women's rights Archives - Adulting: Second- Half

Monday – Funday

Late last year, I purchased these two adorable cicada figurines at two separate times from two different antique dealers. I don’t know why I purchased them, other than I was attracted to them. I keep them by our front door. I feel like they are lucky and mystical. My husband has often commented that he thinks they are cool looking, and that was that . . . or so I thought. Today I read this article that came out in the news two days ago:

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/cicadas-2024-emergence-periodical-brood-2024-map-cicada-rcna134152

It appears that two broods of cicada are going to emerge in the United States this year, at the same time. This is so rare that the last time it happened was in 1803. Now, you are probably thinking, “Wow, what a strange coincidence!” But I don’t believe in coincidences. I believe in the adage that coincidence is really just God/Universe being anonymous. I believe that we are all so intrinsically connected to everything that happens in nature, throughout all of time, but we have lost sight of this fact, because we are focused on all of the wrong things. We have lost sight of the magic of it all, despite the fact that it is all around us, doing its thing, despite the stupid, pointless games we play. Look for the signs, friends. The real signs. The signs that make you feel deeply connected and contented and comforted and wise and knowing and intuitive and assured. The signs are everywhere. Look for them and trust them.

Another great article I read this morning is this one:

https://www.axios.com/2024/01/20/single-women-homeowners-us-map?utm_source=join1440&utm_medium=email&utm_placement=newsletter

This article states that in the United States home ownership is now majority female. Why is this important? According to this article, only sixty years ago, women couldn’t get a credit card or a mortgage without a male co-signer. I’m 53. Thank you to the generations of my mother, my mother-in-law, my grandmothers, my aunts, my older friends, and all the women of those generations who stood up for change. You made this right. My daughter and all of the women of her generation can’t even begin to fathom the world that you came up in. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. (and ladies, let’s remember their sacrifices, and let’s not go backwards.)

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

2691. Do you prefer hot tubs or steam rooms?

Monday – Funday

Never forget your power, my loves. And this comes from a woman who adores her amazing husband and her wonderful three sons every bit as much as she adores her incredible daughter and her magnificent self.

It’s interesting to me that Josie, our only female dog, rules the roost. Ralphie is bigger and older than her. Trip is more audacious than her. Neither of them has ever tried to usurp her authority. She has never had to raise her voice more than a gentle growl. They respect her. Ralphie and Trip tussle with one another all of the time. But ultimately, Josie rules the roost. She knows her worth and they respect that continually. Josie never gives her power away. She owns it. And everyone in the family adores Josie, including Ralphie and Trip. And even more interestingly, she is considered the favorite dog of ours, of anyone who isn’t in our family. She is continually called “the sweetie.” Sweeties, let’s rise. Have a great day. Never, ever forget your power.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Way Showers

I went to an “event” yesterday and I actually woke up feeling like I have things to write about. When you actually go and do things, you end up having stories to experience and then, stories to tell. Life felt a little “normal” again, for the first time in a long time, yesterday.

Yesterday the “event” that I attended, was my daughter’s first high school tennis match, of the season. And she won it. But it was a complete nail biter. She was down 3-6, came back 7-6, but then she and her very worthy competitor, ended up tying 8-8. They had to play a tie breaker, which my entirely exhausted daughter ended up winning, 11-9. My nails are bloody nubs. When the match was finally over, I was reminded of the author Glennon Doyle’s most famous quote, “We can do hard things.” I told my daughter what I liked best about her victory, was that she will always have the memory of it, in her back pocket. When she is struggling with any difficult situation in her life, she can think back to this moment, and know for a fact, that she is full of fortitude, perseverance, and calmness under pressure. She can do hard things. She has proven it to herself.

Yesterday’s tennis match wasn’t exactly “normal.” We have good winter weather here in Florida, therefore the matches are held outside. There was no communal snack table, no hugging, no high fives, nor any handshakes after the matches. Each competing duo was handed a fresh can of balls before their games. I was starkly reminded that it was during tennis season last year, when the reality of the coronavirus pandemic was truly setting in for all of us. At the last high school tennis match which I attended (in March of 2020), the coach told the players that the rest of the season had been cancelled. He also told them, that after spring break, they were not likely coming back to school. Unfortunately, he was right.

While I was at the match yesterday, I also partook in one of my other vices – eavesdropping. I have mentioned on the blog before that I like to eavesdrop. I am not proud of that fact, but I own it. As I was watching my daughter play, I overhead a group of high school girls talking. One girl said, “I have this condition called ‘anxiety’.” That statement started a chorus of statements: “Anxiety! Oh yes, I have that! My therapist says I have that, too. I hate anxiety. I can’t sleep! I can’t drive.”

Wow. At that moment I wanted to run over and group hug all of them. But of course, I couldn’t do it, because 1.) Covid and 2.) I was eavesdropping, which is a rude and hurtful thing to do. So, I just sat in my deserved little cloud of sadness, and I reflected a little bit. And I thought about the blog that I was going to write today.

I would like to pretend that these girls’ anxiety issues were all concerning this awful pandemic, which has a lot of us people, all wound up in tight little balls, these days, but I would be lying to myself. Quite honestly, I am sure that I could have overheard that conversation, at any time during all of the years which my children have been in high school, starting around the year 2010. Three of my middle son’s classmates committed suicide in high school. My daughter’s class just lost a classmate to suicide a couple of months ago. I know for a fact that my own children experience anxiety. I’ve witnessed it, first hand.

I believe life is mostly meant to be savored and enjoyed. I truly do. But do I live that? Am I an example of that? Do I model a life that is mostly “peace and joy”? Do I take any responsibility for my own peace and joy, or do I act as if I am a victim of circumstance? These are hard questions. The answers are hard to face sometimes.

Over the years, the women before us have fought hard for the rights which we women have today, such as the right to vote, to serve in the military, and to become vice president of the United States. It is easy to take these gifts for granted. In our “Declaration of Independence”, we were all promised the right to “the pursuit of happiness.” The women before us, worked hard and tirelessly, to make sure that we women had the equal right to “the pursuit of the happiness.” Are we doing our part in that quest?

I believe that happiness is a by-product of what we do. Is what I am doing on a daily basis bringing me happiness? Do my relationships with the others in my life, bring me happiness? Does my relationship with myself bring me happiness? Am I living to my own standards, or am I trying to live to the impossible standards of “fake world” as depicted on social media? Do I have a strong connection with my spirituality, a faith that makes me feel whole, not one that separates me from others with the sense that I am “holier than thou”?

Why are these questions important? They are important because I am a model to my daughter, and I am a model to your daughters and to your granddaughters, and to that beautiful group of girls, discussing, in earnest, their shared condition of anxiety. Kids listen to what we do, not what we say. Kids are excellent at honing in on hypocrites. After raising four almost grown children, and having made many an eloquent lecture (that I myself, was pretty impressed with), I learned that those loquacious words fell mostly on deaf ears, especially if I wasn’t walking my talk.

What are we modeling to the women of the future, friends? If I am honest, that group of girls, could have easily been me, and any one of my group of friends, in any of my various stages of my life. And that’s okay. It’s good to have friends to lean on for support. But it is also good to have friends to savor life with. It is good to have friends to laugh with, and to sit with, in awe of the pure beauty of each other, our friendships, and of the incredible, nature all around us. What are we modeling to the women of the future? “Don’t feel anxiety, girls, but I just changed my outfit fifteen times, because I feel so insecure about how I look. Don’t feel anxiety, girls, but it is important that you look lovely, have a great job, raise amazing kids (because if they aren’t amazing, it is all your fault), and sustain a romantic, exciting, successful marriage through it all. And if any of these areas of life are faltering, I judge myself mercilessly. But please don’t feel anxiety, girls. Seriously, life is fun, once you are doing a perfect job at getting good grades at school, getting into a good college with an athletic scholarship, landing a cute boyfriend who treats you well, and still being able to fit into your skinny jeans. Then, you can be just like “me.” Isn’t life fun? Why do you have anxiety, girls?”

Our daughters, our nieces, our granddaughters, our friends’ daughters will learn to have less anxiety, when we are the way showers of life lived with less anxiety. Our daughters will practice self-care, self-acceptance, and self-love, when we are the way showers of self-care, self-acceptance and self-love. Our daughters, our women of the future, will learn to have meaningful, purposeful, interesting lives of love and wonder and peace and calm, when we show them that this is possible. Our young women of the future will learn to love and to savor themselves, and to savor the very act of just experiencing life, when we teach them that they are lovable just because of who they are, not for what they do. When we show our girls, that life is a wonderful journey to be experienced in awe, in hope, in joy, in peace, and in exhilaration, our example gives them permission to live life the way it was meant to be lived. Will they still experience some anxiety? Of course. We all will. Anxiety is a part of life. But it can be a small footnote. Anxiety can mostly be experienced as a flutter in our stomachs, as a sign of exciting things to come. And let’s remember, when we are living in the fullness of the gift of just experiencing the astonishing miracle of living a human life on Earth, anxiety is easily noticed and then it is just as easily let go, as nothing more than a passing sensation.

Think of a young woman whom you love with all of your heart. Think of how joyful you want this young woman to feel, most days of her life. What does that look like? Do want her to think that she has to have a Louis Vuitton purse, work in a job which she hates, to make the money to purchase that purse, have her stay in toxic relationships that make her feel terrible, just for the sake of having relationships, and to spend hours of her precious life, photo shopping her real life into a fake online picture, to make her life appear “perfect”? Is this what we believe will bring our future young women happiness? What are we modeling to the women of the future, friends? Let’s choose to be the way showers of the wisdom we have obtained. Love and happiness is an inside job. Life is mostly meant to be enjoyed. Savor life. You don’t have to win at it. There is nothing “to win.” Life and love is given to you freely. Happiness is yours, as a by-product of doing and experiencing what uniquely brings you joy. You are an important piece of this tapestry called Life, and so is everyone else. You know this fact. I know this fact. Let’s live it. Let’s be the way showers to our young women. Let’s make the path easier and lighter and brighter for our young women, as it was made easier for us, by the mighty women who came before us. Let’s let anxiety become a barely noticeable footnote, in the otherwise amazing adventure of living Life. It will be good for our future girls. It will be good for us. Let’s be purposeful in our duty. Let’s be Way Showers.

Are you passing on love, or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Power for the Future

RIP – Ruth Bader Ginsburg

We women so easily forget how hard the women older than us, and in the generations before us, had to work to get women the deserved respect, equalities, and opportunities that should have always been rightfully ours.

“Dissents speak to a future age. It’s not simply to say, ‘My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way.’ But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today, but for tomorrow.” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.” – Abigail Adams, in a letter to her father John Adams, in 1776

Isn’t that a beautiful thing, to stand up for something that will make a better tomorrow for people like you, even knowing that you may never see the fruits of your own labor? What if we looked at every single one of our own individual actions as our own personal gifts to the people of the future? What would we do differently? What would we do more?

Every once in a while, old blog posts of mine trend on my view stats, seemingly out of nowhere. This blog post from February 13, 2019, has been viewed often in the last couple of weeks, so I suppose it has words that bear repeating. Please find that blog post entitled Fragile Like a Bomb, here:

Fragile Like a Bomb

Friends, I’ve admittedly been a little fragile this past week. It has been a tough week for a lot of reasons. But don’t you ever worry about me. I am fragile like a bomb.

It’s a Feminine Saturday

Yesterday I made a point of saying “Happy International Women’s Day!” to every woman I came across. I was having routine bloodwork done and the woman at the lab and I, did a little dance together after I said it. My clerk at the Walgreens gave me extra coupons as we smiled at the proclamation, celebrating us. My barista at Starbucks gave me a high-five and told me that they were only playing female recording artists’ music all day. She said that she was going to try to negotiate with the manager to keep that going for the week. My daughter and I hugged when I gave her a funky little string of pink flamingo lights. It was a lot of fun and camaraderie!

I got to thinking, “Why aren’t we women this supportive of each other all of the time?” Sure, we’re nice to our friends and family, but then we seem to eye other women suspiciously. It feels like our competitive hackles come up more than they do when we are with men. It seems like we are quicker to judge and to mistrust and to blame other women for things than we do to men. I’ve mentioned this before, but in my first “real” job after college, I asked a female manager what was the hardest thing about being a woman in the work world and without hesitation, she said, “Other women.”

I hope with all of these movements going on, trying to progress society that we really make sure that we empower each other. I read a sign that said, “Empowered women, empower women.” I also saw one that said, “Real Queens fix each other’s crowns.” Yesterday, I really felt part of a sisterhood that went beyond the small circle of women in my life who I know and who I love. It felt really good. It felt right. It felt joyous. It felt like progression.

“There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women.” – Madeline Albright

Boys are People Too

I was required to open a Twitter account when my daughter was on a softball team many years ago. That is how the coach reached out to us parents. She was way ahead of Donald Trump. I didn’t even look at Twitter for many years after that, but recently I started following a few people and groups on Twitter because I find them to be so insightful and interesting. Think Smarter on Twitter is something that I try to check out almost daily. Here is one of their recent tweets:

I have four children. My first three children are boys. Honestly, since my youngest son is almost 18, I should say that they are men. I’ll never forget when my children were little, one of my sons asked why is it that in Disney movies, the boys tend to be big dopes and the girls are champions? The other boys chimed in, too, wondering why that was the way of Disney movies.

In the media lately, we have been exposed to the worst men’s behavior. And this is good. Men need to be held accountable for their actions. So, do women. People need to pay their consequences when they do wrong. Unfortunately though, it sometimes seems like men as a whole are being lumped into a group of jerks that the vast majority of men have nothing in common with. Men are being dehumanized and I think that they have a right to question this. I would not want to be judged by the behavior of a few evil women.

I like men. Most of the men that I have encountered in my life have been wonderful influences. Most of the men whom I know are nice, kind, loving, respectful people. They love their families, they provide for and protect their families and they serve their places of employment, their communities and their country. They are good people, just like most of the women I have encountered in my life. Men are not the enemy.

When I was in college, I attended a feminist speaker forum. One of the speakers showed some film footage of women’s rights rallies that had occurred in the 1960s. In these rallies, scores of angry women were yelling, “Take the power! Take the power!” Now, I realize that the women who came before me have made it so that my daughter and I do not have to feel nearly as discriminated against than the women of earlier generations. I am so grateful that these strong women stood up for what is right. Sometimes change requires extreme emotion. I understand that. I also know that further change is needed. However, I am hoping that we have come to a point in our history where that chant can be more of, “Share the power! Share the power!” An inclusive energy going in the same direction, can go so much faster and take us so much further than a constant battle. I believe that most reasonable people, men and women, would like for this direction to be the way of the future. It is what I hope for, for my daughter and for my sons.

******

I debated about whether to write about 9/11 or not. Why after 17 years does it feel so fresh? There are no words. Just a heartfelt thank you to the heroes and heartfelt prayers sent to the families who will never be the same due to this senseless tragedy.