The Girlfriends' Guide to Getting Your Groove Back: Loving Your Family Without Losing Your Mind (Girlfriends' Guides) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Vicki Iovine is the happy and chronically overwhelmed mother of four children. Iovine was raised in Southern California and graduated summa cum laude from the School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. After receiving an LLB degree in Public International Law from Cambridge, she returned to Hastings to earn her JD. She is a member in good standing of the California Bar Association. She is the author of the successful Girlfriends' Guide and Best Friends' Guiide series.

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Chapter One

It’s a Marathon,Not a Sprint

Grooving, Now and Forever

Not too long ago, I emerged from my writing cocoon to have coffee with my Girlfriend Sally, the mother of two terrific grown children. I told her the occasion for celebration was that I’d finally discovered the key to getting my groove back, just in the nick of time, since I happened to be writing a book about it. As I vaguely recall, my epiphany consisted of something about wearing higher heels to look taller and thinner and subscribing to Oprah’s magazine. Sally tapped her latte cup against mine and congratulated me, but still, she seemed to be holding something back. Not in the mood to hear that I was delusional about my “eureka” moment, I pretended not to notice how hard she had to purse her lips to keep her own perspective from pouring out. Still, as a journalist of sorts, I could never deliver a book to you, my Girlfriends, that failed to take in another valid point of view.

“Have you realized yet that the real truth about getting your groove back is that you have to do it over and over again for the rest of your life?” Sally sweetly inquired while I was busying myself with the half-Equal, half-Sweet ‘n Low mixture I use in my coffee to spread out my chances of getting rat cancer from all the chemicals.

“Huh?” I replied, nearly spilling the latte over both of us and suddenly feeling that panicky sweat that humidifies the hair surrounding my face. “What do you mean, ‘over and over’?” What was she telling me? I’d spent months and months on this book just framing the problem of what it means to lose our groove, then even more time struggling with gathering some solutions, no matter how feeble, for all of us in search of our grooves.

It seems to me that our grooves are like towers made by a deck of cards. Each card represents a single issue including everything from our sex lives to our acceptance of our children’s true natures to what we wear to whether we attend to our physical wellness to trying to find that magical balance between work and family. Take one card out, and the groove tower tumbles. That alone seemed like a tremendous epiphany to me, and I guess I believed that just dealing with these issues once and restoring our towers would be an incredible feat. I sort of trusted that this one gargantuan effort would finally bring me the satisfaction, fulfillment, and balance that I yearn for in my life. Can you blame me for hoping the high heels were my trump card?

Well, according to my Guru Girlfriend Sally, the most we can expect from this great endeavor to recapture our grooves is the experience and strength to do it again, and again and again. Like a ship that has a hole in it, you can bail out most of the water and enjoy a patch of smooth sailing for a while, but sooner or later you’re going to find yourself knee-deep in the tide of change. You either stand still and whine that you’ve already bailed out the water once or you remember where you placed the bucket and bend over to start bailing again.

“But once your kids are somewhat independent and your marriage rescued,” I asked frantically, “what else do you have to worry about?”

“Let’s see, where do I start?” asked Sally, trying hard not to sound too patronizing. “How about after you’ve managed to reestablish your career and your husband’s work requires that you move the family across the country? Or how about when one of the grandparents moves in with you because he’s alone and sick? Then again, we could talk about the predictable trials that even a ‘good’ teenager will put you and your co-parent through. And what if you find a lump? What if one of your children has a learning disorder? What about what happens when your children leave the nest and your reason for existence flies away with them? There’s always the prospect of menopause, of course, and what about your plans for retirement? Will your children marry appropriately? Will they get good jobs in a nearby town or start their families two airplane connections away? When one gets a divorce, will you still be able to see your beloved grandchildren? And, speaking of grandchildren, can you even imagine a passel of little kids calling you ‘Granny’ right out there in public?”

Although the prospect of redefining myself and coming to terms with unexpected (hell, even the pretty predictable) sea changes in my life as a mother and woman had, up till Sally, seemed like a onetime proposition, the truth of what she said rang in my head like the Liberty Bell before it cracked. Some little voice inside my head had been placating me for the last thirteen years by insisting that all the changes and upheavals and loss of control that I’d experienced since I first joined the Sorority of Moms would be put to rest as soon as I’d found the most efficient and expedient way to return to the glory and balance of my prepregnancy life.

Like you, my Girlfriend, I couldn’t envision, nor did I want, a life that didn’t include my beautiful babies. I had no doubt that they were the greatest, most amazingly significant achievement of my humble existence. I guess what I pictured was a kind of circle; a journey in which I picked up a few fabulous souvenirs from other universes I’d visited along the way, be they little people or just more wisdom or examples of how much larger my heart had grown, but a journey that ended back where I started. I’d be this fabulous mother, but I’d have the body of a bride, the style of a starlet, the wisdom of Job, the professional accomplishment expected of a Phi Beta Kappa, and the sexual appetite of that girl who could spend an entire flight from Los Angeles to New York thinking of tantalizing games and positions to try out on her beloved. Like Dorothy, I assumed that once I’d clicked my ruby slippers together a couple of times, I’d be back in Kansas for business as usual. That was what getting my groove back meant to me.

What Sally told me changed my entire plan. She was telling me that the journey was a line, not a circle. Most terrifying, she was telling me that the finish line was nowhere in sight, but that the race had to continue. Whether I felt up to it or not really didn’t matter, because that’s just the way it was. I could either keep running, adjusting, and reevaluating, or I could fall out of the race and have my tarnished groove thrown out on top of me.

Setting the Pace

Shocking though Sally’s insight was, I wasn’t completely surprised. You will remember that it was I who told you in earlier Girlfriends’ Guides that motherhood is a marathon, not a sprint, and not to waste all your energies on the breast-or-bottle controversy, or the proper age for potty training or whether your brilliant child should be reading by kindergarten. I knew to expect the rejection I’d feel when my daughter’s best friend wanted to enlarge her social circle, the sense of ineptitude I’d know when my son couldn’t put a project together for the science fair without the intervention of three engineers and a computer programmer from my office, and the shame I’d suffer when I waited patiently in the school parking lot to pick my child up after a three-day Astro Camp sleepaway after he’d only been gone for two days. Even though I suspected that making it through the long haul of my life as a mother required that I stay light on my feet about all matters pertaining to raising my children, I realized that when it came to my long haul as a woman who happened to have children, I was wearing a pair of cement sneakers.

I know there are lots of women out there achieving more and sweating much less than I, but I swear,...