A Human Tale of Two Women
By: Christine Quaglia
Tags: Self-awareness, Self, Growth, Self Love, Self Improvement

Pearl inside of an oyster shell

In the movie “Juno” there is this great moment when the titular character’s stepmother, after finding out about her stepdaughter’s pregnancy, asks “is that the kind of girl you are?”. In response to that question, the usually (at least on the outside) cocksure Juno quietly and softly and vulnerably replies, “I don’t really know what kind of girl I am.”. That moment has stayed with me nearly fifteen years since that movie came out and it is, still, a question I find myself pondering. Even as a 40 year old woman, I still sometimes wonder what kind of girl I am.

Whenever I think upon that “Juno” question now though I don’t ask what kind of girl I am but, rather, what kind of woman I am. While I understand that to just be a question of semantics, as words without the meanings we ascribe to them are pretty useless, it extends far beyond semantics. It extends to the voice I now observe. A voice I recognize more clearly as my own. A voice that is quieter, softer, lower in tone; more sure and less sure, but more comfortable with said uncertainty, all at the same time. The screaming, fearful, deranged banshee voice still emerges but the observer of the inner voice, the God spark, the whatever-you-want-to-call-it-that-works-for-you, is the one, more often than not, that is giving the directions to the driver. It is interesting to live longer and longer and to look back on iterations of yourself and feel the traces of those iterations and hear the reverberations of those old voices, all the while observing how far you have come.

Unfortunately, Jennifer Farber Dulos never really got that chance to look too far back. The chance to continue to grow. The chance to work out what kind of girl she had been and what kind of woman she would be. She did not because Jennifer, based on all available evidence, was murdered by her husband Fotis Dulos with whom she was in the midst of a contentious divorce and custody fight. Ms. Dulos checked every single ‘having it all’ box. She was wealthy, beautiful, learned; a writer and a regular fixture in New York’s literary and arts scene. She married a handsome, European ex-patriate who gave the hint of wealth, money, privilege, and, certainly, of ambition.

Fotis Dulos, the man who would become Jennifer Farber’s husband, father to her children and, eventually, her alleged killer, was certainly ambitious. Driven by an unyielding drive for status, money, power and control. Fotis Dulos was determined to control every aspect of life, and, the lives of his wife and their five children. This apparently took its toll on Jennifer and, after more than a decade, she had determined that she had enough and began taking the steps to end her marriage. The story then unfolded in its usual ways: the male protagonist turns villainous and violent, unwilling to let go of that which he determined to be his. Love becomes obsessive, there are betrayals and, ultimately, murder (Jennifer) followed by suicide (Fotis).

Fotis may have lived up to his heritage, scripting a perfect Greek tragedy and, yet, he did not write the story alone. In fact, Jennifer was a co-writer and while she in no way deserves what happened to her, her life can serve as a cautionary tale of what happens when women (or men) let anyone else define the kind of woman (or man) that they are. In a recently published article in Vanity Fair, Jennifer Farber is quoted as writing the following: “I am the kind of person who looks at other people’s lives and wonders if I could have what they have. The question of whether or not I want it usually comes second.”. According to the article, Faber continued by writing, “[a]nd later I would try on a series of men, figuring out how their lives looked on me, sometimes having to alter my contours to force this appealing new entity to fit like a trace over my own self.”.

While the Vanity Fair piece refers to the story of the Dulos’ as a suburban tragedy, it most certainly is not. On the contrary, it is a human tragedy that could befall any one of us who cede control to a voice other than our own and governance of our minds, bodies and spirits to another. A good friend of mine and I were discussing the Betty Broderick case one day. We were because my friend had watched a recent documentary on Betty’s story and had been both stunned, and horrified by, how thin the line is between what we believe we are capable of doing and what we actually may do.

Like Jennifer Farber, Betty Broderick appeared to have everything. A thriving marriage and children, a gorgeous California home and a social standing among her wealthy peers that was of a great importance to her. Early in her marriage, it was Betty who had supported, financially and otherwise, her husbands goals and ambitions supporting him as he went to both medical and law school. Well over twenty years into their marriage, Betty Broderick’s husband, Daniel Broderick, decided he wanted out. He was moving on and taking Betty’s home, wealth, social status — everything she had built her life around — with him. Betty, like Jennifer, had tried the life of another on and placed it over her own. She decided she liked what she was and would forfeit everything for it, including and especially, herself. Betty never thought any of it would end, until and like everything, it did end.

When any of us worship anything we end up, as David Foster Wallace noted in his Kenyon College address, with less. If we don’t actually end up with less, we certainly end up feeling like we do, as Betty felt and as Jennifer Farber felt. When we give over our inner treasures to another, to an idea, to another’s idealized version of life, we give up that which makes us sacred and unique. The observer of our inner voice, the God spark, the diamond inside, the whatever-you-want-to-call-it-that-works-for-you. A very dear friend of mine texted me the other week about how their life has fallen short of where they want it to be. They have lost the direction, the true North, that only our own voices and selves can steer us toward. Life is complicated though and things happen, plans get changed; we get bumped and bruised and thrown off of course. But, we only ever live in our own skins and when we put the lives of others over our own we feel hollow and empty, like an imposter, because we have occupied all of our time figuring out the contours of another’s life rather than our own wild and precious life.

I was at my Mom’s the other day and saw the box of my father’s ashes she keeps on her headboard and was struck by one thought reminiscent of an old song: is that all there is? We just disappear into a pile of ashes at the end of it all? I thought about our bones, our tissues, our teeth, in one form or another, being reduced to ash, as my father’s were. And, yes, that’s where we all end up but that’s not all there is. There is a whole middle. A beginning, a middle and an end and none of us ought to miss our middles and we must certainly not forfeit them to anyone else. Our middles are the height of the play, the crescendo of the music and the moments in which we get to decide, moment by moment, what we’ll each do with our wild and precious lives. The only way we can decide truly though, how we want to live, with whom and where we will spread the fairy dust of our ashes while we are still alive and in an ongoing state of evolution and becoming, is by heeding our own voice as no one can direct us to a place they’ve never been.

My Father, I know, felt that he had a great life, but, also, a life that fell short. He was disappointed in plenty of respects and that will happen to each of us and that’s okay. It’s called life. As I texted back to my friend: “everyone’s life falls short in different ways. I think about what Glennon [Doyle] says a lot that life isn’t hard because people are doing it wrong it’s hard because they’re doing it right…I think the most any of us can hope for is a life that feels good because it actually is good and whatever we need to do to get there is what we need to do. Our stories are specific but the feelings and experiences are pretty global and human.”. So, while our tissues, bones and teeth are intact, and before we return to ash, we must live it all fully; even when it all falls short and it will.

Our lives will fall short and that can’t be avoided. What can be avoided though, is our lives being cut short. As Jennifer’s was. As Betty’s was. Their lives would have fallen short, and, maybe, even been cut short, as no one really knows what will happen. What they likely would not have been though is truncated by their own hands. These were two women full of their own ideas, their own promise and they turned over the authorship of their stories to those who would not, ultimately, value them, their inner voice, their God spark, their diamond inside, their whatever-you-want-to-call-it-that-works-for-you.

My life has fallen short in countless ways and will continue to do so. My writing, for example, I did not write daily until this year. That is countless years lost but those were my years to lose. My choices; not agency I ceded to another. My writing now, on Medium alone, reaches thirty three followers. Those thirty three people, I assume, look forward to hearing what I have to say when I have to say it. In publishing terms, thirty three readers would…..not be considered a success. In my life, it is a resounding success because I create for those thirty three incredibly important people. Actually, I create for thirty four incredibly important people as I create for me too.

I’m learning that there is a giving over of ourselves to those that will amplify us and our truest voice. They will help us become known to our truest selves and honour us and wherever we need to go. They will not only love us but they will understand us and, in doing so, bring us that much closer to knowing unconditional love. They will be the grains of sand in our shells that allow our pearls to emerge. There is that giving over and then there is a giving over that is not a giving over, but, rather, a surrendering of ourselves that allows for everything to be taken away from us; as it was for Jennifer and as it was for Betty.

I am lucky to be surrounded by, loved by and understood by those who want me to become the exact and perfectly made pearl that I am supposed to be. At the end of the day though, I will write my own story, according to my own inner voice, as I hope you will write yours. It will be imperfect and it will fall short, but, it will be true. We can only write our truest stories though when we keep ourselves as intact as we can, and, when we ask ourselves: what kind of woman/man/person am I and, then, we gently, quietly, individually and patiently wait for the answers and live into our own knowing.