This is painful reading. My (first) ex-wife sent it to me. The essay was chosen for a collection on gritty lawyers published by the American Bar Association. Unfortunately, it is all true. I am the friend who convinced Ms. Lyons that she was smart enough to be a lawyer. She has had a very successful career and I am extremely proud of her.
About the Gritty Barbara Lyons
I was toddler in Doctor Denton’s (pajamas with feet) watching my dad beat my older brother because he couldn’t learn the alphabet. He was about 4 or 5; I was about 3 or 4.
I made the decision right then that I would never be hit for not knowing an answer to a question. My dad hit me for other reasons, but not because I didn’t know something. Actually, my dad hit me for no reason at all. I wasn’t special though. My Mom and other siblings were beaten too.
That toddler’s decision—to not be hit for not knowing – was it because I was born with grit, or was it a natural response to avoid getting hit? Did that decision made by that toddler implant the grit gene? I don’t know. All I know is that it was a conscious choice.
As a result, I worked hard in school. I worked hard at home. Play was not an option when I was growing up. Cleaning, cooking, taking care of the next sibling in line was the norm. Cleaning out a closet was what you did if you had nothing to do. I learned to watch my dad. I could sense his moods and knew when he was going to blow. I was hyper vigilant to his moods. It was my survival. Following one particularly violent episode, I made the decision that when I grew up, I was going to put away all those men who beat their wives and children. Back then, there were no laws against child and spousal abuse.
My dad respected money and people who made it. As soon as I could, I got a job working out of the house. Work got me away from the violence, but also got me some respect from my dad – I was bringing “bread home for the table”. I worked two or three jobs from the age of 13, through college and beyond. We were lower in the economic rung; neither my mom nor dad graduated high school. My dad got his GED so he could become a police officer. He was disabled from the police department when I was about 12, so my part time income contribution was important. He also didn’t make fun of me when I worked. He stopped calling me stupid with no common sense.
Kids at school would make fun of my hand me down clothes. In 7th grade I decided that no one would ever again make fun of the way I dressed. So I took some of the money I made at work, hid it from my father, and bought clothes. Dressing well is part of my presentation today, as someone in charge and successful. Being physically fit is also part of whom I present to clients and the community. Being physically strong serves me in many respects. First, I have been the same size
(except when I was pregnant) since my mid 20’s so I have a lot of clothes and coming from having no clothes, dressing well is important to me. Second, being fit helps me do what I do everyday, which most days seems like a marathon. Third, I feel powerful and invulnerable, regardless of what I am feeling inside. Last, being fit is hard work, and I don’t know how to not work hard.
Because of, or in spite of, secretly feeling stupid and the shame of being found out we got hit at home, I worked hard in school to get A’s and graduated high school with honors. The PSAT and the SAT results however, said I would fail at college. So with good grades and bad test scores, I found a college that would accept me. Once I established I was a successful college student I transferred to the university from which I graduated summa cum laude.
The idea of going to law school never entered my mind. I didn’t think I was smart enough, despite my grades and my work ethic. What I did decide was that I was going to be financially independent and never rely on anyone else for financial security. I saw my mother trapped with no education and no employable skills. That wasn’t going to be me.
So after college, I went to work at a small bank in Boston. I was hired as a bank manager trainee at $110.00/week. I didn’t stay there long because I learned the next hire was a young man with a high school degree only, making $120.00 /week. I asked the manager why the new guy was making more than me with only a high school degree and I was told, it was becausehe was a man and was going to have a family one day and he will have to support his family, whereas I am a woman and would get married and have a husband to take care of me.
At this time, I had a friend going off to law school who convinced me I was smart enough to become an attorney. So in response to the lesson on banking hiring practices, I quit the bank and decided to go to law school.
Like the SAT’s, if you could flunk the LSAT’s, I did. According to the test, I was not going to be a success in law school and I was not going to be able to get into the preferred law schools. So I applied to the evening division of Temple Law School and following my first (successful) year, transferred into the day school.
I still felt like I had to work harder than anyone to get through law school. I felt a fraud and I was there by the skin of my teeth and soon someone will figure out that I didn’t belong. But I was determined to learn how to think like a lawyer and graduated, passed the bar on the first try and got a job in a small firm in Bucks County. Bucks County and the small law firm were not my first choice. The Philadelphia D.A.’s office was, only they didn’t offer me a job. However, this failure, if you will, provided the route to my professional success.
I became a partner in 3 years and had a baby. Three years later I had a second baby and then had to leave that firm when I learned that my partner was playing fast and lose with the clients’ escrow accounts. I had to sue him for my financialinterest in the firm. But, at this point, I had a solid client base and I could choose the law firm I would go to. I chose a small firm in Doylestown and made partner within a year. Then I had my third child. By the way, I have been married throughout my career in law. I won’t even go into the work necessary to have a successful marriage.
Women in the profession can’t ignore the sometimes stronger need for motherhood. I detest the word “balance” as it applies to women who work, and prefer to see the women in the profession I know who are also mothers, achieve excellence at both, but not necessarily at the same time. They are excellent with their clients or in front a jury, and excellent at bedtime reading to their child or perusing the “What to Expect…” series on childbirth and childrearing.
From the beginning of my law career to the birth of my third child, I was a civil trial attorney.
I won trials and did a mean closing argument. Preparing for trials and making the billable hours were a challenge I met, but when the litigation practice came to interfere with my excellence as a mother, I had to make a change. I couldn’t hear my children because the bits and pieces of my clients’ cases were constantly rattling around in my brain. But I couldn’t and wouldn’t even contemplate giving up my work.
I was teaching peer mediation at the time as a volunteer member of a committee in the Bucks County Bar Association. I came to realize that if I could teach mediation to middle school students I should be able to practice it. I had 15 years experience with plaintiff and defenses litigation, so I felt I could learn to approach both sides of an issue and be received as a neutral attorney. I decided to leave my litigation practice and spent that year taking every course and class and reading every book on the practice of neutral law. At the end of that year, I felt competent to establish a neutral practice so I wrote to every attorney I had ever dealt with and told them of my new practice as a mediator and neutral arbitrator. It took a while, but I started booking cases and now I am the Bucks County alternative to the large mediation and arbitration services in Philadelphia.
This change in practice afforded me the time and temperament to be the mom I wanted to be, one that could hear and attend to the needs of her children.
Women in the profession of law are not just lawyers. They are equally and at all times, mothers, volunteers, homemakers, daughters and so many other things.
My promise to myself to put away all men who abuse their wives, didn’t get me to the D.A.’s office, but to 30 years as a volunteer attorney representing women who have been abused in protection from abuse actions. My promise to become financially independent has been fulfilled and for many years now, I have lectured and mentored women on the need for financial independence.
My drive for physical fitness and raising healthy kids lead me to volunteer for years in our Township park system and to ultimately serving in an elected position in local government.
I have spent the last 20 years in an organization that has as its mission, raising a healthier youth community.
Working my whole life at so many different jobs, made me confident and competent is so many areas, a competence I share in volunteering my time to my community. No one said that the return for good, hard work is only money. The payoff for hard work can also be, giving to your community, improving your singing vocal technique, running a faster 5K, a clean house, a well prepared meal, many friends who feel friendship, a family that feels loved.
The decision I made to avoid getting hit by my dad because I didn’t know something turned into a positive love of learningnot only to improve my law practice, but also to try new things. I started piano lessons in my 30’s and voice lessons in my 40’s. Now I sing solo and in several choirs. I am always working toward something. I am always prepared. I am focused and committed. I do what I say I am going to do, because I came to realize that one of the most important attributes of an attorney, or to anyone for that matter, is her reputation. I have always striven for one of integrity.
The vigilance I learned as a child watching my father so as to detect his moods gave me an ability to read micro-expressions and hear what is not being said, both valuable tools in mediation. My dad was prejudiced and a racist, and I challenged him to the point where I got hit because I didn’t agree. I became fearless and an independent thinker as a result, easily unbiased and a champion of acceptance of all people. I respect and admire anyone who works hard at what they do.
Work has been my salvation and my gift.
My older brother didn’t make it to a fulfilling life. I feel a responsibility to live larger for him as well. I ask again, why did I have the ability as a toddler to choose to learn over fear?Was I born with grit and my brother with none? I don’t know. Or, does my story even have anything to do with grit? Am Ithat person who coming from a violent childhood compensates for the sadness and shame with hard work in order to achieve acceptance and appreciation? Maybe.
All I know is that I scored high on (your) grit test. I’ll let you be the judge as to whether I am a gritty girl or someone who took advantage of all things good and bad in life and made the best of it.
I have won numerous awards and recognitions for my work in law and work in the community. Everybody says, they don’t do what they do for the recognition, but it is nice to be recognized just the same. What I know, is that I am a successful big fish in a small pond, do good work, have achieved what I wanted to achieve and continue to work at achieving excellence in my mediation and arbitration practice and in all areas of my life. I am happy, mostly content and at many times, full of joy.
Thank you for this opportunity to get to know myself better. It has been a labor of love.
Barbara N. Lyons
