Pain Across the Pond

Dear Liz,

I’m guessing you’re having a hard day. At this moment, you might be sitting down to whatever British people call “lunch.” You’re not hungry, though, as the pit in your stomach is taking up too much space for you to eat. You’re wondering if everybody hates you, but I can promise that most of them aren’t thinking about you. They’re wondering what they’ll have for their own “lunch,” and even 24 hours after you resigned your position as Prime Minister, they’ve started to forget and move on.

For many years, I’ve fantasized about creating what I’d call a “reverse hotline” for women leaders in-crisis. I — or, in my fantasy, one of my dozens of women colleagues — would read about a woman who was dealing with public embarrassment, scandal, or another work-induced trauma. We’d assume that whatever pain she was facing was amplified and exacerbated by the systemic resistance to women in leadership that I feel every day: that persistent undercurrent of pushing back; that nearly inaudible whisper, “Who do you think you are?”

One of my operators would call her up and, like Frazier, say, “I’m listening.” She wouldn’t tell you, Liz, that none of this is your fault. It might be your fault in semi-large part, for all I know. I haven’t taken the time to familiarize myself with post-Brexit, post-Covid British financial systems, so all I know is the spin. Evidently, you hired the wrong people, and they blew your economy to bits. No bueno, but anyone who’s hired anyone can relate to the soul-crushing feeling of having to take responsibility because of where the buck stops.

Here’s what I know for sure: it’s not all your fault. I know this because our world is complicated. A lever we pull over here causes something to move over yonder. Our decisions have effects and side-effects, and then those effects and side-effects have effects and side-effects. I’m quick to believe the critic who says that a bad turn of events is partially the fault of a leader’s choices. I’m quick to dismiss the pundit who blames all on the one.

You might be amused to hear that my spouse and I got into an argument about you last night. We never talk politics together, as he doesn’t care about politics, and I get I get too worked up about them. But one of his closest friends is a white, male Brit who isn’t a fan of your political party. My beloved had the temerity to suggest that your spectacularly rapid fall from power had nothing to do with your being a woman. I told him to even suggest such a thing, to me of all people, was ri-goddamn-diculous. The argument was brief, and I won.

There was a time when women fought back against sexism openly, as sexism itself was overt. Now, the self-appointed good guys have moved their sexism deep into the recesses of their values, attitudes, and behaviors. In the setting where I serve as dean, Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School, a person who were to say “I don’t see color” would be rightly excoriated for disavowing the work they need to do on their internalized racism. At the same time, gender binaries are melting away, and sexism has become harder, not easier, to call out.

I’m sure that sexism was one of the many reasons you’re right now sipping at broth, trying to get some fuel into your system, but unable to muster up an appetite. Bad timing, bad political choices, a distorted understanding of why poor people are poor? Those factors surely didn’t add up in your favor. But anyone who watched Boris Johnson weather scandal after scandal and tell lie after lie for YEARS, and thinks your getting ridden out on a rail in a matter of weeks, had nothing to do with your being a woman? Well, don’t let them call my husband, and I’ve only just got him back onboard.

My reverse hotline operator would tell you that you are a beloved child of God. You will heal, and you deserve to heal. She’d say to take good care of your body, connect with people who know the real you, practice your spirituality, and place before your higher power that which is beyond you to face right now. Having had my own fair share of public ouch moments, I know you’re feeling pain right now: the kind of pain like we experience after a car accident, where we’re sore all over but not yet at the point where we can identify particular injuries.

I pray that you journey gently through each moment and get to its other side. Those who practice yoga or get massage know that when we locate a pain resulting from tension, we breathe into what hurts, and it begins to release. Those who practice trauma-informed healing know the difference between tensions we address, and injuries we wrap in utter tenderness. So you have some new work to do, Liz, discerning your needs and getting them met. This loss will set you back on the public stage, but getting through it is an inside job.

I don’t pretend to understand your politics and probably wouldn’t like them if I did. But I do understand that leadership is hard, job losses are painful, and the feeling we’ve let people down cuts us to the quick. If we’re ever going to have functioning leaders in our world, we have to remember that they’re human beings, inherently worthy by virtue of the fact God created them, even if they blow it. Even if they’re a woman who dared to beat out men for a job.

Liz, you’re human. That makes you my sister, and I’m sending you the warm light of God’s love from this side of the pond.

In Christ,

Sarah