Dear Ladies of the Tracy Anderson Locker Room,

So let’s face it: Some days we are not our best selves.  [And when I say, “we,” I really mean “you.”]  Maybe it was a difficult school drop-off?  Traffic on 59thStreet?  Or maybe someone cut you in line for class.   I get it.  We’ve all been there.  But maybe we can all just try a little bit harder to be decent?  And again, by “we,” I mean “you.”

It’s true that on any given morning, amid the commiserating over sore feet, banter about the studio temperature -- “Too hot!” “Not hot enough!”-- a small segment of the clientele displays the basest of behaviors.  Rudeness and entitlement run rampant.  It could almost make you lose faith in your fellow women.  

And yet!  And yet! And yet!  Something extraordinary happened the other day, renewing my faith in all of you… yes, I said all.  Including you, habitual line cutter. And yes, even you, lunatic blow-dryer hog.   

Let me set the scene: The Tracy Anderson locker room is small and crowded. Space in front of the mirror is littered with bags of make-up, hairbrushes and piles of sweaty workout clothes.  The floor is strewn with wet socks, abandoned towels and scads of moist sneakers.  It’s the closest of quarters, rendering personal privacy next to non-existent.  So when I noticed a woman I know only slightly, crying to another woman, it didn’t occur to me to butt out.  

The crying woman, I’ll call her A, was asking through tears and gasping sobs if the other woman knew of a therapist, saying that trying to get pregnant had become a crushing issue for her, and that she was suffering terribly.  When the other woman came up empty, I jumped in, and offered the name of a therapist I knew.  Not at all perturbed by my interjecting, quite to the contrary, A looked at me like I had just thrown a life vest into the fertility pool in which she was drowning.

“No one talks about it.” she said as she grabbed my hand, adding, “No one tells you how hard it’s going to be.  I’ve done all the right things: gone off my meds, charted my ovulation, but I am still in a full panic.  And no one talks about it.”

While A spoke, another woman in the room asked A who her doctor was.

“I don’t have a doctor yet! That’s part of the problem. Finding someone who takes my insurance. It’s so overwhelming.”  

And with that, A pretty much dissolved into full-fledged sobbing.

None of us knew A or each other well, but we sat beside her on a bench in the room’s center, four strangers in various stages of undress.  We held her hand, rubbed her arm, gave her tissues and surrounded her with sisterhood. We took turns opening up about our own fertility trajectories: fears of being pregnant or of not being pregnant; how we, too, had felt panicked or pressured, had been poked and prodded, shared how we had suffered, wondered, despaired and cried.  And as the thread of our conversation wove its way around the locker room, woman after woman, came to the bench where we sat in solidarity and offered personal stories or words of support. Blow dryers turned off, phone conversations silenced.  Our collective focus was A.  It was a coming together of women, glorious to be part of, a moment as precious and as kind as I have ever witnessed.  Motherhood, or the quest thereof, is the great equalizer.

And then, just when it seemed the moment couldn’t get any better, like a dream, out from a haze of shower steam, emerged a small woman, with a wet head, wrapped only in a towel, headed right for A.

“Hi.  Hope you don’t mind my interrupting but I’m an OB/GYN.  My name is S.  Can I talk to you?”

Yes.  That happened.  Added into this magical mix was the incredibly kind, exceptionally generous and very wet Dr. S, who, as it turned out, belonged to a practice that had delivered several of the children of the women in the room, my own included.  I mean…can I get a hallelujah?!!  Dr. S made her way to the center of our huddle, spoke to A with care and calm, stroked her hand, and added, in huge orders of magnitude, to the collaborative comfort of the room.  

The mirrors fogged with the breath and heat of all of the advice.  After a time, A got up, blew her nose, wiped her tears and left the locker room, leaving with hugs, Dr. S’s contact information, a new therapist, a well-rubbed arm, and, most importantly, the knowledge that she was not alone on this journey, and never again alone in this locker room.  

In the days and weeks since, I have seen A happier, more content and at peace. For those of us who pitched in that day, we are bonded both to A, and each other.  We shared the best of ourselves and witnessed the greatness possible when women, even relative strangers, support one other.  Kudos all around, to the ladies of the locker room for the help and to A, for being brave enough to ask for it.  

I continue to keep my eye on you, A, and I know I’m not the only one.  That day made me feel a lot better about who we all are to one another. That being said, I’m also keeping my eye on you, habitual line cutter and you, too, blow-dryer hog.  Did you think I’d completely gone soft??? And if you think I mean you, well, I probably do.