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Hard Lessons Learned

December 13, 2011 by

Cruise Alaska – Google Image

Someday my ship will come; undoubtedly, it will run aground before docking because I am nothing if not stubborn to the bone.

I have a history of making bad choices, at the time they seemed to be great choices but in retrospect well let’s just say I might have done better. The thing is there are few things I would have done differently even if Gabriel flew golden wings all-aflutter and offered me a rewind. That is the funny thing about choices as we get older all our youthful indiscretions might not have been great, but unless we are completely incapable of self-examination and introspection we undoubtedly learned something from them.

Byzantine Gabriel – Wikipedia

Ten Lessons I Learned the Hard Way

  1. Nothing is Free, not even Lessons in Life somewhere, somehow and someone will pay.
  2. Men do not love you for your heart, mind or soul until long after the Lust Stage so step cautiously and listen carefully (others refer to the Lust Stage more politically correctly as the Courtship, Honeymoon, Infatuation or Romance Stage).
  3. Selfishness is inherent to the human condition, we have to work at unselfish acts don’t get angry when others don’t work as hard as you do or live up to your expectations.
  4. Extraordinary things happen to ordinary people every single day what happens afterward is what makes or breaks them, don’t judge unless you have been there and don’t allow judgment to affect your decisions and life choices, remember they haven’t been where you have been and you haven’t been where they have.
  5. I am not infallible or indestructible, dammit!
  6. I am not the smartest person in the world, however I am often the smartest person in the room and that pisses people off. It is sometimes better to simply keep my mouth shut until I know the terrain.
  7. I will never be too old to learn something new but it gets harder to apply new learning as I get older, never stop either even if you have to break a sweat.
  8. Hard hearts create ugly people and ugly people should be avoided at all costs no matter previous relationships or even family relationships, toxic are toxic.
  9. Politics and religion should never be discussed in mixed company unless you are willing to be dragged to the town square and burned by your friends and relatives
  10. There are some things that you should never tell anyone, not even your spouse, your siblings or  your best friend. Some thing’s that should remain under scar tissue or locked in the cellar.

Hard way lessons should be respected. You might have your own list of lessons learned, mine are simply those I find worked best for me. When I break them, ignored them or otherwise attempt to manipulate them to make them more palatable for others to swallow, it always cost me dearly.

Filed Under: Personal Notes Tagged With: , , ,

Crime, Punishment and Victims

December 11, 2011 by

Charge

Birth Date

Sentence Date

Release Date

First Parole Eligibility
Att Cap Murder w/ Deadly 12/14/1975 8/12/1992 3/13/2012 3/13/1997
2 Counts Att Cap Murder w/ Deadly 06/18/1976 4/13/93 3/09/2027 07/12/2000
2 Counts Att Cap Murder w/ DeadlyAgg Robbery w/Deadly 03/05/1976 3/08/93 3/05/2027 3/12/2000

The above is not random information designed to entice. This morning my friend and fellow Blogger Red called to ask permission to use information she knows about me as part of her on-going discussion (Reds Crime & Punishment). Of course, I am always happy to contribute, but thought in the interest of disclosure I would provide some of the facts.

Nearly Deadly Night

A night like any other really, the story, in a nutshell, I stopped for cigarettes and gas on my way home from work, it was February 7, 1992,  Benbrook, Texas a suburb of Ft. Worth. From there my nightmares begin, you can read the entire story at the link above, suffice to say my life was changed forever by three teenagers. Carjacked at gunpoint, held for over two hours I knew my life might end and I wasn’t ready. Ultimately, I was shot three times, twice through the neck and once a defensive wound in my forearm.

Funny the things you think about when you believe you might die. After the smoke had cleared and the tail-lights were down the road as I lay curled around myself first thinking how much bullets really hurt when they enter your body, I thought ……they took my brand new pack of cigarettes and just how unfair that was.

1992 UTWatch_ Texas Prison Overcrowding

Giving me Pause

The three young men involved were caught because they made stupid mistakes first in their choice of victims, we survived. Their stupidest mistake though was in committing their crimes in the first place, destroying their lives before they ever started. In all three cases, each of them had one parent serving time; in the case of one both parents were behind bars. This would make them the second generation to share the yard. One of their grandmothers said to the DA, please don’t send him away he is a good boy he thought they were only going to steal cars.

Huh?

In fact, he ended up turning evidence against the other two, he had a good school record, had never been in trouble before this; it is likely he didn’t know what was to come of that night. He tried to stop them but couldn’t and in the end had to back down, how is that for the ultimate peer pressure. This young man ended up with a twenty-year sentence because he thought he was going joy riding.

They Got Time but I Got Life

I will not go into the details here of either the short or long-term damage to my body

Huntsville State Prison – Wikipedia

or soul from this incident. The three offenders will someday walk free, I will never be free and it is extremely likely my life will be shortened by up to twenty years because of their actions and choices. This sentence provides a very different perspective.

I am often asked if I forgive them, the short answer is NO.

Victim Impact

Since I have been back in Texas, I have been privileged to volunteer with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in a program called Victim Impact. I wish they would call it something different, but I understand the meaning behind it and my involvement has provided me both insight and opportunity to truly think about the criminal justice system we have today. I have met some amazing people, other Victims also Volunteers, staff members and even on occasion some of the program participants . Heard some heart wrenching stories that make me want to weep, even when hearing them for the tenth time.

The program takes us, the victims inside of State and Federal prisons, State jails, juvenile facilities and parole groups to talk to offenders about what crime does to us how it affects us. The offenders in the prison and jail programs are volunteers who must be approved, they want to be there and it isn’t an easy program. They don’t get a gold star on their jacket for finishing it.

Time – kutnews Image

How I see it

I am not easy and some who hear me speak are offended by my lack of forgiveness. My only response is there will never be forgiveness until there is remorse and reconciliation it isn’t a right and cannot be demanded. My offenders have been up for Parole more than once each, I have been there each time fighting to keep them exactly where they are, through letter writing campaigns and petitions. Their crimes against me and against my family as the extended victims were brutal. I want every day, every hour, every minute the state promised me in the sentence handed down.

Crime and punishment are abstract until they are real. I believe strongly we have a system  that doesn’t serve us properly. We have spent far too long warehousing the non-violent

Garden of Angles dedicated to murder victims

and returning the violent to a society that is not ready for their enhanced skills. We have grown prison populations that include generations, it should be a national shame rather than a source of revenue and pride. Nevertheless, as a victim of a senseless violent crime I am thankful I can participate in the processes that ensure fair sentences meted out and completed when appropriate.

Some think me hard, others think I am vindictive demanding my pound of flesh. The truth of it is I don’t believe in forgiveness as a right and I don’t believe those that do me and mine harm should be able to demand their freedom. They caused immeasurable and have never said those simple words “I am sorry”. So why should I ever lift my demands they serve their sentences.

I will continue this some other time. There is far more to discuss on this subject.

Filed Under: Series: Crime and Punishment, Series: Victim Impact Tagged With: , , , , ,

Sleep Deprivation and Marriage

December 11, 2011 by

It is never easy to wake-up and find your leg dangling precariously over the side of the bed, as if your sub-conscious has prepared you to flee. Your attempts to roll over are prevented by the person dragging the covers off you, stealing your pillow and laying dead in the middle of your side of the bed. Not mind you, the middle of the King sized bed you share, but rather the middle of your side of the bed. Your arm wedged firmly beneath you, tingling due to the lack of blood circulation and the crick in your neck, it just might be permanent. This is me, six days out of seven.

First Thoughts

Finally, my eyes able to focus I note the time, 2am. Why in the world is it two in the morning, again. Oh, the injustice, is this really my fate. It is 2am, there is a stranger in my bed and I married him more than a decade ago. I frequently wake up with that thought in my mind, “who are you and why are you disturbing my sleep?” It doesn’t last, fading quickly as I am not prone to linger between sleep and the awakened state.

When I try to move his arm tightens around my waist and he makes that small growl in the back of his throat, even in sleep he knows I am trying to move away. It makes me smile even in my annoyance, nonetheless, I slip out of the covers to gain some distance and get my blood circulating again. I know our sleep habits perhaps better than I know our awake habits, he will move back to the center soon and I will regain some small space on “my side” of our King sized bed to finish the rest of my night’s sleep.

Who are you, really? Why are you here?

Image inflexwetrust

My husband, my mate, my partner; all that but mostly the bed hog, cover thief and sleep robber. He is a snuggler far more than I am, in this I think our roles are reversed. For all the years of our marriage, even when we go to bed angry he chases me across the expanse of our bed to trap me in his favored spoon position and hold me there through the night.

I have always been able to take the pulse of our marriage by our sleep position, though there are days I would rather him sleep anywhere but under and around me, I am comforted by his constancy. There has only been one time in the years of our marriage he did not seek me in his sleep, that time now a painful reminder for both of us that we must be present during our waking lives not just our unconscious moments of sleep.

He points to a picture of me as a five-year-old and laughs says I sleep in exactly the same

Only monsters 1963

position today as I did then, asks why I complain. My only answer is, at five I didn’t share the bed, my body didn’t have all the strange grievances then it does today, I was only afraid of monsters and most importantly I never woke up wondering “who the stranger in my bed was”. He just laughs at me and tells me there is always divorce and then I can have the whole bed to myself, yet here we are still married and still spooning.

I love you too.

Filed Under: Love & Marriage Tagged With: , , ,

The Virtue of Chastity, The End

December 9, 2011 by

I come to the end of this exploration. Somehow I expect I will continue to niggle at it now and then as our societal mores ebb and flow over time. We have seen these passages across generations though perhaps never so forthright, so in our face as today. Perhaps I am just showing my age when I say I am offended by the acceptance of degrading language and the flagrant sexualization of our young women.

Since 1968 and my brutal awakening to what the loss of virginity meant I have spent the greater portion of my life defining my personal ethos. How my peers viewed and treated me, how my female role models treated with me and most important how males responded and reacted to me was critical to how I defined my value. Not values, not morals, not ethics but VALUE. Despite the times; Free Love and early definitions of Feminism did not extend to the underlying social characterization of “Good Girl” versus “Bad Girl”; you were one or the other nothing in-between, there was no gray area of moderation.

FanPop Image

FanPop Image
 Archetype Good Girl – Sandy  Archetype Bad Girl – Rizzo

I begin to understand my own version of what the truth of Chastity within the context of Virtue might be.

Women were caught up in our early success. We forgot perhaps that winning our entrance to full social membership did not change our fundamental humanity or our femaleness. What is different today is the images women have become more sexualized and the lines less firmly divided. We happily watch the antics of the beautiful and wealthy, even forgive their walks on the wild side. Those of us on more common ground are claiming the definitions are hollow while still attaching values to the central themes. Young girls laugh as men shout in song and even on the street the words of their dishonor, trying even to claim it for themselves in the mistaken belief it will take the sting out. Perhaps create honor where there is none.

Young women emulate the dress and behavior of their role models albeit on a smaller scale, as their resources allow. These fantasy lives of their heroines played out in magazines and reality television fuel imaginations and hallway conversations. Young girls imitate the dances seen on videos, meant to demean and entice, without understanding either. We applaud the antics of Toddlers in Tiaras as three year olds dance to music and imitate the dance moves of ‘Video Vixens’; have we lost our minds?

Image Rock102online

Image MSNBC
 Madonna in her version 1990  Two-year old Mia with her mother 2011

Women of great wealth and beauty, women who might be our sisters, our mentors and our champions yet have few accomplishments beyond their ability to charm agree by their silence our only value is the imagery of sexuality, including simulating masturbation and sex acts as forms of entertainment. This then is the reality of our diminished value . We have accepted the image and our young girls imitate it gleefully, all too often with parental consent. Go to any High School sporting event and watch as cheerleaders dance to music with moves themed to entice and emulate the sex act, to what end?

What do our young girls find to model? It isn’t the woman of distinction in arts or science, in math or literature. It isn’t the women who stood up for their rights, who distinguish themselves with their contributions to our history or our present day, these are not who are lifted up in media, not the women our daughters emulate in the classrooms of America, not the women spoken of in song.

Image Wikipedia

Image Wikipedia

Image Wikipedia
 Stephanie Wilson – Astronaut  Gabrielle Giffords – Congresswoman  Maya Angelou – Poet & Civil Rights Activist

My conclusion is we should value Chastity not because it is demanded of us by standards that would see us less than our potential. Chastity itself is greater than the mere attachment of a hymen certainly and its loss does not devalue us as women. There is duplicity in the idea that women are not free to choose partners outside of the social contract of marriage without being labeled “less than”.

There is a reason we should value our own Chastity, to me it is the simplest reason of all, because we value ourselves. When we invite another into the inner sanctum of our lives we are bestowing something upon them sacred. Not sacred in religious terms but rather in fundamental female terms, this is our core this is who we are as our most secret and exposed selves. As women we are vessels of life, of compassion and empathy; we are that place of peace and succor. Our invitation is not to be taken lightly or diminished in the light of day.

The idea that Chastity as a Virtue can be socially defined and thus our bodies and souls become the battleground for our future psychosis is ultimately what has been central to my exploration.  Have I been successful at solving the problem? No, certainly not but perhaps in my exploration I have in some small part begun to find some recurring themes for my own life.

Filed Under: Virtues Tagged With: , , ,

The Virtue of Chastity in the Modern Age

December 9, 2011 by

The other day I explored the Virtue of Chastity as it applied to my own life; this left me with open questions. Keeping in mind, I have not personally defined Chastity as Virtue, simply accepted the original seven Virtues as existing in our lexicon and as social standards from which to begin my exploration. (Part One).

How times have changed, or have they? There was a time when Virginity was sacrosanct, Chastity not a commodity to be traded for popularity or acceptance.

Today the gray areas young people draw cause me to cringe; oral sex is acceptable because it isn’t real sex. Sexting isn’t crossing that line into pornography, unless you are caught. Popularity is traded for the number of partners acquired without trading your Virginity, the only thing you save for True Love. Public displays of sexual favors are not off limits so long as it is between friends. The rules change to accommodate a new morality that places emphasis on Chastity only as it applies to Virginity itself, yet even this is flung to the wind in favor of the need for affection and acceptance.

Girls as young as twelve are giving birth to the next generation. One of the most popular

Image TVRopes

shows on daytime television Maury, who has coined the phrase “you are not the Father” while “you the baby’s daddy” is sung viciously by the daily parade of witless women and clueless men who reproduce without restraint or regard. Another popular show is Teen Mom, which follows the misadventures of teenage mothers as they swim the turbulent water of motherhood, welfare and adult relationships with the teenage fathers of their children. We watch fascinated by these forays into other people’s lives, on the one hand publically condemning their choices while on the other making them celebrities by our puerile fascination.

Image LifeasaHuman

As I sit sipping my Latte at the local Starbucks, I watch a gaggle of young girls dressed as if they were heading over to the local stroll. I know, terribly judgmental nevertheless with short shorts, midriff tops and make-up plastered on with spatula this is the first impression. Their voices grate on the middle ear, fevered giggles over some boy or other as they call each other ‘slut’ and ‘ho’ affectionately, as if these names have no meaning or force. The persistent beat of music coming from their IPhone repeats the ugly undercurrents, the language of devaluation, ‘ho’, ‘bitch’, ‘slut’, while these future women bounce and titter.

As I watched these young girls, guessing their ages not more than fourteen, my responses were as follows:

  1. Do your mother / father know you are out in public dressed like that?
  2. Do you have the self-awareness to realize what you are agreeing to when you listen to that music and accept that language, those names?
  3. Do you know you cannot reclaim names and make them less or different from what they fundamentally are?

I wanted to snatch all of them wash their faces and take them to their homes; frankly I was afraid of what I would find.

Have we traded some fundamental self-awareness of our core being as women? Indeed, is Chastity an archaic and troublesome Virtue best left in the past now that we have discovered independence and been granted our liberties?

My personal exploration of this subject is leading me down a twisting path. I will finish Chastity as a Virtue in Part III.

Filed Under: Virtues Tagged With: , , ,

Chastity, Virtue or Burden

December 4, 2011 by

Wikipedia

Chastity also known as the state of being Chaste.

For those who struggle with this somewhat archaic definition what we are really talking about here is abstaining from all forms of sexual intercourse. To put it simply NO SEX.

Let’s get this out of the way first both genders can be chaste. All the Abrahamic religions reserve sex for marriage only. Many of the Eastern religions include cloistered monasteries, vows of chastity and view marriage as sacred. There are varying degrees to which all of the different religions define, preach and act on Chastity within society.

It is a rare man today, who wants to date a chaste woman. It is a rare woman today who

makes it out of her teens a virgin. Do we have two-caste system, a double standard? Women who are datable and women who are marriageable? Haven’t we advanced beyond the Victorian Age where “good” women were presumed to have no sexual desires? It does make you wonder why we laud the man famous for his promiscuity while still demanding women retain their purity.

Slut, horrifying word when applied to young girls beginning to express themselves and define whom they will be in the future. Chastity stripped by acts of violence, does this count against you? I have often

Google Image

wondered whether rape and loss of that all-important proof of virginity is the only consideration for being unchaste. From the age of 11 to 15, my classmates hung Slut around my neck as a Scarlet Letter, not because I had earned it by my acts but because others stripped me of my Virginity in a brutal and senseless act and there was no adult to defend me.

Did this make me unchaste?

My peers defined me in my formative years my first marriage at 15, thereafter. Though my much older husband knew the circumstances of my lost hymen, he blamed me anyway. His anger resulted in closed fists and harsh words leaving scars I carry even today. That I entered our marriage lacking said proof of chastity, made me less in his eyes, made me untrustworthy. Despite the circumstances of my loss, I was branded with Slut across my forehead in neon red, on this he and my mother agreed though they had never met.

Am I a Slut because I am normal and have pursued normal sexual relationships whether within marriage or not? Does any society have the right to judge me, especially if I do not agree to the labeling based on a set of religious / societal rules I do not subscribe to? I am nearly in my mid-fifties; I have had more than one husband and certainly a couple of other partners worthy to share my bed over the course of my lifetime. My Chastity is comfortably compromised, or is it?

How should I really judge myself against what I consider an archaic definition of the Virtue of Chastity? I know that I am a woman integrity, I have remained true to the vows and promises I have made to each partner I have had over my lifetime. That I have taken a different route and chosen different paths no dispute. The struggle to define Chastity as a Virtue in terms that make sense to me, as a woman though, that remains an open question.

Having not concluded my search for answers, I will continue the pursuit of the Virtue of Chastity for the twenty-first century woman tomorrow.

Filed Under: Virtues Tagged With: , , ,

Virtuous Women Hand to Hand

December 3, 2011 by

Merriam-Webster defines Virtue as follows:

1 a: conformity to a standard of right: morality b: a particular moral excellence; 2: plural: an order of angels see celestial hierarchy; 3: a beneficial quality or power of a thing 4: manly strength or courage, valor; 5: a commendable quality or trait: merit; 6: a capacity to act: potency; 7: chastity especially in a woman

  I especially like number 1 because it is so ambiguous. A woman of virtue conforms to an established standard of right.

My question as I contemplated the definitions is who defines right for the rest of us? Am I only virtuous if I conform to the vague standard that others establish? What should I do if I believe these standards are counter to my best interest as a woman? Do I simply ignore them and live my life in my own best interest, outside of social boundaries? Should I silently allow others to cast aspersions on me because I do not agree to their definitions?

Is there a super-secret list somewhere?

I wondered about this and so went looking, my curiosity was aroused, what I found was enlightening.  Originally, there were four Virtues Wisdom, Justice, Courage and Temperance these came down to us from Plato and Aristotle. With the advent of Christianity, they were expanded to including four Cardinal and three theological virtues to offset the seven deadly sins.

  1. Chastity <=> Lust
  2. Temperance <=> Gluttony
  3. Charity <=> Greed
  4. Diligence <=> Sloth
  5. Patience <=> Wrath
  6. Kindness <=> Envy
  7. Humility <=> Pride
  

Wapedia.mobi
 

Acelebrationofwomen.com

After looking at the list, I searched for how these might directly apply to women today. The search was long and aggravating, all to often running into the historical references and more general terms, I even found reference to more modern video games. Eventually, what I found was women and the application of any virtue usually came back to Chastity, Obedience (huh?) and other strange manipulations to fit expectations of how women should behave within the context of religious characterizations. Historically, virtue was intended to carry women unerringly from their father’s house to their husband’s house to widowhood.

     

My Fathers House

 Medieval Practice of Giving away the Bride

All Images Google

Widows Weeds

This took my mind down the path of what about?

What about the duality of expectations between the genders, something that despite all the other social / economic and cultural changes remains consistently set in our minds. Why must women be chaste yet men need not be. Okay, let me rephrase the question, why is it that if women are unchaste there are distinct classifications (slut, bitch, whore, ho) which are lightly to extremely uncomplimentary, while if men pursue an unchaste lifestyle they do not qualify as anything other than STUD, with a wink and a nod.

Why is obey still an option in wedding vows? Sometimes not an option at all but a mandatory part of the vows a woman must recite. Would most men consider including this particular piece in their vows to their future wives? Somehow I suspect the answer is no. I am aware many women choose not to include it in theirs, but the fact remains it is still there. There are even national figures, women who stand in the spotlight of our political debate today who say  with pride they ‘obey’ their husbands and follow they ‘commandments’ in things as crucial as career choice and body privacy.

I am a woman of compassion. I have merit in my own right for my accomplishments. I have the capacity to act for good or ill and try always to act for good. While I do not have manly strength, I have strength, courage and valor. I am a survivor; truly, I am a victor over circumstances that might have left others bereft of joy in life. I know many other women like me; other women who have managed to thrive in a society that does not often look upon us with gladness or welcome us warmly to the hearth fire.

Women and virtue, are these still relevant today? I think they are but perhaps not in their original meanings. How do we then define the virtues so they are easily understood and capture the essence of who and what we are.

I struggled with the direction of this blog for the past week. This is the direction I am taking for now. I hope you follow and offer your thoughts.

Filed Under: Virtues Tagged With: , , ,

Women of Strength – Not for the Faint of Heart

November 27, 2011 by

Queen – Bitch – Goddess or QBG for short

Is there ever a point in time when it is acceptable to say, “This is me, it may get better some day because I decide changes need to be made; but this is me and this is as good as it gets.”

I believe this statement is particularly important for women. We should own it and teach it to our daughters. We should say it in our heads as if it were a mantra, a healing chant and then sometimes we should get up close and personal and snarl it to whomsoever dares to question our value as humans or as women. For all the self-help books, videos and television ‘doctors’ out there promoting various ways in which we can improve our lives or just ourselves, there are few that simply encourage self-validation and acceptance. Sure, many say acceptance is the place to start your journey but what if I don’t want to take any trip, what if the statement above is the entirety of it all.

“This is me, it may get better some day because I decide changes need to be made; but this is me and this is as good as it gets.”

Taking it one-step further, here is the rest, to be snarled at the deniers, the self-help gurus and those who believe we are incomplete or in need of fixing.

“The journey to get here was long and sometimes harrowing so I think I will just stick with the me I am. Don’t like it? Please do feel free to jump off the ME train and find another as your opinions are of very little interest to ME.”

Does that sound harsh? Does it sound as if I might be touched by anger or even bitterness? I am not really but let me posit the following and perhaps this will help place my statements in better context.

Literature offers up four archetypes of the female personality, which we accept without question. While the conventions for these archetypes have changed with the inclusion of more modern heroines the basis of their personality remain consistent and fit our a universal unconscious mind. The female archetypes are as follows:

  Damsel (in distress) or Virgin
Take them home to mother and marry them.

Wikipedia – 1950’s Pulp Movie
Mother (Healer / Crone)
The Queen, our Mother.		  

Google – Mother Theresa
  Femme Fatale (Prostitute / Bitch)
Love and Hate her, demean her and scorn her.

Google – Scarlet O’Hara
Warrior (Avenger / Goddess)
Flawed by life she is strong but feared.		  

Google – Xena

From these archetypes are drawn all of the variations that typify how women are perceived by and interact within society. Usually we don’t fall into a single archetype but combine aspects them all with one being the most dominate. Depending on life experiences and how we process these, by the time we are adults we will have fallen into our primary ‘role’, our ‘This is Me’ personality and we shouldn’t be forced to apologize if we make others uncomfortable with how we turned out.

Queen – Bitch – Goddess or QBG for short

I was eleven the last time I fell under the Damsel designator from that time on I begin walking a path that was entirely my own, often with no particular destination in mind but a clear idea I wasn’t going to

ABCPrague Czech Crown Jewels

be a victim. These days my this is me statement is, “QBG all the way, I am certain any improvements will be entirely accidental in nature.” It used to be I was insulted by Bitch when used in combination with my name, these days I own it. I earned the title the hard way and hold tight for the sake of my history, for everything that came before; it is mine all mine. My title, my crown signifies my strength as a woman, not to be taken lightly not to be set aside or in need of improvement simply because I don’t fit the norm or others expectations.

What is a woman of Strength?

What do you think this means, when someone says you or another woman is strong? Do you think it is in reference to strength of character or ability to endure hardship without folding? Do we look upon this woman of ‘strength’ and her accomplishments because they are greater than what we would expect of her gender, or because she has overcome greater obstacles to achieve them despite her gender?  There are those women who we label strong because of what they have achieved despite great adversity. We see their strength as an outcome of events and applaud their ability to overcome their circumstances rather than inherent to their core personality.

Art.Com – Burning Joan of Arc, the Heretic

When we speak about the strength of women individually or as a gender is there something we are tapping into culturally, something that has the potential to make us uncomfortable? To be a strong woman often means sacrificing a fundamental aspect of ourselves. Historically women who stepped out of traditional roles had to hide their womanhood, such as Joan of Arc who ultimately burned at the stake; or give up parts of themselves, such as Elizabeth I of England who gave up marriage and love to rule.

Society does not allow for strength in women simply as a part of our personality without attaching often demeaning labels to us. It seems the ideal is still the Damsel rather than the Warrior. Am I a strong woman? I like to think that I am. My strength is inherent to my personality, it is core to me. Has my strength allowed me to survive situations in which others might have crumbled? The only answer I can give is yes. I believe that my life has proceeded along certain paths because I have the personality of a Warrior. Has this made my life more difficult at times? Certainly, however, it has also made me capable and given me the tenacity necessary to fight the battles I needed to fight to survive. Though these are stories for another day, one of my siblings once said to me I was chosen to be carjacked, shot and left for dead because I was the only member of my family strong enough to survive the event. At the time our family required ‘saving’, this event helped to bring us together thus saving us. Obviously my ‘strength was necessary for this happen and clearly also for my own survival.

Women are born with the ability to meet every challenge placed before them, just as men are. Many of us fail to live up to our potential or even understand our potential due to social conditioning and expectations. Just as men, we are rarely any single thing, rarely just a Warrior or a Mother. Rather we are a combination of all the archetypes. As we mature and take on experiences one type becomes dominate usually through circumstance. Strong women – are we victims, bitches, warriors; or are we simply multi-dimensional human beings?

For me I will continue to answer this question this way:

Queen – Bitch – Goddess or QBG for short

Filed Under: Women Tagged With: ,

What Price Beauty

November 24, 2011 by

What is the function beauty in our day-to-day life?

This is a very personal question that each of us must answer. What is the function of beauty in our society, how does it facilitate our advancement and success. What does it draw from and to us in life? If we are beautiful, can we skate across the pond without the ice cracking beneath us? If others believe we are beautiful do we get a pass on all that is ugly in life, able to blithely walk through dark forests without the wolf crossing our path, or must we be convinced of our own beauty for this to be true?

What price beauty? What are we willing to pay, to sacrifice to prevent the mirror from shattering?

Are the questions above the right questions at all? There are many definitions of beauty, over the years these definitions have changed in our minds eye, however the ‘correct’ definition is given to us by Merriam-Webster, below; how we then interpret the qualities are an entirely different standard all together.

1 : the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit : loveliness 2 : a beautiful person or thing; especially : a beautiful woman 3 : a particularly graceful, ornamental, or excellent quality 4 : a brilliant, extreme, or egregious example or instance <that mistake was a beauty (Merriam Webster , 2011)

The question of beauty, what it means particularly to us as women is one that someday must be answered. One day we might say to much or to little is the price already paid by our young girls, our daughters even our mothers. Nevertheless each of us must say something so we might move through the world with some confidence, dignity and comfort in our skin. Those sly comments we hear beginning at a young age if we are imperfect in any way, if we are short or chubby; if we are clumsy or we are late to bloom, those terrible asides all serve to shake us to the core. Worse those terrible commentaries of our shortcomings, our flaws compared to cousin Jane or the neighbor next door come from those who should be our greatest cheerleader, our booster the one person in our lives that

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should see no blemish in us, ever. We are brought low, dropped to our knees in fact, by what can only be their clear vision of our lack of beauty. This then is our fate, how the mirror will forever reflect us; unlovely no matter what we do to change our external self the voices in our head will forever yammer on;

‘You have such a pretty face if only you would lose a few pounds’.

‘Cousin Jane has such nice skin, with her peaches and cream complexion maybe you should stay out of the sun so you don’t turn so brown’.

‘I don’t know where you get those thick ankles they must come from your father’s side of the family you look like a peasant woman’.

‘I am sure you will grow out of the baby fat stage eventually, though most of your friends are already much thinner than you. Maybe we should put you on a diet’.

‘We will just have to make the most of what you do have, after all you are smart. Lots of girls find husbands even though they aren’t great beauties like your cousin’.

There are so many other examples, so many mirror-shattering statements our mothers and grandmothers, aunts and even fathers say to their daughters. By the time a she is a teenager her self-image can be destroyed, possibly for life. How a young girl and later the woman she becomes acts on these soul shattering characterizations of who she is will define her for years to come, the consequences could be life altering.

What price beauty?

What do we pay for the soul shattered and ego battered women of the most recent

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generations? Maybe a better question is this, what have they paid for what has been done to them by their families, by well-meaning friends and not so well meaning peers, by society and the media. What debt is owed for Toddlers in Tiara’s and beauty queens unable to form coherent sentences or identify the current President of the United States? How do we repatriate into normal society? How do we begin to convince these women whose mirrors tell them daily their value is less, far less based on the extra five pounds they carry or their lack of perfectly symmetrical features, that in fact they have a value beyond their surface.

What price beauty when taken against the value of a woman’s soul?

What price beauty when compared to a lifetime of diminished opportunity and self-inflicted battery.

What do you see when you look at me? Do you judge me by the circumference of my hips? Do you evaluate my intellect by what you guess is my dress size? Do you speculate I am  lazy and without self-control? Do you presume to know me before we have been

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introduced, before you know my story. What price beauty and the judgment of a society that has failed so far to find value beyond the surface of a woman.

What is the function of beauty? It opens doors for women everywhere. The price we pay in not meeting the standard is diminished opportunity for love, for work, for friendship even. Perhaps we can be the fat friend, the ugly friend; you know the one every clique wants and needs but we will never fit and never be fully part of anything because we don’t believe in our own value, our mirror was shattered long ago.

What price, the price of our soul the only true value we had we paid thousands of time over.

Filed Under: Women Tagged With: , ,

What we Forgot to Tell You

November 22, 2011 by

Did we forget to tell you?

The number one reason we married you wasn’t for your sparkling wit or your dimples either, those certainly caught our eye but they weren’t number one. It wasn’t for your six-pack, neither the one you proudly show off at the gym nor the one you pick up from the corner store on Monday nights. It wasn’t for the TGIF dinners you bought us or the occasional Chick Flick movie you suffered through on Saturday night. It wasn’t even that you make nice with our girl friends to make a good impression or that you try hard to get along with our family.

What we must have not told you when we agreed to spend our lives with you is this.

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We married you because we saw something in you we didn’t see in all the other boys that did all those things during their hot pursuit.

We agreed to marry you and spend our life with you because of all the opportunities we had we thought deep down in our hearts that you were the one. The one that would step beside us, not in front of us but beside us.

You made us laugh, you made us feel safe, you made us feel smart, beautiful and mostly you made us believe together we would achieve greatness. Does that make sense? When we walked that aisle after being pronounced husband and wife we didn’t meekly follow you we walked side-by-side and that was how we expected to live our life with you. We married you because we thought we would be your partner.

Did we forget to tell you what we wanted?

This is the only explanation there can be for the strange and utterly inexplicable changes our marriages seem to take after the vows. Being women we tend to look to our own failures first rather than any of yours, we gather into ourselves for deep examination anything we might have done that would cause this baffling change in the dynamic of our relationship.

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Where once you were our White Knight, our romantic hero and our friend, now you are something entirely changed from the man we said yes to what seems to be an eternity ago. This change can only be due to our failure, we think. Our failure to communicate to you our desire to keep the person we married at least somewhere we can find him. More importantly even to keep ourselves from disappearing too.

We ask ourselves countless questions during this time of examination. Questions that hurt us deeply because there are no real answers.

Why aren’t we laughing at the same things anymore? Did we forget the fundamentals that brought us together or is it that we forgot to tell you they were important to us in that forever sort of way. What happened to the man who would laugh when we forgot the punch line, not at us but with us. Where did that man go, the one who was willing to tell us about his foibles and fears, the one who was willing to be vulnerable with us now and then? The guy who would sit for hours and share intimacies as if they were invaluable gifts between us to be handled with great care, where did he disappear to?

Did we forget to tell you before the vows were read, before we said yes that we wanted there to be an “us” not just a you and an I.

How did we suddenly end up on opposite ends of the couch? Did we forget to tell you that part of what made us so happy was touch, just that random snuggle that didn’t lead to anything else.

How did the bed suddenly get so big? Why have you moved to Siberia? Why is there your side and my side now instead of us piling into the middle of the bed like puppies randomly wrapped around each other. Did we fail to tell you that was the way we wanted to wake up with you, wrapped around you and in your arms? The air conditioner isn’t broken so your excuse that it is to hot can’t be right. I am certain you aren’t suffering from hot flashes, what has happened since we said “we do” that we don’t unless it is part of the post-coital moment and even then it truly is only a moment till you roll over to your personal Siberia, your side of the bed.

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What have we forgotten in our march to the alter of forever, what did we fail to say to you?

It wasn’t “I love you”, those words tripped off our tongues thousands of times, perhaps to easily to thoughtlessly. Conceivably we didn’t tell you what that meant to us, when we said “I love you” did you understand it meant all the parts of you, both what we see and what you thought was hidden, that we are in it forever even when it feels like we are on top of Everest and we can’t breathe?

Did we fail to tell you there will be days we don’t like you much, we still love you.

Did we forget to tell you in our breathless joy at becoming your wife what we already knew about marriage and you didn’t; marriage is hard work, never easy. That it takes two strong people willing to go the distance every single day to make it work. Not one person willing to go half way most days but two willing to bust through all the hard stuff every day.

Did we forget to tell you even though we love the White Knight we don’t need him. Even though we love the idea of the Romantic Hero, we don’t really want to be married to him every day just once in a while we would like for him to show up and sweep us off our feet. Did we fail to tell you what we really wanted is for you to be fully in the moment, all of them every single day. Everyone changes, everyone grows we just want you to change and grow with us not apart from us.

When you say to us, we have grown apart our hearts break, all we can think is we forgot to tell you something important.

We forgot to tell you we love all the bits and parts of you. We forgot to tell you to be part of something you have to stay in the moment and stay part rather than apart. We forgot to tell you it was important to us you stay so instead we watched you drift your own way. Once you had us we became less vital to your and we forgot to tell you we were still here.

Filed Under: Love & Marriage Tagged With: , , ,
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