Being A Millennial & Rolling with the Punches

I thought she was going to say our generation was entitled.

It's a common criticism of my generation – Gen X or the Millennials – that we don't know how to handle bumps in the road. 

We've grown up without threats of another world war or an impending nuclear fall-out. We've been showered with trophies for simply participating, not for actually winning. We've been overindulged by helicopter parents who didn't say no enough. We've been entitled to comforts and technology unthought of in our parents' childhoods. And we expect things to go our way because we were inculcated with the tenets of the American Dream that said that you deserve something if you work hard enough for it.

Perhaps some of those criticisms are valid. But that's not what she said that afternoon. She said it was about control.

"We didn't have as much control over our lives as your generation does," my aunt explained, "As your grandpa used to say, you just have to roll with the punches."

But my generation isn't used to having to roll with the punches. 

We don't see the value in getting punched, at least not in and of itself. It's as if we don't think we should weather the storm because we now have the power to divert the weather and prevent the storm in the first place. What's the point of getting soaked when your can manufacture clear, sunny skies for most of your life?

As a woman, I also understand that I have more control over my life than the vast majority of women who are living have and who have ever lived had. For one, I am not classified as a piece of property to be transferred from father to husband; I am a human being. I can choose a life of both/and – of both marriage and career, of both family and an advanced degree, of both faith and doubt.

Even though we have unprecedented control over our lives now – from education to relationships to religion to careers – there are still times when we must come face to face with the unsettling, yet very human fact that we are not in complete control of our lives. Relationships don't turn out as expected. The pregnancy test refuses to show two lines. The job doesn't come through. Our bodies betray us with sickness. Our friends let us down. The writing community we adore keeps ignoring us. Our manuscripts go unnoticed. Even God may not answer our cries for some time...or even a while.

It is in these moments, we realize how little control we really have over our lives.

We realize that we are only human but also fearfully and wonderfully made. And we decide whether to throw a temper tantrum or roll with the punches when we don't get our way.

I've thrown enough temper tantrums over the last several months. I've flailed and screamed and kicked on the floor, raging when I really, really wanted that thing but I didn't get it. I cried out to God to answer me, to at least explain why I couldn't have that thing, to prove that He is still good as I wrestle with doubt. Sometimes God answered, sometimes not.

So in this season as I strive to thrive, I will try a different tactic: I will roll with the punches. I will take each setback or tentative hope with more grace and humility, not taking for granted that my generation truly has more control over our lives. I will continue to work like it depends on me, but pray like it depends on God.

But I'm also giving a few punches of my own. I'm not giving up the fight for control and options that easily.

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Photo credit: KWDesigns

Business for Good: GREENOLA Style

About the Business for Good Series

Some 18 months ago, I challenged myself not buy anything new. But midway through last year, I decided to both extend and expand my challenge: I will not buy anything new as long as I can, and I will highlight and reward companies that are going above and beyond in their commitments to people, planet, and profits. 

As part of the Business for Good series, each month (or so) on this blog I will highlight at least one company that is innovative, mission-driven, and socially- and/or environmentally-oriented. I will try to test out their product beforehand, give a summary of their business model and goals, and if possible, include links for discounts for you to try the products if interested, as well.

About the Company

Today I am profiling a GREENOLA Style, a company I first interacted with at the Chicago Ideas Week last year, a smattering of events throughout the city relating to innovation, social enterprise, and creativity. GREENOLA is a fair trade and ethical fashion company that partners with and empowers over 50 local women entrepreneurs and artisans in Cochabamba, Bolivia, the poorest country in the South American continent and now Uganda. Each GREENOLA product is a handmade expression of the philosophy that women are the solution, not the problem.The founder, Jen Moran, is an incredibly insightful and inspirational leader in the ethical fashion world, and I am grateful to get to know her over these last couple of months.

To learn more about the GREENOLA Style team and producers, see here and here, respectively. To learn more about the sustainable materials they use, see here.

Business Model

GREENOLA Style is a for-profit social enterprise that seeks to bring ethical purpose and style to the fashion industry. When I interviewed Jen about why she organized the company to be for-profit, she explained that it was important that businesses, and the fashion industry in particular, show that they can turn a profit without sacrificing purpose and ethics. As many of you may know, the fashion industry is one of the most exploitative and wasteful sectors in the world. The industry employs some one-third of the world's workers in some way or another (sourcing, manufacturing, distributing, etc.), and the vast majority of brands and retailers do not have a commitment to environmental and/or social sustainability. Jen writes:

I wanted to show that we are challenging an industry; through fashion, we are changing the world. What a revolutionary thought! Especially for an industry known for less than ideal working conditions, human exploitation, and environmentally-harmful production practices. We are shaped by this, as it explains and supports our rebellious personality as a brand.

As a for-profit social enterprise, GREENOLA Style seeks not only financial sustainability through sound business practices, but also social and environmental impact. Therefore, their metrics as a company include both traditional business markers (net profit, market share, etc.) and innovative impact markers (preservation of indigenous environments, sourcing good-for-the-earth materials, etc.). The company also gives a percentage of its profits to charity: 10% to Solidarity Bridge, a nonprofit organization rooted in Catholic social justice teaching that provides medical and other assistance to local communities.

One of the long-standing misconceptions about the ethical fashion industry is that to be truly ethical and green, the products must appeal to crunchy, granola types, not modern fashionistas.When I asked her what she thought needed to be done to overcome these barriers to making sustainable, eco-friendly, and socially-conscious fashion the norm, she explained that education is key.

Education. There is a big disconnect between green/environmentally-friendly and ethical. Often consumers associate "green" with ethical, but this is not the case. We as consumers have to dive deeper and look past the "green" elements and really see if their production practices are responsible; in terms of their producers, how they produce the sustainable material. For instance, I read that though bamboo is a sustainable material, certain ways it is processed to make cloth is actually worse than non-sustainable materials for the environment. There is also a big barrier of style. There is also a negative (some call it positive) association of Fair Trade/Green products to those of "hippies." That they are un-styled, boxy, potato-sacks.

When I asked Jen where she saw GREENOLA Style in five years, she responded with inspiration and tenacity, just what I want from a visionary leader in the fashion industry:

I see GREENOLA Style as a leader in the industry. Never will we say we know it all, but we will have created a movement of education and learning. We hope to learn right along with our customers, and discover in connection with them as well. We will have grown to other countries with needs of artisan empowerment. GREENOLA will be a larger vehicle for women's voices; for women who otherwise would not have an opportunity for enterprise, for creative expression, and for full transparency in their wardrobes.

That's exactly what I want from my own closet and fashion purchases: connection to larger purpose, empowerment for women around the world, and transparency in how and under what conditions the clothing was made.

Certifications

GREENOLA Style has several certifications as an ethical fashion producer, including Fair Trade, Chicago Fair Trade, and Green America.

Product Review

GREENOLA Style generously gifted me two items from their winter line: the gorgeous RAYA scarf and the Cream Floracion headband. The RAYA scarf was made by hand by the women entrepreneurs in Bolivia from 100% pure, organic, fine alpaca fiber with low-impact dyes. Alpaca is not only indigenous to the Bolivian region, but also a sustainable and hypo-allergenic in its pure state (compared to more refined cashmere). The Cream Floracion headband has an adorable flower on the side and is also made of 100% pure, organic, fine alpaca fiber.

Discounts

Be sure to check out more styles of their sale, and of course, my obsession, dresses! They also have a variety of jewelry and bags/wallets. I've also seen GREENOLA Style heavily discounted through daily-deal sites for fair trade and ethically-sourced products at Pure Citizen.*

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What are your favorite eco-friendly, sustainable, or fair trade clothing companies? Are they mission-oriented? Style-oriented? Both? Let me know in the comments!


* Affiliate link included. For the direct link, see here.
Image Credits: GREENOLA Style, my own.

You Don't Have to Be Perfect to Be Loved

Good enough has never been good enough for me because it's not perfect. 

From the inside-out socks on the bedroom floor to the work blazer carelessly strewn on the dresser after a long day of work to the Tupperware we were supposed to return to my parents last week piled high on the countertop, I identify what wrongs need to be righted, what can be improved.

It’s not just socks and clothing and dishes, though. It’s in the mornings in the bathroom mirror when I’m trying to figure out how to mask the filemot stains under my eyes, hues of dull, jaundicey browns like a decaying leaf. After five minutes of what seems like jeopardizing my feminist credentials, I typically give up and shuffle to the kitchen for a cup of yesterday’s coffee.

The other morning a faintly azure sky flooded through the windows as I sat down to sip my overheated coffee. Despite the beaming sun outside, I know that the weather was faking it. Midwestern winter turned spring is always coldest when it’s a cloudless, sunny day. “It’s because the air isn’t warm enough to hold moisture,” as my scientist husband says. And I realize that it’s the same with me. I appear spotless and warm like a cloudless spring day, but when you step into it, really lunge deeply into who I am, you sense the chill and bite in the air that wasn’t expected.

But I expect it now. While attempting to run through the Ignatian Examen, I can hardly take a sip of coffee without chastising myself for not buying fair trade, yet again. It’s just so much more expensive and I have to do some research and it’s easier to simply plop the Starbucks bag in our grocery cart on Monday nights, you know? But no, I plaster on a tough face and say that I should just get over my frugality and laziness and stop making excuses – the wrist slap of anti-hypocrisy taking its toll as I promise myself that the next pound will be certified. It’s that or we stop drinking coffee. That last part slips in almost without me noticing, but it is the most harmful thought of them all.

In a quest to be perfect, I equate self-deprivation with self-discipline and take it to the extreme. 

Every time, I think it will help me improve, to become good, then better, and then the best. It is simultaneously a destructive and exhilarating cycle because it is a never ending one. But this cycle, this attitude and mode of living has gotten me into trouble before. No, it’s gotten me into deep sh*t. In high school it made my hair fall out and my tooth chip in the middle of Spanish class and my womb shrivel up from undernourishment. But it also shrunk my muscular thighs and accentuated my cheek bones and gave me a free pass on dealing with so-called feminine hygiene products for several months.

Intellectually I know that nothing good has ever come from the extreme self-deprivation that I’m so apt to implement, but the perfectionist in me taunts that next time it will be different. And so while it’s been many years since I counted calories, a new demon has taken root in my wannabe perfectionist cortex.

It's only midway through the week, but I’ve already stumbled across a half dozen posts about ambitious, inspiring pools of young women in their twenties who are surpassing me in all of my goals. They are starting social enterprises helping to empower women in the developing world. They are writing OpEds in the New York Times. They are matriculating into the top tiered graduate schools in the field of their choice.

My logic is simple: they are getting more gold stars than I am; therefore, I must not be good enough.

Some of my millennial peers are truly exceptional. They are using their minds and hearts to make the world a better place for all people. They are sharing raw, compelling stories in lyrical language I can only pretend to mimic. They are excelling in their careers at paces faster than I feel like I am. They make that coveted weekly roundup with the one post they’ve written in weeks.

I know part of it is based in my personality type, the hyper-logical and creative INTJ that is ingrained in less than one percent of the female population. One of the most common characteristics attributed to INTJs is that we thirst for knowledge and are passionate about improvement (of ourselves, others, and processes), which subsequently means that we tend to be perfectionists. We are overachievers and overthinkers and take ourselves too seriously at times, but mostly we like that about ourselves (or at least, I do.)

Sometimes being a perfectionist is less about doing everything perfectly and more about punishing yourself for not doing everything perfectly all the time.

But it doesn’t stop there. This week I also crossed a couple posts that felt like a hammer pounding deep into my flesh, hitting at the core of my struggles as a perfectionist.

First there was Addie Zierman’s post about the pressures of feeling like you need to do this or that to be a good Christian. A bridge-builder by nature with one foot in both the Catholic and Protestant camps, I’ve never felt the immense pressure that my one-tradition peers have experienced to be perfect. For the evangelicals, this burden to be perfect manifested in what Addie Zierman describes as needing, in part, “to like Christian music or read Christian fiction or answer all the questions in your fill-in-the-blank Bible study.”

Sure, sure, I reasoned with myself, not resonating with the immense pressure that my evangelical brothers and sisters felt (and feel) given their tradition’s values and priorities. I was about to dismiss the entirety of her beautifully written post that was surely written for those other people when my focus narrowed onto the sentence that followed:

“You don’t have to eat organically or buy fair trade or go on mission trips to the other end of the world. You don’t have to sponsor a child in Ecuador...There is no test. God is not waiting for you to do some certain thing or to say some particular combination of words to give you Good Things.”

Laugh if you must, but I have honestly felt like God will not provide my husband a meaningful job until we sponsor a child through a Christian nonprofit organization. 

And while I’ve repeated that Psalm 84 verse, battered it into my psyche as much as possible, I wonder if God is withholding good things from me. And because I wonder, I deep down don’t trust that God is good, and that it’s really about being obedient – or else.

No one ever taught it outright, of course, but I implicitly learned that I would be loved if I followed all of the rules. And yet I found that the rules are always changing, slipping just past my fingertips.

This destructive cycle of perfectionist thinking nearly unraveled me when I found this post by a young woman, a brave truth-teller from my alma mater who implores us to believe her when she says that we are not inadequate, that we are enough. The author, Morgan McDaniel, writes:

Only too late did I find out how many people feel this way, even though no one talks about it. It shocked me to realize that I wasn’t the only one going through this, that even the peers I admired most felt inadequate, that the façade I measured myself against ruthlessly and mercilessly didn’t actually exist. In real life and on the internet, we’re plagued by the Facebook effect. Everyone’s accomplishments are public but their insecurities are invisible. It creates a vicious cycle. We are all fueled by each other’s successes, trying to race against a receding horizon we cannot reach, which just makes us feel less worthy.

It seems as though this internal, destructive drive towards perfection is more of a female phenomenon. Granted, maybe it’s because I’ve mostly spoken with women about it, and this isn’t to say that men on this campus don’t suffer from anxiety, depression, and the overwhelming pressure to achieve, because they do. But it’s women who are taught to be pleasers from day one, and it’s women who somehow are never able to say no. Courtney Martin captures this in her book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, in a quote that gave me chills the first time I read it (emphasis mine): 

“We are the girls with anxiety disorders, filled appointment books, five-year plans. We take ourselves very, very seriously. We are the peacemakers, the do-gooders, the givers, the savers. We are on time, overly prepared, well read, and witty, intellectually curious, always moving…We pride ourselves on getting as little sleep as possible and thrive on self-deprivation…We are relentless, judgmental with ourselves, and forgiving to others…We are the daughters of the feminists who said “You can be anything” and we heard “You have to be everything.” 

It’s hard to ask for help because that means we have failed at the basic goal we have aspired to for years – self-sufficient, effortless perfection. Asking for help, and accepting that it is okay to do so, means rejecting that framework entirely, and accepting that we can be valuable people, worthy of love and friendship, even if we didn’t score the internship or win the election or get the A. It’s incredibly hard to do, and I wrestle with it every day.

We are already accomplished and compassionate social justice leaders – we know how to be kind to others. We need to be kinder to ourselves.

The morning I ran through the Ignatian Examen, I prayed that I would be conscious of God’s presence as I went through the day. Morning and noon and early evening passed, and I didn’t sense God. But then as I speed-walked to the train station for my long commute home, I felt the Word become flesh in my once stone heart:

If you don’t learn to give grace to yourself, then you’ll never learn to give grace to others.

In one logical if/then statement, God prodded me to relinquish my strive toward extreme self-improvement, covering over my broken and foolish attempts to be perfect. It’s not about being perfect, but about being as kind to myself as I am with others. It’s about being as generous with myself as I am with others. And it is about giving as much grace to myself as I give to others.

You don’t have to be perfect to be loved and cherished by God. You need only be you. Who you are is always good enough, and trust me that good enough this time really is good enough.

But for this struggling perfectionist, maybe with some more Spirit-filled if/then statements, I’ll finally believe all that as much for me as I do for you.

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Photo credit: Mind Body Green