Mirror, Mirror

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest maiden of them all?” – From Snow White 

My cabin was so small, I could stand in the middle of it and put one hand on my front door and one hand on my bed … but it was still my space and I didn’t have to share it with anyone else.  On this particular morning, I stood there brushing my teeth, half in and half out of my tiny bathroom, getting ready for work.  I was the Assistant Shore Excursion Manager of a small Greek cruise ship called the Stella Solaris and it was my second year working for Sun Lines.  Our exotic destination cruises were small and intimate, sometimes sailing with just 400 guests.  The winters were spent cruising the Amazon River, from Belem to Manaus and then around Cape Horn into Chile.  Our summers were spent in the Mediterranean with 7-day cruises to Greece and Turkey or Egypt and Israel.  The cruise prices were on the high side featuring enrichment lectures and exclusive entertainment, so needless to say we were a far cry from Carnival Cruise Lines with their spring break, “drink until you pass out” experience.  Our guests had a tendency to be well-traveled, college-educated, adventurers who looked down their noses on those cheaper cruises … but that wasn’t the reason for my deeper look on this particular morning.  Although I was living my dream, I’d been feeling “off”, weeks spent trying to put my finger on what was going on.  I could feel it but I couldn’t name it so in those quieter moments spent alone, I was using the time to reflect and dig deep.

After a winter in South America swimming with pink dolphins and piranha, traipsing through penguin colonies in Chile and multiple calm sailings around Cape Horn, we were back in the Med.  Each week I was immersed in ancient history and given an early childhood dream of becoming an archeologist, I should have been in absolute Heaven.  I frequently retraced my steps through Ephesus, a place steeped in stories … I’d been to what was believed to be the last home of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and said a prayer; I walked the same path as Marc Antony and Cleopatra when they visited Ephesus during their honeymoon; not to mention, this was the site quoted in the Bible where Saint Paul spoke to the Ephesians!  This was the birthplace of Artemis and the Amazonian women … it was the place where Europe meets Asia.  I was in my glory feeding on wisdom of the ages, so how could I feel so much at odds with myself!  On the outside I looked like the Divine Feminine … dressed in a skirt and high heels, my waist length blonde hair inspiring the Turkish locals to nickname me “Rapunzel”.  I was passionate about the region we were sailing in, the food I was eating, the spice and fabric markets of the Grand Bazaar and the story-telling carpets that cushioned my footsteps.  All of this life on the outside, but inside I ached and I felt lost.  Crazy, right? How could I be lost when I geographically knew exactly where I was.

“In a mirror is where we find a reflection of our appearances, but in a heart is where we find a reflection of our soul.” - Unknown

I was frustrated because up until that moment, I didn’t know what I was aching for, but on this particular morning, it all came together in a flash.  Like a bolt of lightning hitting a tree in the middle of a field, there it was! My toothbrush stopped, I looked at my hair, makeup, uniform.  An angry young woman was staring back at me, and it was that moment that I recognized my angst … I didn’t like the person that I had become.  My outer world and my inner world were in complete and utter conflict.  After almost two years of working with Greek men, I had come to a place where I’d learned to fight back like one of the Greek sailors I was surrounded by. Oh don’t get me wrong, they taught me well … I learned and practiced how to express myself and stand my ground, how not to be bullied, how to argue, how to debate.  I could go toe to toe with the best of them but I couldn’t seem to get past an underlying current of discrimination because of my gender.  And the person I was aching for was myself.

I remembered one day when the Chief Purser Kostas came to the Shore Excursion Office.  I was in the front, counting tickets, balancing the sales from the previous day and Rick, the department manager, was in the back, prepping for the following cruise as we were changing itineraries.  The two of us were a solid team and worked so closely that we could literally finish one another’s sentences.  There was not one task in the department that neither of us couldn’t do and we loved working together.  We were like brother and sister … inseparable!  So when Kostas approached the desk, he asked me to go and get Rick, he wanted to speak with him.  Assuming it was a management question, I notated where I was in my count, put my tickets down and went into the back office.  When Rick came out, Kostas turned to him, completely ignored me and asked Rick about the ticket sales from the day before.  Because I was the one balancing the books, a task that I had been doing in plain sight when Kostas approached the desk, Rick turned and asked me the same question Kostas had asked him. Completely dumbfounded (and albeit fully insulted) I quickly and efficiently answered.  However I stood there, steaming, thankful that Rick promptly reminded Kostas that I was fully capable of providing the financial information.  Kostas’s vehement response, talking to Rick as if I didn’t even exist was, “Yvette is a pretty girl. Pretty girls sit at the desk outside the office, answering questions.  They do not sell tickets, they provide information.  They don’t balance the books. They speak to guests and are social.”  His words added fuel to a fire that had started as a simmer, quickly leapt into a raging firestorm.  I was the subject of discrimination because of my looks and because I was “a girl”?!!?!?!?! 

To add insult to injury, not even looking me in the eye when he said it, Kostas finally acknowledged my presence and forbade me to work behind the sales counter!  He couldn’t even give me the respect of looking me in the eye when he said it, he stared down at the toes of my shoes.  There was no way that I was taking this without a fight so as I fought to remain civil, I took a deep breath and drew myself up to my full height of 6’1” in my high heels, looked down on the man who just dismissed my value and said, “Absolutely not! Mrs. “K” hired me for this job so she is the only one who has the authority to approve any changes to my role … if you want me to just sit outside and answer questions, you will have to take it to her and she will advise me.  Until that time, I will continue counting tickets and balancing the books.”  I turned on my heel and walked into the back office.

This wasn’t my first experience with gender discrimination (I’d seen my Mom deal with it on many occasions during her career) and as I was to learn, it wasn’t going to be the last time this lesson would present itself.  But the challenge, how to avoid getting lost in the feelings … feelings that had become almost self-destructive and consuming to my once sunny disposition!  For as black and white masculine and feminine appear on the outside, we all know that appearances can be deceiving.  In my world, for as soft and feminine as I looked, a full 180 degrees opposite was my inner world where I was aggressive and masculine. And get this … I actually judged myself for being a “girl” or being “soft” so I always felt the need to overcompensate for something that I actually wasn’t in the first place … a man.  

For the casual observer, this was not something you would immediately notice but I constantly felt myself raging from within and all I wanted to do was break free (or break the glass ceiling … whichever I could pull off first). I found the back and forth dance to be an emotional roller coaster, something I was not accustomed to and it was purgatory.  This was a dance that I didn’t know the steps to and I kept finding myself stumbling constantly, my “feet” out of sync with the “music”. 

The blessing in all of this was my environment, living in the cradle of civilization that gave me the unique opportunity to begin a deep dive into self-study.  I questioned everything and read voraciously, turning my sights to the myths of the various Greek gods and goddesses, and the original seeds of Christianity.  I didn’t lose my faith in God, I questioned the structure of organized religion and questioned how a religion could uphold one over another when in my eyes, all should be equal.  In the mythic home of Artemis, the twin of Apollo, I visited her temple as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  She is known as the patron and protector of young girls and the Greek goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, the Moon and chastity so in my mind, what better protector could I ask for as I explored my inner world? I wanted to know why women were considered to be the Achilles Heel of men and wanted to shed some light on when that shift happened.  How could we go from being worshipped to being condemned?  Such confusion.  Talk about mixed messages!!

It was in this period of my life that I came to the conclusion that my integration had to draw upon my cultivated strengths (masculine) and vulnerabilities (feminine) simultaneously.  I couldn’t be one without the other, I had to find a way to honor both, not consciously choosing one over the other because truly neither one could exist alone.  It was a form of checks and balances.  So I began to nurture my Divine Feminine.  I began to pay attention to which side of me responded or reacted.  I began to recognize when the masculine side of me was judging my feminine side … and I worked to get them to play nice in the sandbox together.  I nicknamed my feminine “Artemis” and my masculine “Apollo”.  I learned about myself, peeling away the layers to reveal the deep-seated triggers that would set my aggression off and learned to recognize when others saw those triggers within me and played to them in order to see if they could get me to react. It was a valuable time of reflection, revelation, nurturing and learning to not only be kind to myself but they were the first steps I took towards learning to love and accept myself.  

Today I no longer have to ask “mirror, mirror on the wall” and can easily look at my reflection staring back at me each day. I am gentle with myself and I continue to rise to the challenge of being me and DARE to love myself, just as I am.