The Nine Rooms of Happiness: Loving Yourself, Finding Your Purpose, and Getting Over Life's Little Imperfections (32 page)

Ellen is a social worker and a writer. She never had to worry about having enough money when she was young, but she never felt comfortable spending much. It just never seemed important to her, perhaps because her mother was such a big spender. “I was so unhappy every time she brought me home a new dress, for every special occasion. My mother insisted that we get fitted at this old-fashioned kind of department store, with the same old ladies falling over themselves to help us find the perfect dress for communion, or graduation, or even just a party. It seemed ridiculous and wasteful to me, even as a kid.”

Ellen’s values were always different from those of her parents, who couldn’t understand why she always wanted to take a stray dog home, or volunteer to serve food to the homeless as soon as she was old enough. “They thought I’d grow out of my need to ‘save the world,’ as they used to say, but I didn’t. They were only concerned with material goods, appearances, and social stature. I couldn’t stand it. But now that I’ve done it my
way and bucked the family system, I am feeling conflicted because I still need money to live and never have enough of it. I just don’t understand this.”

She is now a social worker in a community center and does feel good about her life’s work. She is involved with a wonderful guy, Hank, who also works at the community center as an engineer. He came from modest means and makes enough money to live comfortably. “I admire Hank so much. He seems happy with what he has and what he’s doing. His hobby, making model airplanes, is his love. I’m doing what I love, and I’m not happy, I’m stressed about money all the time!”

Ellen’s family home when she was a child was decorated like Versailles, all gilded furniture and ornate moldings, and she hated the look. All she ever wanted was simple furniture from IKEA and modern white walls, like the clean lines of a loft in some artsy neighborhood. She tossed off all the wealth and privilege to pursue her dream of saving the world, but when she got back from her travels in Asia and Africa, the family money was decimated—her father had made bad investments at the end of his life—and now she wonders: How could that have happened?

Catherine explains that Ellen is a product of a family that never thought they would have to worry about money, so they never discussed it. They had so much that they thought it was tacky to talk about it. But in the end they did their children a disservice, since it’s important to be educated in the topics of saving and earning, spending and giving. Ellen’s family worried only about giving it away and taught her that philanthropy was a responsibility, but by not discussing the other aspects of personal finance they left her without a critical life skill.

She thought nothing of settling for a low-paying job and told herself she’d never have to worry about savings; there would be
something
left over when her parents died. It couldn’t
all
be gone. But Ellen turned out to be naive. The money was all gone, and she had no more in the bank than a few weeks’ expenses. She would have to work for the rest of her life in order to keep food on the table and a roof over her head.

Ellen needs to take responsibility for her own situation and actions.
This is her deciding “not” to deal with money, and it meant not dealing with her life. She has been reacting to her mother and not wanting money to define
her
in her own life, says Catherine. Now, of course, that is just what is happening. The lack of money is now her biggest stress and is front and center in her emotional house.

For Ellen to resolve these money issues, she first needs to get to the right room: her family room. The truth is, Ellen is still reacting against her mother, long after it’s warranted. Her mom isn’t buying her dresses, and Ellen needs to stop thinking about the past and start thinking about her future. That will require her to take action and pay attention. Even if it is to the bills, the debt, and the fact that she now needs to earn money.

Her future awaits her, back in the office, where she can start to take control over her financial outlook and reconsider her job or lifestyle choices. It’s late, but never too late to take charge of your life. The pearl: Stop reacting and start acting. It’s never too late.

Sheila and her brother and sister were assigned roles in their family, and though she was always the smart one, she was also attractive and a decent athlete. Her beautiful sister was only a B student, and her brother
was both cute and smart, so they pretty much all stuck to the roles “assigned” to them for years.

The three siblings were pretty good-natured about their roles, teasing one another about them. But when Sheila got accepted into Harvard for college, the family pressure to go there felt overwhelming. “It’s like I didn’t have a choice,” she says. “They assumed I’d choose Harvard. I mean, who turns down Harvard? But I knew it wasn’t the best fit for me. And I was getting more scholarship money from one of the other excellent schools I got into—which would make it much easier for me in the long run, because I wouldn’t get out of school weighted down by a huge debt. But you should have heard them; they were like broken records trying to convince me to go to Harvard. It’s like it was more for them than for me.”

Ultimately, Sheila turned down Harvard and is pleased that she had the guts to stand up to her parents. “I have to admit, it also feels good to say I turned down Harvard. Sometimes I second-guess myself and wonder if I did it just to prove a point—to my family and everyone else. I think I made the right choice, but it’s hard to have your whole family pushing you in a different direction. They all seem to be handling it okay, but it’s as if the family roles have been forever challenged or changed. It’s weird. I’m still the same Sheila, but somehow they seem disappointed in me.”

Catherine says Sheila’s grandparents and parents are benevolent narcissists, since they always wanted to go to Harvard themselves, or at least say their offspring did. It was as if Sheila had to validate their intelligence, live out their dreams, and make good on the fact that they’d all worked so hard to “arrive.” But this wasn’t her idea of the only worthy destination, and they couldn’t understand why not.

“I wanted to be my own person, so the more they pushed the more I resisted. Maybe if they had never said anything I would have chosen that school, but by the time I got in I was determined to go anywhere else and let everyone know I wasn’t a puppet they could manipulate. I almost decided to forget college completely, go off to India, and just say, Take this acceptance letter and shove it!”

Sheila even told her parents she was thinking of taking a whole year off and getting a job, and they nearly had a stroke. It gave her immense pleasure to tease them. Catherine says Sheila was acting out, not expressing her true feelings of wanting to be an individual, without the entire parade of ancestors following her through the pearly gates of Harvard. Family pressure can alter the very things it is trying to preserve. Sheila eventually chose Brown, which was her way of staying true to herself and also getting the education she wanted. “They will never forgive me, but I don’t care,” she says. “Now my grandmother introduces me as the granddaughter who’s too good for Harvard. It makes us both smile, but she will never forget or forgive. But we love each other for being so fiercely independent. I know I’m more like her than anyone else.”

Whether you are stubborn and strong, or caring and loving, or a combination, the kind of legacy that matters is the emotional traits passed down through generations. That’s better than a string of pearls.

Nora, who is a sales associate at a small ad agency, has been dating Jed, a graduate student in comparative literature, for eighteen months. Because of his many years in school—not earning much money, living (happily) on a shoestring—and her years in the work force—socking away
savings as a single woman—they are on slightly different pages in terms of how ready they are for marriage. Nora never thought it possible that she might be able to be in a stable relationship. Until she met Jed.

“But now I have fallen for a guy who is a hopeless romantic, recites poetry in three languages, and has written the most beautiful marriage proposal letter to me,” she says. And Nora is nervous. At first she thought it was about the lack of security. He will never be a big earner, and she will likely have to support them. And then she realized her big hesitation is darker and more deep rooted. She thought about her family, her past, and realized, “My parents got divorced, my grandparents had a rocky marriage, and my grandfather committed suicide. And his mother did too. What if it’s not in our gene pool, this thing called commitment and happiness? What if I am destined to hate being with one person for the rest of my life?” Nora knows she can be hard to live with—she has her moods and her nasty side. That’s all the more reason it’s a miracle Jed loves her, she says. “I don’t really deserve him. Whether or not we ever have any security, I know he’d stay with me forever. That’s who he is, what is in his DNA—a stable and loving marriage for his parents, and they hail from a long line of couples that stayed together for, like, sixty years and then died together. It’s kind of sweet, but I also wonder: How does that happen? What kind of person never looks around and asks: Is this it? But then I immediately think,
What’s wrong with me?
I am so lucky he wants to be with me, and yet I can’t commit.”

Catherine says Nora’s stuck in the attic, rummaging through the steamer trunks for clues as to why the people in her family can’t stay in relationships. One way to get unstuck is to realize hanging around in the attic is more detrimental than moving forward. Catherine reminds us that mental illness runs in Nora’s family, although she should understand that this is by no means a certain destiny for her. Still, if Nora feels this issue is “blocking” her, she may want to talk to a mental health professional to better understand what is and isn’t genetically programmed. “Marriage doesn’t cause suicide,” Catherine explains. “Clinical depression and other mental illnesses do, or at least contribute to the problem.” Still, some
things are more genetic than others, as it turns out. “There is extensive evidence that some mental illnesses run in families,” Catherine adds. “But that is no reason for Nora to let her family history determine her future. She may be right to be wary of her emotional DNA, but she can’t ruin her life over it.” If Nora loves Jed and wants to make the commitment to marriage, she has to take a leap. I would add that the answer to the question “What if this is the biggest mistake of my life?” could be posed as: “What if
not
doing it is the biggest mistake of your life?” As we like to say: Not to decide
is
to decide. In fact, this is an “heirloom” from Catherine’s own grandmother. Think about your own family sayings—the ones that work for you are precious and worth passing on to the next generation.

In the attic you can play around, delve into your grandmother’s trunk, try on her wedding dress, or leaf through her album. But at the end of the day those heirlooms are just dusty old things. They aren’t you, and while you may be proud of your heritage, it’s time to go out and make your own history, whatever that may be. Your own legacy is ahead of you, not up there in the attic. Get back to the rest of the house and live the life you choose to live. You’ll be happier, and everyone who came before and after you will be proud.

“Even My BlackBerry Gets to Recharge”

V
irginia Woolf had it right when she wrote that all women need a
room of their own. For the twenty-first-century woman, that can be an actual, physical space or a mental place she has established with some healthy boundaries.

I’d add that we all need time away from our lives, to think, to relax, to just be with our own thoughts and reboot. Whenever I am stressed it’s because I haven’t given myself any time lately, which is the one thing we all deserve to give ourselves. I was grabbing a quick lunch recently—as usual, late for an appointment—and I asked the gentleman ahead of me if he was in line for the cash register or waiting for something from the server. He nicely offered that I go ahead of him and I said, “Thank you so much, since I’m keeping someone waiting.” His response: “There is an expression where I come from, ‘There is more time than life.’” I thought about this and then had to ask him what he meant. (Even taking the time to have this conversation told me I was giving myself the gift of relaxing a little, not charging ahead.) “It means,” he patiently explained, “that before we’re born, there is time, and after we die there is time, and we are only here for our life, but time goes on and on.” Time is bigger than all of us and we just rush ahead and don’t realize that it’s as precious as space, as air, as any other essential commodity. It’s a reminder that the things you can’t see or own or control are those that we should value most but that we take for granted. But we shouldn’t. Time is the one gift you can give yourself every day to be happier.

Janet, an entertainment executive and mother of a ten-year-old boy and eight-year-old girl, is always busy—she has a crazy work schedule, monitors all the homework on the weeknights, coaches soccer on the weekends, and barely has time for her own workout. Her idea of a luxury is a bubble bath every now and then, usually late on a Friday night, at the end of yet another hectic week. Most mornings she wakes up early and is on the treadmill in her home office by six (she can watch videotapes for work during her sweat session), and an hour later everyone is racing to get ready for school or work.

Sometimes Janet hardly has time to get ready for work in the morning, and even that fifteen minutes alone in the bathroom is often ruined because the sink’s a mess, with globs of shaving cream in the basin, and so she gives her husband a hard time about it, and they have what they call “the first stupid fight” of the day. “It makes my blood boil when he says I get mad at the littlest things, but I feel like I should be able to walk into a clean bathroom, and I have asked him to clean up after himself many times. It’s no big deal to him, but to me it is huge. It makes me feel like he doesn’t respect me.”

Despite this friction, Janet adores her husband. Stewart is a great father to their kids, helps make breakfast for them, and is always trying to
be cheerful. But when Janet storms out of the bathroom and says, “Your shaving stuff is everywhere and the sink looks like something out of a frat house!” he acts hurt. “All I want is for the sink area to be dry and neat, a place that doesn’t feel gross and wet. Call me anal, but that pisses me off. That and a bunch of other unimportant things that I get on him about…and then feel guilty about afterward. Like not folding the hand towels after using one. Or putting the newspaper back together after he reads it so that I don’t have to search around for sections. That’s stupid stuff, I know, but it sets my teeth on edge.”

Janet’s best friend, Melissa, has a similar complaint. Her battleground isn’t the bathroom (or the morning newspaper); it’s her bed. Sleep is very important to her, so she gets aggravated when her kids jump on her while she’s still dozing in the early morning or when her hubby yanks the blanket off her as he rolls over. She also hates how much her husband intrudes on her bedtime. “He is jealous of my time, even when I sleep,” she says. “He wants me to entertain him 24/7. I am the opposite of that—I want to be alone when I’m in bed. I love my husband, but when he says he has to work or take a trip I am so happy because I can do my own thing in bed.”

Janet found the space she needed by moving her cosmetics bag to the guest bathroom, even though she has to keep everything neatly tucked away when guests come over. Melissa thought about getting twin beds and pushing them together so she would have her own “pod”—no blankets pulled off her at night, but she would be close enough to snuggle when she and her hubby felt the urge. “The other day I moved some magazines and the book I was reading off my nightstand and into the guest room,” she says. “I even thought about sleeping there, but I didn’t because I knew it would hurt my husband’s feelings. But I know lots of women who would love something like that. It’s the ultimate taboo—separate beds, separate rooms.”

For Melissa, it’s a bedroom of her own; for Janet, it’s a sink of her own.

As Melissa and Janet were walking home one day after dropping their kids off at school, Melissa said, “I plugged in my BlackBerry the other day, and as I did that I thought,
Wow, even my BlackBerry gets to recharge!
”

The fact that her PDA will sit there undisturbed for the entire night made her jealous…and showed her that she doesn’t have enough time
to herself. Pearl: Don’t forget to unplug yourself sometimes.

Sometimes I Just Want to Run Screaming from the House

Erin is a working mother who just moved to a nice New Jersey suburb and is feeling isolated. She’s far from her brother and sister (who live in Massachusetts, three hours away), and they’ve always been close. Her kids are three and five, and they always have playdates and birthday parties on the weekends, so it’s no longer possible to pick up and go on a Saturday to see her family. Erin and her husband, a banker, moved to the burbs to get a bigger house, a safe community, and a real backyard for their kids. But she gave up the proximity to college friends and work colleagues. Her husband works late all the time, leaving her alone to make dinner and take care of the kids most evenings. Since Erin works part-time at a home-design firm she isn’t bonding with the stay-at-home moms in her neighborhood. “We have dinner parties, but our friends from the city think it’s this big deal to come across the river. I find myself spending hours on the phone or Facebook just to connect with friends. When I go to the train station and see the park and ride sign I think,
Omigod! I’ve been parked
. I mean, we have this beautiful house and this great life, but sometimes I feel so trapped that I just want to run screaming from the house!”

Everyone Needs to Get Away—and Can, Without Even Leaving

What are these women feeling, and are they in the right room? Melissa wants to be left alone, Janet needs her space, and Erin is feeling trapped, but it’s not about the actual rooms for any of them. It’s about the “Tenth Room,” a place away from the other nine. They—and all of us—sometimes want to “have it their way,” to paraphrase a favorite old TV commercial. Often this is hard to do, especially given our busy routines. Many of us who are mothers can count on one hand the number of times we’ve been alone in our own home. The toddler can walk (yeah!), but now she
can follow you into the bathroom, so for the next few years, you can’t even pee in private.

Is it asking for too much? To have a little space?

Catherine hears this all the time. “A friend said to me yesterday that she was upset at her husband for being sick because it meant he was going to be home all week. She was pissed. She felt bad for him, but her primary feeling was annoyance because she wasn’t going to have any alone time in her house. Is she a bad person? Of course not, but she felt guilty. The real issue here is that you can’t just have alone-time when your husband goes to work. That makes it feel like you’re stealing those moments. And stealing anything makes you feel guilty. The paradigm is wrong. You need to
create
those moments. You have to have your own identity and your own life. And for that, you need your personal space.” This brings up a favorite old expression of mine: “I married you for life, not for lunch!”

And we do love and need those we cherish most, and value our time together, but we also need to cherish ourselves and take the time to replenish our own energies when we feel depleted—emotionally, physically, or spiritually. That is what the Tenth Room is all about.

Can’t Fit into a Mouse Hole? You Just Haven’t Found the Right One

The first person in my home to use the expression “mouse hole” was my daughter, Josie, when she was three. My husband and I had just put a big colorful plastic slide in Josie’s room, and she liked to crawl under the platform and into a little square space where she would drag a book, a puzzle, a coloring pad, and some crayons. She’d spend hours happily playing in this little space, and when I would check in on her, she’d poke her little curly-haired head through the round hole, and I would say, “What are you doing?” Josie would answer: “I’m in my mouse house.” When I asked if I could come in, Josie said, “Mamma,
you
can’t fit through the hole. It’s a mouse hole, and only I can get through it.”

That told me Josie needed this space, this mouse hole, to be hers, and
hers alone. It was her retreat. Even a three-year-old knows that every woman needs a sanctuary.

Not all of us are fortunate enough to have an extra room in our houses. For many of us, the mouse hole is metaphysical—it’s that bubble bath or your garden, anywhere you feel free to think and close the doors on your other nine emotional rooms so that you can be alone with your thoughts. For some women it’s a walk, for others it’s listening to music in their favorite chair. Even something as mundane as doing the dishes can provide an escape from the swirl of activity around us. In fact studies show that repeat-motion activities—knitting, jogging, ironing—can be soothing, since while doing them it’s easy to lose yourself in your thoughts and let your mind wander.

Some people go to Starbucks to sip a Venti skim latte and read the paper in peace. You can carve out your private space, even if it’s in a public park. One woman Catherine knows relaxes as she walks the aisles of her grocery store. “It’s a mindless but very cleansing expedition,” she says. “I’m by myself, and I get a lot of pleasure out of it.”

As much as we love our children, we also need our own “adult” time, just as they need their “kid” time. It’s something kids do naturally—the first thing they do upon arriving at a playground is to go running off gleefully, like birds taking flight—but we need to remind ourselves that we need this same time away, free of guilt and inner conflict. I remember one particularly beautiful vacation day with my daughter, who was then six. We were holding hands and walking to the pool across a beautiful garden, and I said to her, “Wouldn’t it be great if I didn’t work and we could spend every day together just like this?” She said, “Mom, honestly, we’d get sick of each other.” I laughed and realized she was right.

You have to be realistic about how much time you can give yourself: If you have a baby, the smallest escape—a long, luxurious shower—may be enough; if you have teenagers, you can give yourself more alone-time, since they’re ignoring you anyway…until they run out of money or get hungry!

Everyone has an escape hatch, and the key is to find yours and then take it. As often as is healthy for you, find your mouse hole, before being
at home feels like being in jail. Then all you can think of is: Bust out! Or more likely you’ll act out by being irritable. Take control of the situation before it has control of you. It’s not selfish; it’s self-preservation. By taking care of yourself, you will be better equipped to help yourself and everyone else around you.

Not having that time, that space, is a source of tension that leads us to being crabby with our family, and having a bad day. We don’t want to be bitchy to the ones we love the most; we just want them to leave us alone sometimes. You need to take care of yourself by making sure you get alone-time every day. Don’t wait till your husband leaves the house and the kids go off to school and then say, “Hooray, I’m finally alone!”

Conversely, when your mate has his time away, whether it’s his regular pickup game or a few hours tinkering in the garage, it’s critical to respect that time as well. When my husband goes out with the dog and I need him and call his cell and it rings in the other room where it’s sitting on his desk, I get annoyed until I remind myself that he needs his forty-five minutes away too.

The Tenth Room is all about regeneration, about recharging the batteries of your being. Remember Melissa being jealous of her BlackBerry because it gets recharged every night?

“I need to recharge because everyone is trying to suck the life out of me,” says Melissa. Catherine would tell her that they can suck the life out of you only if you let them. Often she will ask a patient who is having these issues, “How do you think this happens?” And she’ll say, “They do 
this
to me and they do
that
to me…” and Catherine will say, “Do you think you participate in the dynamic in any way?” And of course the patient typically will smile and admit, “Well, I must, right?”

The key is to be aware of your role in this exhausting routine. It may sound like yet one more “to do” on your list—Take time for self; check!—but it’s liberating and healthy and essential.

The neat irony here is that to truly clean up your emotional house you have to sometimes “leave it” and come back later. Spend time in your Tenth Room and you’ll return to the other nine refreshed and with a healthier perspective. This will allow you to see that no one is
trying
to suck you
dry—your kids and your husband, your friends, all of whom love you—it’s
you
who is allowing this to happen. You give too much…of
you.