Finding A Spine

I’ve decided this blog needs a spine. One unnamed BFF has turned all “sensitive” about my diary posts about my life and who is in it - her she says.  She’s right, that’s hardly a movement. So let's find a spine. Since my book review on Betty and fertility created a tweet fest, let’s start there. Sissy, this one is for you...

 I call it the “Feminine Mistake.” One blogger asked if I did something wrong. Yes! Lots! My point is I’m at home on a twelve-week leave from my six-figure job trying to get pregnant at forty. I played by the new rules, Betty! But there’s one problem. You forgot to tell me to remember to get pregnant in my thirties! You didn’t mention any clocks striking at midnight or bibbidi-bobbidi-boo when you granted me my wish to have it all. Is it even realistic to have a kick-ass career when you put babies in the mix? 

For close to ten years I’ve watched my best friends struggle to create this cocktail without a manual. They are the real mavericks who decided to have children and then figure out how much career/art/family they needed to feed their identity. I took the solo career track, which Betty extolled. But she had something I don’t. A child. She wanted her old life back, with a child. Do you feel this way? If you do, tweet me back. My Twitter handle is @RachelZ.

– Rachel Z

A Master Plan for This Thing Called Life

If I knew getting pregnant would be this complicated, I would have followed Sissy and been knocked up a decade ago, likely on a dare, after too many gimlets with Greg at Automatic Slims. Here’s a photo of Sissy, my BFF, at my rehearsal dinner, eight-months pregnant.  Her “cankles” were so swollen we brought her silver ice buckets from the tables, a champagne pedicure. Back then, I thought she made a crazy mistake moving to Boston for his job, giving up hers, and starting a family at thirty. I was convinced she was going to miss out on everything meaningful in being self-sufficient and independently solvent with a closet full of Barney’s newest labels. Now, as I sit here on a six-week leave from my high-octane career, I’m starting to wonder if maybe Sissy had the better master plan for this thing called life. – Rachel Z

The Feminine Mistake as we turn 40

In 1963, Betty Friedan published her famous book “The Feminine Mystique.” She proclaimed, “Women are victims of a false belief system that requires them to find identity and meaning in their lives through their husbands and children. Such a system causes women to completely lose their identity in that of their family…” Blah, blah, blah. But it got me thinking what exactly did Betty and her gal pals sell those of us born post 1963, and did she wrangle up the right antagonist? Because that singular quote keeps haunting me. – Rachel Z