By Stephanie Linehan
Women tend to maintain the calm, the schedule, the everyday life, the household, the ups and the downs. All in the name of love, diligence, tradition, the have-tos, and the supposed-tos. Think about it. The women who held it all together. Answered all the questions. Remembered all the details. And kept their self-ness, their hobbies; their art, creativity, drive, and dreams, off to the side. I know there was always just
something else, right there within them.
The shift. Since at least the early 1900s. Slowly peeking/emerging/leaking/bursting through. Leave it to Beaver and June Cleaver of the late 1950s. The feminist movement of the 60s. More women in the workforce in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Stay-at-home mothers with a side-hustle; women CEOs, start-ups, and entrepreneurs of the 2000s. What was at the surface level - deep within but always just right there - was that lingering, that yearning. The my-time-will-come. The smile anyway. The grin and bare it. Perhaps some (a lot?) of (hidden?) helplessness, despair, unworthiness; masking, and depression.
The story of my grandpa visiting his grandma. Her watching from the porch screen door. Stone-faced. Mad, sad, or just plain lost perhaps. The handwritten notes taped to the cover of cooking magazines. That glimpse into my own grandmother’s yearning, dreaming, trying, creating, allowing - a little bit of herself within her day, her house, her means. A tired mother crying to her daughters. The daughters holding her up and reminding her of her capabilities, ambitions, and dreams in list-form and positive affirmations. And then my own mother. Staying-at-home. Her refuge in one-hour-a-week bowling league as a little child and going to the neighbor’s in-home daycare over the lunch hour. Mac-and-cheese out-of-the-box and yellow lemonade. Every time. (Side observation: Moms who thrived/relished/survived on consistency and continuity). And the dozens of my mother’s pine cone/fake bird handmade ornaments to adorn our Christmas tree. An ordeal/spectacle/event taking up the entire kitchen counter. To me, as a mother, completely recognizing my own need/want/yearning for that space. That time. That creativity. That fulfillment. And sectioning it out. Finding time. Making time. Carving time. Giving time. To it. To our whole being. On the outside, a work horse. The do-er, the driver, the martyr, the holder-upper. Steadfast. And on the inside - the dreamer, the hope-er, the lover, the seeker. Passionate. Almost like a second person. The one that truly needs to come out. Burst forth. Truly be.
Now (Insert pause, deep breath). What will it be like for our daughters? And sons? What will they notice in us as mothers, fathers, parents? What (role) modeling will dawn on them later in life? Or what despair will they recall and feel a need to rehash and sieve through? Either way, keep bursting forth y’all. Decide when you’ll let it happen or make it happen. Carve out the time or wait for the time. It’s in the small steps. “It’s an evolution, not a revolution,” (From a conversation on teaching through the years … with former teacher-colleague, Ben Toppel … in the Greenwood School teacher’s lounge … years ago. Fist-bump! #futureblogtopic, LOL). P.S. This evolution of womanhood/wifehood/motherhood greatly intrigues me. I am open to reading recommendations, thanks!
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You do not have to be fire for every mountain blocking you. You could be a water and soft river your way to freedom too. - Nayyirah Waheed
Quit waiting to get picked; quit waiting for someone to give you permission; quit waiting for someone to say you are officially qualified and pick yourself. - Unknown
‘Finding yourself’ is not really how it works. You aren’t a ten-dollar bill in last winter’s coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that become your beliefs about who you are. ‘Finding yourself’ is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you. - Emily McDowell
There are things I buried deep within. Things I rejected about myself, because throughout the years of my life I was conditioned to believe that they should be. But I am recovering those things, dusting them off, and shining them back up. That weird girl who believed in all the strangest things has a few things to reteach me. - Stacie Martin
The world will tell you how to live, if you let it. Don’t let it. Take up your space. Raise your voice. Sing your song. - Shauna Niequist
It’s safe to come out now, there’s no need to hide. Remember who you were all along, deep inside. Awake your passions. Wake up to your dreams. I promise you, this life is so much more than it seems. It’s safe to come home now, to let your light shine. It’s time to remember, you have always been divine. - M.G. Williams
Be all of you. Allow your heart to shine and your soul to be seen. You are magnificent. The world needs your magic. You radiate a glorious light. Light up the damn world with it. - Kelley Webb
Selfless women make for an efficient society but not a beautiful, true, or just one. When women lose themselves, the world loses its way. We do not need any more selfless women. What we need right now is more women who are full of themselves. A woman who is full of herself no longer internalizes the world’s memos and expectations. A woman who is full of herself knows and trusts herself enough to say and do what must be done, and lets the rest burn. - Glennon Doyle, Untamed
Behind every strong woman is her sacred female bloodline. - Unknown
Road to Character by David Brooks:
Working for the Consumer’s League of New York and lobbying for worker’s rights, Frances Perkins found herself suppressing her femininity and even part of her identity in order to win the confidence of the men around her. It’s a questionable tactic today, when women should not have to suppress themselves to succeed, but in the 1920s, it was necessary. - page 35
The mid-twentieth century … husbands were unable to see the depth in their own wives. In so many ways, life is better now than it was then. - page 5
Writer and Catholic worker in the mid-1900s, Dorothy Day’s father had been a journalist, but the newspaper printing plant burned down in the quake and his job was gone. Day experienced the family’s humiliating descent into poverty. Her father moved them to Chicago, where he set out to write a novel that was never published. He forbade his children to leave the house without permission or to invite friends in. Day remembered Sunday dinners marked in gloomy silence. Her mother did her best, but she suffered four miscarriages, and one night fell into hysterics, smashing every dish in the home. The next day she was back to normal. ‘I lost my nerve,’ she explained to her children.
- page 75
Mary Anne Evans, born in 1819 and later pen-named George Eliot, writes in her Middlemarch, about the crisis of vocation that many young women feel. They experience a great yearning inside; a spiritual ardor to devote their energies in some substantial, heroic, and meaningful direction … And yet Victorian society provided so few avenues for their energy that their ‘loving heartbeats and sobs after an unattainable goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centering in some long-recognizable deed.’ - page 154
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