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The other day I came across my neighbor at a coffee shop.  I hadn't seen her in a while and I noticed how different she looked. Her eyes were no longer swollen, and for once she had no dark bags under them.

"How are you?" I asked her.

"I am much better, thank you," she replied, while adjusting the baby carrier in which her nine months old son snuggled against her body. He looked like an infant koala, holding onto her sides with his tiny hands and his spooning feet. He was also quite a few pounds heavier than the last time I had seen him, unlike her who looked skinnier.

"What do you mean: much better? What happened before?" I asked her, even though I already knew the answer.

"Well, it was very hard at first. I cried and felt lonely. Why other women don't tell you how difficult it is?" she confided.

"I totally get it," I said. "I bawled for two years, nearly, but it will surely change when he goes to preschool, you'll see.

 

            I walked home thinking about the encounter. I recalled when my girl was an infant and how desperate I felt; the days seemed interminable, the loneliness a voracious throat with teeth from which escape wasn't an option. When I was offered to join a mother support group I jumped from the excitement of reconnecting with adulthood. Finally! I told myself, other women will know what I mean and we'll help each other!  But it didn't turn out that way as the discussions revolved more around baby diapers and meals scheduling than how our lives have been turned upside down. These encounters left me empty handed and I felt as if I had landed on a planet full of aliens.

 

            One has to wonder why women don't reach out more fully and in sharing truths that are so similar. We all go through the same processes and it would benefit us tremendously if we could confide in one another; we would stop doubting ourselves and not feel so alone, and communities would spring up organically.  It took me years to identify the ones who later became my best friends; in the meantime I could have easily drown in my depression and the neurosis that arise naturally from spending so much time alone.

 

Is this phenomenon cultural? Is it economical? Dr. Rosemary Ruether suggests, in her book Gaia and God, that the way goods are produced has a lot to do with the splitting of communities and the separation between people. As the means of productions are concentrated in geographical areas away from home, people are forced to physically leave their own turfs and their extended families. Furthermore, they are taught to portray a side that doesn't reflect what they experience at any given moment, which robs them (us) of the chance to form meaningful relationships and feel less isolated in a world where it's harder to find the help we need, especially as parents raising kids.

 

            When crying over not knowing what had happened to me and how I was going to survive those days of extreme isolation, I called my aunt in Italy. Her reply was: "Remember, it is impossible for a human being to be with an infant twenty four hours a day and stay happy and sane all the time. In the old days there were cousins, mothers, grandparents and a whole tribe raising the child with you. Now we are alone and need to reach out for help, even if it means that of people you don't know like babysitters." Her words soothed me, and reminded me of the importance to be authentic, even if it means revealing to perfect strangers that NOT all is perfect all the time.  Who knows?  May be that person is meant to become our best friend, but we will never know unless we trust in each other.

 

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Last night my sixteen-year-old daughter came home sobbing. "I...I..." she kept trying to say something but the words wouldn't come out. Eventually, she told me that her feelings had gotten hurt during her Varsity team soccer tryouts.

"Did you perform badly?" I inquired.            

"No," she said; "it's just that some of my friends were mean to me," and explained how a couple of the older girls-with whom she shares sleepovers and clothes-pretended not to know anyone and acted as if they owned the field.

"They kept yelling and bossing a few of us around," she continued, "it was horrible."

"What did the coach do?" I asked.

"Nothing! He sat in a corner and watched," she replied.

"You know," I said, "this is why sometimes the world goes crazy. We think we are better than others, and try to destroy the weaker individuals or species, but all we are doing is hurting ourselves."

"How?" she asked.

"By refusing to recognize that competition, especially amongst women, diminishes our strength and annihilates our compassion, our empathy and our innate gift of caring for ourselves and others. What's good about that?" I replied.

"I guess you are right," she said and went to bed.

It stands to reason that these girls would feel threatened and react accordingly. After all, they know the ropes-having been on the team for more than a year-and fear losing their place. But, as healthy as at times can be , competition taken too far is detrimental and dangerous.

Some of the most famous feminist writers, historians, psychologists and anthropologists like Audrey Lorde, Jane Baker Miller, Rianne Eisler, Rosemary Radford Ruther and Jane Belenky, believe that women should never compete. Born with the natural gifts of nurturing and empathizing with others' suffering, women form the foundations of our society-creating communities, developing relationships, tending to the sick, the elderly, babies and the handicapped. Cultural values of "survival of the fittest," "competing until you die," and "eat what you kill," minimize women's natural gifts. Soon we are warriors ready to kill anything that stand in our way, including friends who have a chance of getting the coveted spot on the team. We fail to see that this behavior also blinds us when we need to save endangered species and appreciate the others' gifts that may not be as apparent as beauty, physical strength or athletic aptitude. These beliefs are what keep us from growing more compassionate, wiser and generous. It is these beliefs that may ultimately destroy our planet as we know it.

Only teens, these girls have already replaced their feminine traits with the ruthless values of a society based on aggression and dominance, no doubt inspired by the adults around them. It breaks my heart, but it also makes me realize how much work there is to do.

I want my girl to make the team; it will help her self-esteem and improve her athletic skills. But, if to make it she has to kill off her inherent, inner beauty, then I'd rather that she didn't. I hope that she sees the difference and can look at her friends with compassion and understanding and, more importantly, the firm resolve of never to be like them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“This is not about feminism, but the way feminism was taken in by this society. You want to work? Well, you'll work and raise the children and do everything in the house. No one could be expected - woman or man - to work 80, 90 hours a week. It's not human and it's just not bearable.” By, Marilyn French

This sentence best exemplifies the dilemma of America in the twenty first century. Reportedly, women now represent more than fifty percent of the work force, but in many cases they are also the ones raising the kids and managing the household. So, often, the mothers who can afford to do so quit their jobs to raise their children, because they see the impending disaster that arises from two people working insane hours (leaving aside that most men prefer to work than staying home). These same mothers are, unfortunately, faced with the question of what to do once the kids leave home. At the pace at which corporations travel (fast!), it’s unthinkable for a woman to rejoin at the level she was before kids, but it’s also unfair to penalize her because society is set up in a way that doesn’t allow for parents to raise families AND work. So, what is a woman to “do” when the children go to college?

For now, and until our culture understands the need for more balance, we should ask ourselves how we have changed in the years of managing households, organizing other people’s lives and juggling several balls at once, and what that means. The how refers to the level of compassion, wisdom, strength and endurance that we have acquired and the what speaks to where these traits fit the best. Since women have (and fully utilize) their intuition and are by nature versed in affiliation and community with others, it suits us best to help the rest of humanity along, i.e., men and children. Since the ills of society are many, i.e. a culture that is profits driven, a complete disregard for the elderly, a lack of adequate social services, an environment that is being destroyed, why not delve into one of these major issues and apply our natural and learned skills to heal these areas? Whether we have become mothers or not, all of us, middle-age women, are hungry for more fulfilling roles and the feeling that are contributing to the growth of our society in a meaningful way.  Right now there are many not-for-profits organizations addressing these issues, however these much needed changes can also occur as a result of the efforts perpetrated by the huge pool of talent of mothers rejoining the work force once the children leave.

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   Are women equal to men today? If this question were to be asked of any of my friends they would undoubtedly say: Yes! Women (at least in the Western cultures), are finally equal to men in their freedom to choose, to attend the schools they want, to participate in sports, to vote and to pursue many more forms of independent living. And yet, if we look carefully, we can see how our gender is still considered secondary to  that of men.

    Jean Baker Miller, a famous psychiatrist, and Riane Eisler, author of "The Chalice and The Blade, tells us that "in society as presently constituted, only women are geared to be carriers of the basic necessity for human communion, and to in fact, value their affiliations with others more highly than even themselves. In contrast to men, who are generally socialized to pursue their own ends, even at the expense of others, women are socialized to see themselves primarily as responsible for the welfare of others, even at the expense of their own well-being."  These traits is what does us in, so to speak, because even though we will all attest that what we do, i.e. weaving the structure of society's foundations through the creation and the maintaining of strong families, communities and healthy relationships, it is still not regarded as important as what men do, i.e. pursue careers and making money.

    To understand why this is, we must learn of how the ruling and governing of society shifted millennia ago from the point of view of partnership to that of dominator (we must thank the invasions of the Kurgans and Dorian tribes followed by the Greek/Roman empires). Western civilization history as we learn it in school focuses largely on winners and losers, conflicts and peace, but it is always based on one class dominating another, not how the relation between the two genders interact and work with each other. And to borrow again from Eisler, "the way a society structures the most fundamental of human relations profoundly affects all aspects of living and thinking." For instance in Crete, prior to the barbaric ascendence, power was primarily equated with the responsibility of motherhood rather than with the exaction of obedience to a male-dominant elite through force or the fear of force. This is the definition of power where women and traits associated with women are not systematically devalued.

    To change the paragdime and embrace a system-a thinking and decision-making system, that is-based on the two halves working together (Gylanic) as opposed to Androcentric, i.e. "men's centered," a process of remolding and replication has to occur. Just as we forgot that at some point in history peoples, lands and societies were governed peacefully together, we must remember that we have been conditioned to think in a certain way, i.e. dominator vs. subjugator, conquest vs. loss, etc... and that we must strive to re-establish a society based on the relation between the two halves in synchrony with Nature and in the full respect of other species.

PS All the material and social technologies fundamental to civilization were developed before the imposition of a dominator society and the principle of food growing, as well as construction, container and clothing technology were all already known by the Goddess-worshipping peoples of the Neolithic. Pottery was also invented by women and the cultivation of the soil is to this day primarily in the hands of women. (The Chalice and The Blade, pp. 66-69)

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"The Industrial Revolution, in its need for office and factory workers, pulled fathers away from their sons and, moreover, placed the sons in compulsory schools where the teachers are mostly women." By, Robert Bly author of Iron John

Literally speaking, Patriarchy means ‘the dominion of males over females.' Historically speaking, it supposedly originated with the beginning of slavery and the industrial revolution, which in both cases gave the OK to society to appropriate resources and people for the goodness of a few.

Today Patriarchy is obviously still existing-we all know about men running most companies (not all, of course), being the last ones to say Yes or No at home, being old and gray and yet labeled sophisticated (where an old woman becomes a grandma) and the list continues. Women need to understand when they are not taking responsibility for their actions and do whatever they can to make things right when they operate within limited realms, i.e. Patriarchal, to reach equality in pay, social welfare, personal and racial discrimination etc... And I am sure we all agree on this.

But the real question is: what about the men? What about the way they have been ‘bottled up' in a society, particularly in America, where from the 50's and 60's they have been expected to produce, provide, lead, not cry, become soft and understanding once their day job was over? What about the fact that they grew up with parents who lived through the Depression and hardened to the point where for a man to cry was considered a sin?

For a woman it's acceptable to look within and work on herself. It has been necessary, I may add, for a woman to do so because otherwise the immense fragmentation of having to be a worker bee AND a mother and a wife and a friend etc...would have destroyed us. Thus women are healing and growing and becoming stronger. They have the feminine side well rounded and now that they work outside the house, the masculine too.

But what about the men? Who is going to give them the break from the treadmill of competition and over-production? How and where do they have the time to be alone to grow inside, to be with the children as a real presence for them, to rest and to have healthy relationships with their spouses?

Instead of speaking of Patriarchy, we should call it ‘unjust domination.' Domination by all of species for the greed of few, i.e. corporations doling out outrageous amounts of money to top executives while laying off the lay men; domination of animals, i.e. eating more meat than necessary and reaping off the extra resources for the third world country; domination of plants, i.e. by destroying forests for the greed of developers.
I think that this kind of domination is what creates the unbalance.

Men are left behind and labeled patriarchal, generally speaking because they have had no chance to catch up with women and do the internal work we have done to become ‘less egotistical and softer'.  Thus they are like flying trapeze that can never reach the ground safely. They have to keep going and stay strong, lest they fall behind and lose their spot.
If somehow society were to have the same expectations on women as it has on men, I am sure that they too would develop their feminine side, i.e. intuition and nurturing, and act more justly toward the other gender.

P. S. Let's not forget that in our society work is taken very seriously. Any man who doesn't ‘work' feels wronged and like a fish out of water, thus the chances to develop the self and yet maintain a certain status are even more few and rare.

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If you are a middle aged American woman living in the suburbs and you haven’t seen the movie Revolutionary Road, I suggest that you do.

It depicts the story of a married woman trapped in the mind-numbing, ordinary life of a suburban house-wife and full time mother, her struggle to reclaim her identity, and her relationship with a husband who tries to hush her cries while he continues with his undisturbed career. The movie shows us the malaise of a culture that prefers to shut down a woman’s feelings in the self-serving illusion that a pretty home with a yard, a faithful stay-at-home mom with two beautiful children and a hard-producing husband are the answer to a her quest for happiness and fulfillment (ironically, the only person seeing through the lies is a guy who had been hospitalized for an alleged mental illness and who has the courage to tell April’s husband that he is a hypocrite). The movie doesn’t end well, predictably so, but leaves one with the clear picture of how and why so many women cries have gone unheeded, and continue to be so, over the years, in the name of outward appearances and peace for their husbands and families.

Like April, I too for years have questioned how and why I have come to lose my identity, lost in the myriad of household chores as much as in raising my child and in living my life mostly through the successes of my husband’s career. I held jobs here and there, but none of them panned out as smoothly or as visibly successful as the professions I had had prior to marrying and having children. My talents (I speak four languages and have worked in high-tech, highly regarded positions) struggled to find a place in the small talks of a suburban town while performing mind-numbing chores like grocery shopping or taking my child to the park. Why was this happening? I asked myself over and over.


Literature points out that a woman goes through three phases:
•    a first encompassing youth and adolecensce and the assimilation of notions relevant to her culture;
•    a second during which she expresses what she has learned in a professional sense, in her family life and in her community;
•    a third where, particularly in a Western culture, she questions the value of of her actions and longs to revisit her deepest feminine side.
That a woman finds herself puzzled and often in distress during the third phase of her life is a byproduct of her having assimilated and bought into the patriarchal values which have been prominent in the industrialized societies since the birth of the Greek and the Roman cultures. Throughout time, we have lost our ability to recognize how we take care of others before taking care of ourselves, and often fall into the trap of believing that “a job” will save us, forgetting how this job and its paramters were created by men, and lack an intuitive/feminine side which allows for balance and a life beyond work. Thus, a woman ha sto choose: she either raises a family or works. If she does the first, her creative expressions and talents are underutilized and the privatization of the home since the 50’s and 60’s will most likely cause her to become desperately isolated. ; if she chooses the second, she needs to renounce her dreams of having balance in her life.

Maureen Murdock, author of “A Heroine’s Journey,” writes of how a woman feels after having raised kids and done everything asked of her:

As she peels off the well-worn mask she presents…being nice, polite, compliant, agreeable…(she will) find daggers of rage about time sacrificed, confusion about betrayals…sadness for having abandoned herself, and helplessness about taking the next step. (120)

What is a woman to do, one may ask, after all these years?
The answer lies in our ability to communicate with one another and come together in full consciousness of the mechanisms at work around us. Only then can we begin the task of changing those aspects of our culture that don’t accomodate our needs as women, as mothers and as very creative individuals.

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I face many years ahead without the task of raising my child and find that there is no model to accommodate whom I have become and what I have to offer. I don't want to be only a wife, I don't want to rejoin the corporate world which will leave me scarred and without a life outside the office, I don't want to hear a thirty-something tell me how to manage a project. I have done all that and more. So, where do I fit now?

As we look for the next step in terms of a career or purpose, we believe what the world tells us we ought to. We equate ‘career' with finding a job amongst the many a thousand that already exists. In many cases that alone leaves us dissatisfied. A ‘job' per se is, more often than not, not enough. What do I mean by that?

As we grow into our forties and fifties we change. Whether we have kids or not we change in measurable ways. From the days when we lived alone and all we had to worry about was our job and our wellbeing, once we marry or join lives with our partner(s) the essence of who we are is forever modified. Even if it is by virtue of living in a culture that sees women as the providers of emotional support, or whether it is because our partners can't alter the course of "their" direction, such elements push us against the wall of self-reflection.

Who are we now? Now that we have quit the earlier corporate job, have spent countless years tending to someone else's needs, have accepted less-than-what-we-deserve-or-can-do positions in the working world to accommodate our kids' schedule and the necessities of being part of a larger community, who have we become and where do we fit? 

The answer lies deeper than one may think. It is now, more than ever, that we need to pay close attention to what our heart tells us. As Nor Hall says in The Moon and the Virgin, "So the female void cannot be cured by conjunction with the male, but rather by an internal conjunction, an integration of its own parts, by a remembering or a putting back together of the mother-daughter body." Similarly, Maureen Murdock, author of A heroine journey (a MUST read for all) and a therapist, tells us that

"Women...between the age of thirty and fifty (carry) a dissatisfaction (that) is described as a sense of sterility, emptiness, and dismemberment, and even a sense of betrayal...These women have embraced the stereotypical male heroic journey and have attained academic, artistic, or financial success, yet for many the question remains, ‘What is all of this for?'

In Murdoch's estimation this ‘success' has left us exhausted, stressed and wondering how it all came about. She moves on to address the necessity for women to embrace their feminine nature and to heal the "deep wound of the feminine."

If we look at history since the early 1900's, it's clear how we have arrived where we are. As early as half a century ago women didn't live past much past their fifties. Giving birth to sometimes ten, fifteen children, tending to them and to the farm (or, as it was the case in the 20's and 30's, to the factories), took its toll on women. The ‘women problem' disappeared even before it had a chance to be acknowledged (never mind that writers like Virginia Woolf, Friedan, Rich and many others screamed their outrage at the overlooking of women situations; our institutionalized, industrialized, patriarchal society had different priorities). As the world wealth increased in North America and other Western nations especially, women became more educated, lived longer and had less kids. But this change left a huge gap in our gender's journey. Where is the model for the throngs of women who are still fairly young, who have worked in the corporate or non-corporate world to match their male allies and become independent, who have raised their children, who have gained spiritual and emotional understanding and maturity, and now face years ahead? How and where do they (we) fit? The first step, says Murdoch, is "the redefinition and validation of feminine values and an integration of these with the masculine skills learned during the first half of the century."  In other words, listening to our inner-self and nurturing the ‘daughter' we have inside that has been neglected in pursue of worldly and patriarchal dictated goals. The second step, I say, is to reconnect with one another in the firm belief that we are not alone, but rather a link of a much larger chain.

Our society values what we do, not who we are. Those of us who seek success in the world as it is today are bound to create an imbalance in our feminine selves. We know how to do things and achieve goals, but we carry a void inside that leaves us broken and lost. To heal we must first reconnect to our deeper selves, devoid of the world symbols, to listen to the energy within that spurs us to write, paint, sing or else. Let us be, not do. Murdoch says: "A healing...occur...as she begins to nurture her body and soul and reclaim her feelings, intuition, sexuality and creativity."

Once we have embraced all of us without shame and regrets, we must reconnect to one another for support and validation. Only us women can understand what we mean when we say: "Now what? Now that my child is out the door, now that I have cooked thousands of meals and laundered hundreds of loads, now that I have worked endlessly for someone's high profits, now that I KNOW BETTER, where do I go?"

As I spend my days doggedly reclaiming my true nature, I have faith in the journey and trust that the Universe will meet me where I am supposed to be. I hope that you do the same as it is from this place that the answer will come and, with time, a change will also occur in society that will reflect our quest and the integration of our deeper selves.

Please don't be afraid to comment. It is only through knowing that we are not different from one another in our feelings and thoughts that we can help ourselves uncover the next step(s) for our future and purpose. Thank you.

 

 

 

 

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