I thought to stand upon the Hermit’s hill,
Hold high the beacon and o’er light the path below.
Instead I am the Hermit’s star,
The light within the Lamp,
Suspended from the Eternal’s hand.
C.T. 10/94
Woman to Woman
I firmly believe that if women are to free themselves from explicit and implicit biases and abuses, they must come together and free themselves. No one else can free us or give us the equity or equality to which every human being is entitled.
One of the subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, attitudes I’ve been hearing is that no white woman can really understand the life of a black woman.
While this belief, stated or implied, is accurate, it is also accurate to recognize that no black woman can really understand what it is to be a white woman. Actually, no woman from any ethnic, religious, or cultural background can really understand what it means to be a woman of a different ethnic, religious, or cultural background. Every grouping, regardless of how they are categorized, is unique unto itself, just as every woman within a grouping is unique unto herself. While such statements are accurate, they are also divisive. They create walls that can neither be scaled nor demolished, leaving all parties with a need to make a better world together and no way of doing so. When women are able and willing to set aside such divisions, they can honestly understand the “female” experiences which, while uniquely individual, we all have in common.
Let’s start with the two big “M”s: menses and menopause. These two physical, natural events change a woman’s life forever. At the very least, they take her into childbearing and out of childbearing. It doesn’t matter if she is mentally or emotionally ready. And, it is sad to say that many girls/women are not taught (or supported) about either of these physical changes with the attendant mental, emotional, and psychological changes and demands. Woman-to-woman education and support is all too often sketchy at best or absent all together. Ignorance or misinformation of these two most basic experiences in our lives makes us victims, afraid, uncertain, and vulnerable to abuse.
What else does every woman have in common with every other woman? Childbearing, by choice or not by choice, by chance or planned, changes a woman’s life forever. The yearning or not yearning for children, the desire to mother or not to mother is a world-wide common choice shaping a woman’s life. The decision to mother cannot be a substitute for having someone to love or be loved by. It is a 20-year commitment to raise self-confident, healthy, curious, creative, happy children who will discover themselves and make their own way as adults in the world, capable of creating a world in which they wish to live, and perhaps have children themselves.
Every woman has her own personal need or desire for relationship. There is a basic commonality in the ways that women relate to others and each other, and in how they seek and sustain relationships; relationships of ALL kinds that serve and enrich the many facets of their lives.
Like it or not, recognized or not, wanted or not, regardless of what it looks like, the woman is the heartbeat, the central pole of power in every family grouping. She colors the attitudes, ideas, actions, confidence (or lack thereof), and creativity of every member of the family group, for better or worse. She holds the moral and ethical center of a family, of a community, and ultimately of the world.
As a woman reaches beyond any apparent divisions, she comes into her own identity and discovers her own power, and truly become a light to the world around her.
Blessings,
Charlotte
THE LANGUAGE MAGICIAN: Change “Women’s Rights” to “Human Rights for Women” (or people living with disabilities, or people with health issues, etc.)
edited by Monique Huenergardt of MoReadsYou.com