Failure: What Is That, Anyway?

Writing about success last week started me thinking about failure.  For years after each of my two marriages collapsed, I felt shame because of what I perceived as my failure.  I no longer feel shame, and I don’t think I failed.  Writing the memoir helped me greatly: by examining each marriage and its demise, I could see all the steps I had taken to save them; I came to believe I had been working alone in each relationship and that no one can save a marriage single-handedly.  The question for me is why I saw the end of each of those marriages as my ‘failure?’  As much as I am, and have always been a rebel, in many ways I still have accepted the precepts of my culture. One of those is that women are the caretakers of relationships, and therefore responsible for them.  Of course I know this is wrong-headed, even silly. Nevertheless, for yearsI believed I had failed before those feelings began to shift.  I not only came to accept my own mistakes, without labeling them anything more than mistakes, but I could also see and accept all the steps I had taken to work on, and try to save, those relationships.  They each may have failed, but I was not a failure.  On the work front because I was no longer able to find work in Hollywood when I reached my mid-forties, in my heart of hearts, I thought I was failing.  It took joining the affirmative action committee of my union, the WGA, and learning about the statistics from the Bielby Report, which was commissioned by that committee and the union to examine ageism and sexism in Hollywood, for me to let of that one go as well.  As I write this blog today I begin to see a message.  By becoming proactive – writing the memoir and working with it; and becoming an active member of that union committee  –  I learned ‘facts’ that helped dispel ‘feelings.’  Those feelings had more to do with what society told me I was supposed to do, and what my own mother had taught me about my role in life than they did with any external reality.  So for today what I’ve learned is that knowledge is empowering. I’m relieved I continue to seek it out whenever I am stuck or distressed as I was on that day I sat down at my computer to write a letter to ‘little Nancy.’  I would not accept the loss of that vibrant little kid.  For me giving up is the failure.