented out the rowboat to a fisherman, who gave him a portion of his proceeds from his catch. A month later the fisherman could afford to buy another rowboat. And a month later he bought yet another rowboat and hired yet another fisherman.

But sadly the fisherman was unhappy. He never could just sit in his rowboat anymore and fish. There were always things he had to do, like keep track of the earnings of the other fishermen, who didn't have quite the passion for fishing that he did. They just fished to feed their families. When he fished he caught more fish than they could combined. He had to teach the other fishermen new tricks, and had to keep them motivated. He often sat with them in their rowboats and encouraged them. He taught them to love fishing.

Eventually, his fishermen got quite good. Sometimes they caught more fish than the original fisherman did on his best days, back when he fished alone. Years into having his fishing business, the fisherman became quite successful. He was surrounded by dozens of expert fishermen who loved him for helping them to support themselves--and teaching them to love fishing.

The fisherman was happy that he had a thriving business, but he knew that he was unfulfilled because he no longer enjoyed the simplicity of being a master of something that he loved to do.

One day, he set out on his own to fish. It had been a while. He sat out there a long time and caught nothing. In the distance he could see another rowboat. It was weathered and old. As the rowboat got closer the person inside of it started to look familiar. It was the Old Man who, years ago, had encouraged the fisherman to start a fishing business.

"Morning," the man said. "Do you remember me?" the fisherman said. "A long time ago you suggested that I start a fishing business, and I did just that. I have a very successful business, and many successful fishermen working for me."

"Congratulations!" the man said. "But if you are so successful, why do you look so sad?"

"I'm sad because this is the first time I've gone out to fish on my own in years. I'm no good at it anymore. Sometimes I wonder if I ever should have started my fishing business, or if I would have been happier fishing on my own."

The man began to laugh. "I suggested that you start a fishing business not because I think you should be a businessman all of your life. I suggested it so that you could fish for the rest of your life, and be happy."

The fisherman started to understand. His business wasn't designed to keep him from fishing, but to give him the freedom to fish without having to do it for any other reason but the joy of fishing. The fisherman knew that the only thing for him to do now was sit in his boat. And wait.

When a manager can't let go of the glory: What's an employee to do?

One of the ironic outcomes of my current maternity leave, during which I've had no semblance of a schedule or focus on my career--has been more time to talk with friends about their careers. Just call while I'm nursing and voila, we can have a somewhat lengthy, spontaneous conversation.

That was the case the other day with a good friend of mine. She called to check up on me, the "new mommy", and found herself, instead, sharing her employment woes and getting my unsolicited career coaching. For me, talking about other people's jobs is a recreational activity; and I seem to have a talent for sucking these details out of people.

My friend had been at her new job for three months. She was excited to get her position, especially after being unemployed for a long time. She had taken a multi-year "hiatus," from the job market, during which time "social media" became watch words, and those with solely "traditional" marketing expertise learned not to admit it. This job was a mixed blessing; it immersed her in the digital marketing realm from which she could leverage jobs in the future, but with a much reduced paycheck and seniority. Despite its shortcomings, this latest job seemed a perfect fit, combining her agency experience with a business development role.

I knew there was more to my friend's story when I asked her about the new job, and she said it was "fine." Three months is a pivotal time during a new job. It's a point of sink or swim, when inherently you know whether you are on a path to greatness, or need to get the hell out of dodge, or will just be a cog in a machine of relative mediocrity. None are inherently bad, if they fall in line with an expectation.

My friend elaborated: She was aware that she'd be reporting into a managing director, but she wished she'd done more diligence on this person in advance. He was the quintessential lone wolf, and very political. Now I've learned to stop demonizing people for being political for the same reason I can't fault people for breathing. Earlier in my career I would have made it my business to ignore the political rumblings and goings-on at my job, but pretending that they don't exist and not reacting to political undertones might get you fired, or worse, stuck in the purgatory of career stagnation.

Moving on: Three months into the job, my friend was crystal clear that her new boss was going to hamper her progress at her job. Though my friend was hired to progress certain accounts, these accounts had been landed by her boss, and he wasn't going to just let her manage them. In essence, he'd agreed to let his new report drive the new car but refused to hand over the keys. He wouldn't provide her with the resources, contacts, and ultimately the trust she needed to do her job well. Once, when the company's CEO came to her for information on a client, which she innocently provided, her boss admonished her for going over his head. Though she had come to the company with 25 years of work experience, she was now afraid to speak at meetings for fear of saying something impolitic, or something that might undermine her impossible-to-please boss.

"I feel like I can't win," she told me. If I don't do the job that I was hired to do, he'll fire me, but if I do the job I was hired to do really well, he may fire me for that. I'm doomed to maintain a status quo that keeps him comfortable."

My friend had assessed the reality of her situation quickly and, I believe, accurately. Now, she said, she needed to determine whether the situation could be improved, and if it couldn't be improved, was it one that she could live with.

Pregnancy Journal, Week 36: Working with my feet up

A friend of mine called me from New York. We talked for a while about his new job--I may be one of the few people who enjoys discussing with my friends the intricacies of their day to day work.

He asked me, so how are you?

I had to preface my response with a disclaimer,

"Nothing's wrong," I said. "But things are different." My friend probed to determine if I was unhappy.

"Nope," I said. "I'm just getting used to this change." I felt inarticulate, like when I had nightmares as a kid and my mom came into my room and asked me what I was afraid of, and I didn't know. One time I told her, "I'm feeling something skinny; a skinny string." I still get the sensation, but I don't know what it means.

By "change" I think I mean all that has shifted since becoming pregnant. For years I've been told about how the focus of energy shifts when you become a parent. I've held off on my decision to have children knowing this shift occurs. 

But even knowing that I am supposed to slow the centrifugal force that has tied me to a grinding schedule for so long, I find that I still give myself a spin or two to stay in motion, even during times of physical exhaustion. I wonder if I do this out of habit; being in motion is all that I know. Or because the slowdown scares me; all this momentum, what would it take to start up again? What if I fall in love with slow? What if slow feels like a skinny string?

A trusted friend--a powerhouse, even to other powerhouses--tells me that her desire to work, to achieve, didn't change when she had her son, but her reason for working did.

"I did everything because of him," she said.

Some might bristle at that thought, especially since working women are encouraged to have their careers "for themselves". But some of us have been working "for ourselves" for a very, very long time, at the risk of having no perspective and losing the meaning behind what we do. For me, the thought of working for someone else is liberating; it opens possibilities. It bends the rules I set in my mind of the way work must be.

Still, the rules run deep. My business partner said to me last week that if I may not want to bother commuting these last few weeks before the baby is born. Makes sense: an hour-long commute (on a good day) is hardly safe or desirable should I go into labor a few weeks early. After five years of working together (two of those virtually) she knows the work will get done anywhere. But I struggle to take her up on her suggestion. I've always valued physical, tangible presence. Presence is being in motion.

Another co-worker suggested that I use the couch she has in her cube--something she's integrated into her space for extreme back issues. I thanked her and wondered, when would I think to put my feet up? My first job out of college, when my boss traveled I'd sneak cat naps in her office. Why was it so much easier to acknowledge exhaustion when I was 21?

At the BlogHer conference I promised my colleagues and husband that I would put my feet up regularly. It took my husband physically guiding me back to my hotel room 14 hours after I started the day to do what I'd promised. As I sat there, propped by pillows, feet up against the wall, tired and restless, I lamented that it was still so early--I was leaving first thing in the morning and still hadn't seen or done everything I'd wanted to do.

I am hardly a sadomasochist or born with more energy than others. I just don't know otherwise. I suppose I will learn. And I will learn how to channel that energy where it needs to go. And rather than look upon these offers of support suspiciously, I will learn to put my feet up and note that there are moments that we work and moments that we work FOR.

And that skinny string that keeps us tethered to a life in which we've done very well won't break.

BlogHer '10: My first conference as a working mother

I was chatting with my BlogHer co-panelists last week about our panel: Where's the Line or the Lie: Storytelling, Memoir and Poetic License. I find that I often moderate these more personal-blogging-type sessions at BlogHer, because I started as an identity blogger. I have a natural affinity with those who put it all out there, even if that has not been my reality for five years, since BlogHer began.

I realized, hot damn, I have not posted to this blog in over a month. That's not very bloggy of me. And I and my colleagues will be running a conference built by and for bloggers. I find myself asking, Jory, WTF? Are you still an identity blogger? Do you still see life through the lens of what would make a compelling blog post? The truthful answer is, sometimes.

Sure I've been busy--everybody's busy. Though I must confess the recent disadvantage of pregnancy. I don't cram things in my day anymore, like a blog post or an extra call. I do what's directly in front of my face, get the immediate priorities done, and then call it a day. This has become a physical necessity, one I knew would manifest by my third trimester but chose to not think about...until I noticed things, like how breathless I get when I'm speaking, and how forgetful, and that it's been a month since my last post.

There's a lot of withheld information in my unwritten posts about women, work, and family making; I've thought about this in light of my BlogHer session. Before I was pregnant, I read voraciously about women raising kids and building careers. The only impediment to achieving in both realms, I thought, were others' preconceived notions about women and work--the assumption that once we procreate we're no longer interested in pursuing our careers.

Clearly that's not the case--I know too many women who have achieved even more post-children than pre. Some of the most prolific, and commercially successful, bloggers are full-time moms. While I can't explain why without having been there myself, I do believe it probably has something to do with an efficiency that develops among women who now have two jobs to do: There's no time for questioning your ability; both jobs simply have to get done. Kids need to have their lunches made, just as presentations need to be completed. There's less time to stew and wonder, could I have done that better? Was I less than perfect in that meeting? It's a strange luxury--not having the time to overthink, just to do.

I recall the first BlogHer, when I woke up at 5a.m., arrived at the TechMart at 6am to help post signage and prepare the registration line, and was sick with nerves. Though I was a blogger and can relate to the many pre-BlogHer posts I read by women with social anxieties, my concerns were hardly around who congregated with whom, or what bloggers might blow me off, but rather whether the food was coming out on time, if sponsors got what we promised them, if the sessions were useful. Connecting later with other women over drinks, or even in the hallway on their way to a session, was pure pleasure in comparison.

I realize now that my stress during BlogHer is the kind that lies in the eye of the storm, where anxiety is minimalized to the bare essentials. After BlogHer '05 I cared less about my blog traffic--even stopped monitoring it altogether--or whether I was included in top blogger lists. I was enveloped in a new purpose of creating a space for this community. The act of creation and nurturing something or someone other than yourself immunizes you from seeing the world as a pecking order, or as a series of parties you are not invited to, or as an old-boys network. These constructs melt away; paradoxically, there is less time AND fewer constraints. It's a place of re-invention.

Perhaps, since BlogHer is my "baby" this is not dissimilar to the situation of the working mother.

This year for me will be different. I have a new consideration that is purely physical. I won't likely be able to weather a day of not eating. I won't laugh off suggestions of taking a load off. I'm not concerned about making it to all of the parties, but rather whether I will have the energy to make it to A party. I will literally have to put my feet up at times over the next few days. Perhaps, from this standpoint, I will get to see the event from others' eyes.

But from my own it will be different because I have another job, if you will, that makes some of the rushing, the stressing, the performing a bit absurd. And it will be different because I will be in wonderment at those who have children already, or another baby--literal or figurative--in the making who attack this event like they do every thing else, with no second thoughts.
 

The Rush: An entrepreneur's inevitable making

Becoming a woman wasn't something I looked forward to. Despite having read every Judy Blume book that existed, the thought of sprouting boobs and menstruation terrified me.

When the time came I was getting changed after gym class. I felt "the rush", and I panicked. I threw on the rest of my clothes and ran to my drama class.

About a fourth of the way into the class, right before we were to break into groups to practice a scene, I realized that I couldn't hold off any longer. I had to handle this--this new truth that I was hoping to hold off.

I approached my drama teacher, Mrs. Clooney, not sure of what I was going to say,

"Ummm, I think I just got my period," I said.

She looked at me like I'd just won the lottery.

"Congratulations!" she said. "Why don't you head on down to the nurse's office."

The feminine product I would receive was an albatross--the first of thousands to come over the course of my reproductive life. I wasn't excited or relieved to have made the transition so many of my friends had been anticipating excitedly for themselves. I was scared.

I wasn't fully aware of why I had dreaded this moment. Looking back I think I dreaded all that it implied; namely that I was meant for much headier endeavors, like being an adult, like motherhood. I anticipated choices that I would encounter that I could no longer say were never choices.
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We said goodbye to a well-regarded employee last week. He's decided to stretch his enterprising muscle and build a writing practice around his passion for everything related to food. His goodbye was as charming as his many hellos after weekends he spent cooking or experiencing food; he came to the office bearing homemade cannoli--an aunt's unorthodox recipe that just worked. I must confess, I will miss his treats.

He stopped in my office to say goodbye. And while he had no "job" to go to per se, I was excited for him. I recall my own decision six years ago to leave my office position to explore things that beckoned but were yet unclear--when my excitement overshadowed any fears I had about making a living or permanently denting my career. When you've veered too far from your real path, blowing up your current one isn't such a big deal. Leaving my job to start my own amorphous "thing" was no longer a choice but a forgone conclusion.

Still, I knew that anyone on this journey can't help but question himself. Even if he decided to come back to W2 employment, he would be forever changed. He would find it difficult to extract purpose out of jobs he didn't create. Anything that he hasn't generated himself won't be as worthy. He'll want to forever create the recipes, even if his job is to simply follow instructions and make the food.

"Congratulations!" I said, hoping I didn't sound too excited that he was leaving. Fact was, I was excited, for reasons he wouldn't yet understand.

It's so easy to congratulate someone from the other side, like a drama teacher who exclaims to an adolescent girl that she is entering the next, inevitable phase of her purpose. You, the young woman, know that this outcome is likely, yet there's bound to be moments, maybe even months or years, of struggle and false starts. Moments when you think this isn't for me, or that you must be going crazy. There's an intuitive understanding that purpose is in the making, but you fear how much material stuff and identity will have to be let go in the process.

Still, you really can't avoid the rush when it happens. Mrs. Clooney was onto something: You might as well celebrate.

Why I don't care that low numbers of women are receiving VC funding

My first semester in college I went with some sorority sisters to a set-up (these were small parties that paired a sorority with a fraternity, and for which you were often "set up" with a date from that fraternity. The concept seems almost ludicrous to me now, given the potential room for mis-matches, but I digress). One of my pledge sisters asked me if I had a problem "being set up with a black guy."

The question threw me. I'd noticed, shall we say, homogeneity among my corn-fed, flat-accented, Midwestern sisters. But I'd gone to a racially diverse high school where I had African American friends, and interracial dating was quite common.

"Of course not," I said. I was above such foolishness. I silently prayed he was hot.

"Good," my friend said. "I mean, I would do it but my brother (who was white and even in the same fraternity as the black pledge) would kill me. You're so open to stuff like this; I knew you'd be a good sport."

I recall being offended, not for myself, but for my date. Did he know how his supposed peers felt about him? I resented the assumption that by agreeing to go out with someone of color I was somehow agreeing to take one for the team. And I questioned where I'd settled socially. Did these women accept me because they thought I saw the world like them?

I ended up having a fine, but not earth-shattering, time. My date was shy, even a bit standoffish. After my friend's comment I couldn't help but notice that he was the only black man in his pledge class. I wondered if he was aware of comments said behind his back, like the one my friend made, or if he was oblivious. He seemed restrained, even a bit false. He wore the same preppy clothes as his fraternity brothers; the same garden variety frat boy well-worn baseball cap. I also wondered if I was judging him as fake because he seemed "too white". What if he identified as being white? Was there anything inherently wrong with that?

At some point we started talking about our backgrounds, and he shared that he had been adopted as a baby by a white couple. He admitted to me that he didn't "feel" black and even referred to black people as "them." I felt sad. I felt like he was trying to say to me, "See, I really do belong here."

I wanted to tell him, "You don't really want to belong here. Believe me."

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A few weeks ago I read several pieces that evoked anger, empathy, even silliness about the lack of venture-backed women entrepreneurs. Some focused specifically on Silicon Valley, tech-related businesses. One piece indicated "hidden biases" of VCs toward younger, male entrepreneurs who presumably have fewer distractions (read: families, concerns about hygeine) than women to worry about. This later led to discussion in the comments arguing for and against women's innate suitability as primary caregivers. One commenter, Carla Thompson:

...As long as a good-sized portion of the population, both male and female, believe that women are the only gender genetically predisposed to adequately nurturing and raising children, this problem will persist.

I knew that these blog posts were, indirectly and yet directly, about me, but I didn't know how I felt about them. In the end, I felt confused--certainly not inspired by comments of women who, despite biological realities, could claim to have managed it all--there were none of that sort offered. And I couldn't say that I have felt the back hand of bias in these matters. My partners and I had a business with a revenue model that was working in a growing industry and several years of experience to back us--that's what has mattered to our investors. Story told.

Have I felt marginalized as a female entrepreneur in Silicon Valley? Made to feel less worthy of funding because I have ovaries and may put them to reproductive use? No. Can I say that because I haven't experienced bias that there isn't a problem? No.

So I backed away from writing on the topic. I didn't feel I had a strong enough opinion either way.

I asked another female entrepreneur if she had read these recent pieces, and what did she think of them?

"What's to say?" she responded. "None of these writers asked actual female entrepreneurs in the Valley how they've felt."

"What would you have told them if they had?" I asked.

"It's a non-issue. Women can have babies and run businesses. Get over it."

I found myself wanting to verbally sweep my penchant for drama under the rug,

"Exactly," I said. "What's the big deal?"

Why do people make a big deal about these inequities when clearly there are women who are making things work? Why do we feel compelled to constantly pull out the data showing the lack of women being funded when, perhaps, most women simply don't want the life of a tech entrepreneur?

Why do I keep thinking of that set-up, my Freshman year in college?

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Just this week I happened to be back in New York the day that my sister, Julie, did a signing for her new book, The Madame Curie Complex. I've browsed the book and read every review that currently exists on it, but embarrassingly have yet to read the damn thing. When people asked me what the book is about, the PR flak in me comes out:

"It reveals how some of the most acclaimed scientific discoveries made by men were actually made by women," I say, then wait for the oohs and ahhs one reserves for books that out Presidents and get you on Oprah.

Fortunately my sister is amazing at Cliff-noting herself at these events--I need to remind her to stop providing so much value at her readings, lest people think they can learn nothing more by buying her book. And she's entirely too noncontroversial. I realized that I've woefully oversimplified the premise of her book. It really has nothing to do with men taking credit for women's brilliant work, but rather women's brilliant work not being seen as brilliant, because it is women's work.

The Madame Curie Complex is a term meant to describe a standard women scientists often set for themselves (and is often perpetuated by men, to be fair). My sister writes in her book:

"No doubt, [Curie's] work helps to make the case that science is made to be manly rather than being inherently so. But Curie’s myth haunts these pages and the psyches of succeeding generations of women more completely than her real-life example, for it has both empowered and stigmatized women, liberated and constrained them, often at the same time. The historian Margaret Rossiter noted an inferiority complex in women after Curie’s tours of the United States in the 1920s, and for generations the Curie complex has continued to allow men to disqualify women -- and women to disqualify themselves -- from science. Women scientists have felt as though they cannot measure up to Curie, and of course how could they, when this mythical measure of female competence has morphed in the American mind over and over again? It’s like trying to hit a moving target."

It occurred to me: women scientists, women entrepreneurs, same freaking difference. How effing sneaky, Julie, Wrapping your latest work up in a geeky little package to get your science-averse twin sister to not think you were onto her. Isn't the Madame Curie Complex what we women in "male" industries perpetuate when we back away from asserting our femininity? When we undermine it? We look at what we do in the world and say under our breaths, "Yeah big whoop ... did I put the milk back in the fridge this morning?"

Because even when we take on "male" industries, we do it in ways that are seen as much less impressive than men, or we do it just like them--both of which approaches are equally alienating and in many cases ineffective.

There was a point in Julie's talk where she spoke about "the numbers," as in: "Why the big stink? Look at all the women MBA's and women who got into MIT." In science academia women are as well represented, if not more so, than men at top institutions. "We need to stop worrying about the numbers of women in science," Julie said, "Numbers aren't the problem."

But, she pointed out, often women scientists are relegated to "female" forms of science--think of those soft mushy behavioral sciences. After all, as Lawrence Summers would posit, those cold, hard facts are just so difficult for us ladyfolk to grasp. Or our more holistic approach to such serious subjects as science, tech, and business have often been dismissed.

For instance, Jane Goodall was relatively untrained in the traditional (read: male) technique of studying primates. Rather than measure their toenails, count their bowel movements, and call it a day, she watched them and took notes, often in narrative form, and often giving the primates' interactions a storyline. Initially this more intuitive approach was seen as amateurish and dismissible, and yet it's now much more indicative of how scientists today frame this sort of research. Goodall proved the worth of a "female" perspective in science.

I think of my own industry and of BlogHer: We didn't invent computers, or the Internet. We didn't invent blogging; but we provided a larger context for its importance, particularly to women. I guess by some definitions this is a girly-girl approach to technology, akin to Goodall's approach to her science. But is it any less valuable; any less illuminating or fundable?

Do I care if so few women are being funded in Silicon Valley? No. I care that women's approach to business is so underfunded, and hence undervalued. I care that those women who are succeeding in it are seen as doing so DESPITE who they are, rather than because of who they are.

I think of that black man I was set-up with 20 years ago, content, silent, and numb.