19 Comments
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Dr Melissa Gilbert's avatar

Such a great piece! This has been a conversation in my friend group for a while now - you nailed it 👏🏽

Gina Hamadey's avatar

Thank you so much! Thrilled you could relate

Ryal's avatar

"I'm sorry that you feel that way" is a fake , bullshit apology. I hate when people say that. He's not taking accountability for what happened to cause how your feeling. "I'm sorry for what I did to make you feel that way" is what the instructor should be saying.

Gina Hamadey's avatar

AGREE!!!! 🙏🏼🙏🏼

Lori Nast's avatar

The best part of the essay was the last line. As people-pleasers, women often have strong feelings but don’t take action on them.

Gina Hamadey's avatar

Thank you so so much!! ☺️☺️☺️

Bruno J. Navarro's avatar

What a lovely perspective. And I’m in awe of Henry’s wisdom!!

Gina Hamadey's avatar

Thank you Bruno!! 🥰🥰

Joanne's avatar

Great article! 👏 We only seem to get feedback when we are either rubbish at something or needy . No one tells us when we are doing a great job. At 53 I love how I rarely care these days and look inward for my own feedback and that feels good 💕

Gina Hamadey's avatar

👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

Maria Hanley's avatar

Love this so much.

Gina Hamadey's avatar

☺️☺️

So glad

Najwa's avatar

Wow wow wow! Thank you for the PS at the end, was wondering what ended up happening. It is also the reason why, at 45, I don’t want to take up tennis again. I was a top player as a teen, and am just OK now at 3.0, not having played at all for decades. I was asked to play on a usta league doubles team and couldn’t figure out why I didn’t want to compete ever again. I think this instructor is a very common personality type among instructors and I just can’t deal w it at this stage. Bravo for calling him out! That’s awesome.

Gina Hamadey's avatar

Ugh!! How is this common behavior?? I say you should find yourself a great group and instructor and doooo it! I’m sure you’re awesome

Philia Kelnhofer's avatar

This was so beautifully written, I loved it!!

Gina Hamadey's avatar

Oh, thank you so much!! ☺️

Sarah Weeger's avatar

"But if we’re treated like ghosts, we might as well start haunting." This gave me chills. YES. An idea I've been playing with lately is overshooting. For a long time, I've wanted to do things like use my voice more, take up more space, get better at failing and/or doing just average work instead of perfecting it before I share, etc. But I haven't made as much progress as I'd have liked to by now. So I'm going all in. Overshooting everything. Because maybe that will actually help me gain momentum and make real progress. Instead of just saying something more often, how can I overshoot and say too much? I want to overshoot failing, by being really terrible at things. Overshoot taking up space; stretch out and be loud. Overshoot playing it (un)safe; get in trouble, do things I might regret. Overshoot abundance over scarcity; get delusional about how good I have things, etc.

Gina Hamadey's avatar

Oh Sarah I hear you on all of this!! And I would love to hear what overshooting on this looks like. Let’s keep up this conversation xoxoxo

Sarah Weeger's avatar

I'll DM you. <3 It's been working!!!