Nina Tassler - What I Told My Daughter

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Copyright 2016 by Jerry Levine, Inc.

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First Atria Books hardcover edition April 2016

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Jacket design by Yoori Kim

Author photograph by Cliff Lipson/CBS 2014 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-1-4767-3467-5

ISBN 978-1-4767-3469-9 (ebook)

For my husband, son, and daughter

Jerry, Matt, and Alice

And thank you to my mother, Norma

I was forty when my daughter was born. After nine months, sixty pounds, and enough water retained to fill the Los Angeles reservoir I gave birth via emergency C-section to a ball of fire. This was not entirely surprising given the journey my husband, Jerry Levine, and I took to meet her.

I had gone through a festive assortment of fertility treatments ranging from the requisite menu of drugs and procedures to an experimental medical procedure that occurred entirely by accident; Dr. Richard Paulson flooded my uterus with my husbands sperm when one of my fertilized eggs decided to make a run for it while going through egg implantation. This was the second time I had gone through an in vitro experiment (I would remind myself periodically that I was still a lab rat). Lots of needles, lots of doctor appointments, all while climbing the high peak of Mt. Anxietyand then seven to ten days later I got the thrill of taking a pregnancy test. Talk about torture. The wait for the results, the fantasy that I am, in the very moment I am about to take the call from the doctor, in fact, pregnant. How could he possibly give me bad news? Not going to happen, no way. I wasnt quite sure how to process the information the nurse was giving me over the phoneshe reported numbers and levels and hormones.

Am I pregnant? I asked.

Politely, the nurse replied, Probably not at these levels.

What level do I need to hit, just give me a number, and Ill hit it, Im very goal oriented, I said in my intense, type-A network executive voice. What a ridiculous thing to sayborderline crazy, I realize as soon as the words leave my mouth. The disappointment made my skin feel thick.

The following week Dr. Paulson, the kind, patient Lord of Fertility Manor, called me at home to see how I was feeling, physically and emotionally. I remember getting out of bed to answer the phone. He told me to take a break from the shots. Take a breather. Dont think about conception, return to sex without an agenda. Just relax. Okay. I hung up the phone and started to cry.

Two months later I was pregnant. Regular old sex. I think there were some survivors from the sperm invasion waiting for the perfect egg. They found her. Or rather she grabbed one by the scruff of his collar and commanded, You! as if she were Diana, the huntress of Roman mythology.

Our daughter was setting the stage for her arrival into the world from, literally, Day One. She dictated the terms of her insemination, and she was going to orchestrate every detail, from the pounds I gained during pregnancy to the trauma she and I went through after an induced labor resulting in a horrific emergency cesarean delivery.

A decade and a half later, I am just beginning to understand the significance of my daughters creation and birth. We named her Alice Luisa after both of her great-grandmothers. Each of those women were heroes in their own rightthe eldest children in both of their families, immigrants who came to the United States with little but grew up to be formidable women. We chose the name not just because Jewish tradition says naming your child for a deceased loved one allows their memory to be kept alive, but because Jerry and I hoped all the traits we admired in our grandmothers would be passed down to our daughter. It was a thoughtful and significant decision.

From the day she was born, I was committed to raising Alice as a feminist, just as I was by my mother. To me, that means understanding that women are in every respect the equals of men and should never in any circumstance be considered otherwise. I made a point of instilling these principles in my son, Matthew, when he was little. One morning on our drive to school he declared, You know, Mom, boys are better than girls. I pulled the car over, turned off the engine, and made sure he saw the look on my face. No, Matthew, I told him, boys and girls are different but they are equal. This is an exchange that my son remembers to this day.

That deep-in-the-bones understanding of equality comes with the acknowledgment that we live in a patriarchal society that imposes gender distinctions in so many waysfrom the toys we play with as toddlers to the careers we pursue to the roles we carve out in our own family structures. As women, we have a responsibility to combat such prejudice with our words and deeds, sometimes with our feet, and with fists clenched in solidarity. We dont need to demand equality so much as we need to live and breathe it in everything we do. It is an extra burden, one that women have shouldered since time immemorial.

At the core of what makes us women, the objectification of female sexuality has a profound influence on our psyches from our earliest days. In todays hyperactive media landscape, we are buffeted by an endless stream of messages to be prettier, thinner, sexier, lustier, happier, smarter but not too threatening. Ask any motheryou never feel the outrage about our cultural obsession with false ideals of beauty until youve seen it through the questioning eyes of your baby girl.

As my daughter reached her preteen years, I began a quest to hone my personal definition of feminism and learn how other women defined their strength. I read all the books and research I could find, but nothing quite answered the questions I had about the unique intimacy that exists between a mother and daughter. I wanted to know how other women communicated with their daughters, how they instilled in them the values and principles that matter most. I wanted to hear the humor, sense the subtext, and savor the lyrical language used in telling each storywomen who are all so different from one another, and different from their mothers.

I realized that if I was searching for advice and inspiration on ways to teach girls to feel empowered, other moms probably were too. My instincts told me to reach out to women who are in leadership roles in a variety of disciplines, from Oscar- and Emmy-winning actresses to pioneering doctors and scientists to spiritual leaders, activists, politicians, academicians, writers, directors, business executives, and those who do heroic work with nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. I was overwhelmed by how quickly so many embraced the What I Told My Daughter concept.