Dear Rose # 38 - The Myth of Toughening Up: A Lesson from a SharePoint Training Room

Rose is an amalgam of us - women in their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond who are looking for somewhere they are seen, heard and listened to.

Dear Rose,

This week my three workdays were spent at a training course about Microsoft SharePoint. The colleagues I was attending with were all familiar to me, but not all in my team so I didn’t know them well. There’s something about spending all day in a bland meeting room, fluorescent lights humming, and another round of the same slightly grey catered frittata for lunch, while learning about software, that brings people together; it’s possible we were trauma bonding, but probably we were just a little stir-crazy.

(Note: this is a stock image, not from the actual training session)

By lunchtime on day three, we had somehow gotten onto the topic of our childhoods—specifically, how sensitive we were and if that had transferred into adulthood. One of my colleagues said her parents had always shut down any sign of tears because she needed to "toughen up."

I offered an alternative and said that perhaps her parents were the ones who had needed to toughen up—by being able to accept the discomfort of a child who felt things deeply.

I could see the cogs turning in my colleague’s brain as she tried to compute this alternate reality. I’m not sure if she got there, and it doesn’t really matter if she did or not, but I hope my words helped her get one step closer to self-acceptance.

Love, Em xx