Jun 2 2012

Boyfriends and Foster Families

For years I begged my mother to let me go live in a foster home. Defeated by her determination that my emotional reactions to the alcoholic insanity, the life threatening violence in our house was a result of my being born defective. She was also hell-bent on convincing my brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles and family friends of the same thing. What Leslie did now, how Leslie acted and reacted was one of her favorite topics. I’d listen while she told family members and friends about something I’d done or said to her. How I’d go “crazy” for no reason. Scream and hit and throw things.  How I begged to be put in foster care. Cried all the time. They’d shake their heads in disbelief, so convincing was my mother that she was an innocent victim. A woman who loved her children more than life itself. I could feel hot rage roll in my belly like lava. My laser beam eyes, indignant fire, threatening to incinerate her.

When I confronted her, asked why she never told them what came before my “crazy” behavior she would try to convince me too. Saying to me in her megalomania mother knows best way, that it wasn’t my fault. That I was born with the same sickness my dad had. Even though I knew she was wrong, a pathological liar, grief seized my heart. A tight fist lodged in my throat, my tears evaporated into a vapor of hate. I pleaded with her at the top of my lungs, “Please. Let me go live in a foster home.”

I got my wish a few weeks after I tried to shoot my father attempting to defend her life. I heard my mother telling someone on the phone that she had to get me out of the house before my father killed me. I went to live with my oldest sister, her husband and their two-year old son. To earn my keep my job was to babysit while my sister worked.

I don’t remember packing anything. I made a bed on the couch in their single wide trailer house. My job ended up being pretty much everything but cooking. I cleaned and did laundry. My nephew fell in love with me. Even though my sister wasn’t that interested in her child she got jealous when he wanted to be with me more than he wanted to be with her. When it was time for potty training he’d only go for me.

A few weeks shy of my fourteenth birthday I was just about to graduate from the ninth grade. When I wasn’t in school, playing mommy or keeping my sister’s house, I was on the streets with my friends. My best friend at the time was Laird Johnson. Her family moved to our small town from Brazil. Her father was in the military and they’d lived all over the world. To me Laird was as exotic as pitanga. She and I hit it off immediately. I spent most weekends at her house. Skittish as an un-socialized dog I hated being around her parents, especially her exceptionally alpha father. Once we got downstairs into her room though, I loved being there.

She had two twin beds and her very own bathroom. Both her dressers and her closet were brimming with clothes I could tell were expensive. In her closet she had a shoe tree heavy with jeweled sandals, boots, boat shoes, dress shoes and casual shoes. I hungered, like Eve for knowledge I plucked the shoes I thought she wouldn’t miss. Stuffed them in the bottom of my grocery bag suitcase.

Laird was much more worldly and mature than I was. Aware of her beauty and playboy bunny body, she knew how to dress, put on her makeup to accentuate her ripe sensuality. Even though her father didn’t like it she let me wear her clothes. She’d choose an outfit for me and we’d stick it outside her window. When we left the house I was wearing my own clothes. Then I’d change in a gas station bathroom before we hit the streets.

I always took extra long showers at her house. She had two or three shampoos to choose from but my favorite was Herbal Essence. We spent well over an hour putting on our makeup. She taught me how to use a needle to separate my eyelashes after applying just the right amount of Maybelline Great Lash Very Black mascara. We brushed our teeth with Ultra Bright toothpaste and doused ourselves head to toe with Avon’s Sweet Honesty perfume. After which I almost felt sweet, honest, clean.

She and I’d walk up and down Main Street like naive prostitutes talking to the boys and men in every car that pulled over. The older guys always asked us how old we were. Eighteen was our agreed upon answer. Our favorite guys were Duff and Pete. In their twenties they had cars and places where we could hang and make out. At first we all stayed together but then Duff and Laird started going off alone. We’d pick a time and place to meet at the end of the night so we could walk back to her house together. Her dad was always waiting up so we had to be home on time. Duff talked Laird into meeting him later in the night after her parents were in bed. We stuffed both beds with blankets and pillows to look like we were there sleeping in case her parents checked, then climbed out her window. After her dad caught us climbing back in one night I wasn’t allowed to stay there anymore. Not long after that her dad made her mom call the school to ask about me. The school secretary Mrs. Sunbloom told her she thought I was a bad influence. From then on we weren’t allowed to hang out anymore. I was sad and confused. Laird was always the one who wanted to drink, sneak out, and run off alone with Duff. She’s the one who thought up most the lies we told her parents but I didn’t say anything.

Even though I missed Laird alot I started hanging out with some other girls. Louise’s McGuire’s house became my weekend crash pad. Her parents were much more trusting. Or maybe oblivious would be a better way to describe them. A good church going family they had no idea what their kids were up to. At first I was scared to hang out in Louise’s room. The walls were painted black and she had a black light. To me the atmosphere felt eerie. The only music I’d listened to was country and western, my parent’s favorite. She loved Pink Floyd and played The Dark Side of the Moon over and over. The kid’s bedrooms were upstairs. Their house was old the stairs narrow and steep. Her parents were seasoned, didn’t like climbing the ladder erect steps so they never came up to her room. Louise was a late in life surprise so her brothers were much older. They smoked pot and drank in their rooms. Had CB radios and stayed up late into the night talking with truckers.

I was still hanging out with Pete. Louise liked a guy that was in his thirties named Dennis. He and Pete belonged to the local chain gang. Slang for CB club. On the weekend at ‘Darktime’ the thing to do was go out on skunk hunts. One person in the group was the skunk. He’d hide in his vehicle somewhere within a ten-mile or so radius. Over the radio he’d give clues to everyone in the gang and they’d all drive around and search for him. When Pete was the skunk we spent our time doing eights, CB slang for love and kisses.

Louise liked to hang out with Dennis past her curfew. My job was to go home to her house on time so her parents would hear me come in and think we were both there. Louise made up a story I could tell her parents if they caught me coming in alone. We’d gotten away with it lots of times so I was surprised the night her mom opened the front door when I got there. I launched into our agreed upon speech. Didn’t know that Dennis and Louise had a big fight and she’d been home for a couple hours. Her mom made me call my sister to come get me. I never stayed the night there again.

Late in the summer out of the blue Laird called my sister’s house. We hadn’t seen each other for a while so I had no idea what she’d been up to. She said her family was moving and she wanted to tell me goodbye. When I asked why she said her dad was being transferred. Her mom dropped her off so we could spend some time together. Laird was really sad which made me really sad. We both cried until our cheeks were bruised with Very Black mascara. I was surprised when Lairds mom hugged me goodbye. I thought she hated me. Several months later I found out why they’d left in such a hurry. Laird snuck out to meet Duff one night. They were drinking and smoking dope. He roughed her up and raped her. Dumped her bloody and half-naked on the side of the road not far from her house. Her father was determined to keep what happened a secret so they disappeared.

May 31 2012

From Baby Dolls to Barbie Brawls

My father’s aunt made a living sewing Barbie clothes. When my parents took us to visit her daughter Kelly and I used to spend hours role-playing with her Barbie dolls. She had several, including Tutti, Skipper, and two different Ken’s. When we played it was like living in Cher’s closet. Her mom made coats and skirts, glamorous gowns, scarves and dresses, bras, panties, slacks and fur hats. She even made black patent leather looking knee-high boots. Anything her mom couldn’t make she bought for Kelly, so there was also a several pair of teeny different colored high heels, sunglasses and jewelry. Her dad made her a Barbie house complete with miniature closets. Kelly carefully hung all her dolls clothes on itty bitty plastic hangers that matched the high heels.

Even though I was just about to start the fourth grade at home I was still playing house with my baby dolls. I didn’t have a Barbie of my own so she shared with me. My dad and her mom made a big TaDo because Kelly and I looked so much like each other and their side of the family with our chestnut hair, olive complexion and dark brown eyes. Kelly liked to play with Francine because her hair was the same color as coffee beans like hers. Most times I picked Malibu Barbie. I thought her suntan was sexy and I sensed that Ken really liked her long blonde Christa Helm hair.

We both wanted the Ken with brown felt hair. It brought to mind my grandmothers Christmas tree sprayed with flock when I touched it. Because the Barbie’s belonged to her, she always got to choose first which meant I got stuck dating the Ken with the molded blond coif.

Feeling rich and pretty we spent hours dressing and redressing, the four of us crowding into Barbie’s school bus yellow camper van and racing off to have a picnic next to our make shift lake. Using spoons from the kitchen as shovels, we dug a large serving platter sized hole in the backyard and filled it with water. Spread out a tiny blanket Kelly’s mom whipped up on her sewing machine while we waited. Spent the afternoon picnicking and basking in the sun.

Upset that Barbie was stuck with a guy she didn’t want I pretended that Francine’s boyfriend wanted to be mine. When Kelly went into the house to go to the bathroom Barbie was mean to Francine. Called her an ugly bitch. Let her fuzzy haired Ken kiss my beautiful blonde Barbie.

Jealous of all the things Kelly had, including her mom, I told myself that she was spoiled, then stole whatever I could from her. Stuffed my pockets full with tiny clothes and shoes. I even smuggled one of the Barbie’s she didn’t play with and the yellow knob head Ken out to my parent’s car. Figured once I got away she’d never catch me. They lived a hundred miles from our house and never came to visit.

At home I couldn’t play Barbie’s inside the house. Afraid someone would find out about my stealing Kelly’s dolls and the clothes her mother had sewn for them, I tucked them in the waist of my pants and snuck them outside. Played in a pretty spot by the stream behind our house.

At first they loved each other but then things started to change. Ken stopped trusting Barbie, started accusing her of cheating on him. Even though she insisted she wasn’t, he didn’t believe her. Instead of lying next to her, kissing her softly, telling her he loved her with all his heart, he started to kiss her real hard. He slapped her. Threatened to kill her if he ever caught her with another Ken. Even though she begged him to calm down he kept getting madder and stronger. Ken liked the way he felt when he was in control of Barbie. Made her sit perfectly still on a rock next to the stream, warning her not to move a muscle or he would drown her skinny fucking ass. She begged him to let her leave but he refused. Barbie tried to run away but Ken chased her down, dragged her back by her ratty blonde hair. Beat her for leaving him, then raped her.

Barbie began to look disheveled. Her pretty clothes dirty and torn from Ken shoving her around. All her shoes lost her feet were bare and dirty. You’re a stinky whore he screamed in her face, then threw her into the ditch. Even though she begged him to pull her out he didn’t save her until she’d floated down stream and through the culvert. Yanking her from the water by her wet stringy hair Ken called Barbie an ugly bitch then threw her into the dirt. Lying on her back he shoved and twisted her head into a rock until her nose was scraped right off her smashed up face. Hating the way she looked when he got done with her, he pulled her head off and hucked it into the stream. Stood and watched as her blonde hair floated away.

May 24 2012

Missing, but in Action.

Hi Everyone!

So anyone who’s been reading my blog for the last four months knows that my husband [Al] and I have been building our own house [a cabin actually], for the last few years. This last week we finished up the built-in’s in my nifty new writing space! I now have file drawers and regular drawers, cubbies and nooks, and a few crannies for little stuff. Yay!

So for the next week I am moving in there. Unloading boxes and organizing years of work. I can’t believe I have a writing space after years of making due. That said, what I learned from making due is that although the space is nice, real nice, it’s not necessary to get the writing done. In fact over the last three or four years my home has been upside down much of the time but I still managed to produce more work, sitting on my couch or in my bed with my laptop, a few books and my puppies scattered around me, than I had in previous years.

The lesson was a good one. I spent a lot of time thinking about writing,  talking about how I was going to write when conditions were right for me to do so; which is funny to me now cuz it didn’t end up working that way at all. Oh how I love the adventure of life!  Anywho, I look forward to getting back to it soon.  I have a notebook in my back pocket to jot down all my significant thoughts and I’ll pick up with comments and posts when I get back!

Leslie

May 21 2012

You’re so pretty. When you smile.

For the last few years I’ve been focused on listening to what my body is telling me about how I am feeling.  Recovering from ruptured disks I made a point to slow my body and my mind way down.  In the beginning when I took walks my steps were as deliberate as a Geisha’s. I had no choice, the swelling was so severe my legs simply wouldn’t move me along as swiftly as I normally walked.

As I improved I decided to continue at my tortoise pace, discovering things about my body I hadn’t noticed before the injury. I’d known for a long time that one leg was longer than the other but couldn’t remember, nor was I concerned about which one it was. I’d become so adept at striking a pose, I had no idea that my right hip was turned ever so slightly in which twisted my whole leg and foot. I’d done yoga for years and had in fact become much more conscious of myself and my body, but not being able to walk, the fear of being paralyzed, dropped me into my skin and bones like nothing else had.

I’m convinced that my back trouble began years ago when I opted for a mommy makeover surgery. My attempt to restore what I thought I’d lost. Part of that procedure is a tummy tuck and when all was said and done I was tucked so tight I couldn’t stand up straight for months. The ways I compensated were subtle, barely noticeable to all but the few who really know me. My bones however bent and twisted like a pretzel to accommodate the new and improved me.

It’s been three years since my back gave out and although I’m not 100 percent, I’m much better than I was before the injury occurred.  I used to exercise to improve my physique. To maintain my sex appeal; what I saw as my primary power.  Today, I walk, do yoga, mediate and eat right to heal my body and my mind. I am happy to report that my physique is better than it was in my twenties and I think I’m sexier than I’ve ever been.

These unexpected discoveries and recovery gave me the courage to go a bit deeper. I’ve noticed that my jaw is tight alot of the time. I also tend to get sore throats, even when I don’t have a cold, which seems to be connected to my tight jaw and the muscles in my neck. This morning I realized my jaw was locked so I dropped my mouth open and took a few deep breaths. Wondering what my face looks like when I’m clinching my teeth I went to the mirror to check it out. Hmmm? When I relaxed my face muscles, let my throat open, I noticed that my lips droop slightly at the corners making me appear sad, even though I’m not. The thought that came to me was, Do I have the courage to face the world looking like I’m sad? They next thought that came was, I’m ugly.

Not thinking anymore about it I headed off to an early morning meeting. As I sat listening to what others had to say I practiced letting the muscles in my face and my tongue relax. I also decided to practice not pretending I was feeling anything I wasn’t. That meant if someone said something I didn’t think was funny, even though almost everyone else laughed, I didn’t.

After the meeting a man came up to me and put his arm around my shoulder. For some reason he found he needed to assure me, in a rather sarcastic tone, that everything was going to be alright.  This guy happens to be what I consider the class clown sort. A funny looking bald guy with legs that look like he rode in on a chicken. During the meeting he mentioned that he’d golfed with his wife over weekend. Also, how unappealing he found it to be when women over fifty encouraged each other by saying things like, ‘you go girl,’ which made most of the room howl.  Anywho, arm around me, he proceeded to tell me that he liked it better when I smiled.  Caught off guard at the irony of his statement, considering my woman in the mirror encounter earlier, I started to defend myself, then laughed and told him I didn’t care what he liked. Determined, he boldly backed himself up by stating that my smiling was what he preferred, then hurried out the door.

Driving home I thought about how many times men have tried to get me to smile by telling me I look much prettier when I do. Or as this man did, letting me know he preferred it, me, when I smile. What’s that about I wonder? Does making me smile give men pleasure, like being able to bring a woman to orgasm, does it mirror something about themselves back to them?  Maybe it’s shallower than that. Simply about how I look. Not much different from women in girly magazines, where they are careful to make sure their face is as inviting and the rest of them.

May 17 2012

Liberty or Madness

It takes courage to be shadow; to go mad in a world

bent from being brave.

I drank. Like Alice

used drugs to shrink myself

to fit

into the tiny box marked good.

I trusted

when doctors said

the blue pill

would take away the bad dreams,

the purple one

the fear.

The white pill lifted

the weight of pain and

love poured over my parched heart

flooding my life;

so they saved me

with the yellow one.

It erased all the feelings

that come

when we realize

no amount of good

is going to save us.

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May 15 2012

Blacking Out a Bankrupt Life

When I was nine, my parents moved from Orange County California to Peoa Utah. Population maybe three hundred. It was 1969 and dad wanted to get us out of the city. Thought peopled gone nuts, that the world was headed to hell in a hand bag. He’d grown up in the Utah Mountain’s, his dream was to bring us up close to nature. My mom was a city girl, the move didn’t suit her at all.

My parents started spending their recreation time with my dad’s uncles and cousins on his mother’s side. Grandma was one of ten children. Her brother’s were rugged hard-drinking men who worked in the copper mines. Most of our time was spent with one of my dad’s distant cousin’s families. My mom got along well with his wife Donna. Even though we referred to them as our aunt and uncle, I personally never had any love or real concern for them.

When my mom had a car we went to their house in the city. It was where the family hung out and drank. Even though aunt Donna was easy-going as an overweight house cat, she ruled her roost. Anybody caused any trouble, including one of her five kids, she kicked them out. She also never cooked. Even though she worked, there was rarely anything to eat. The first thing her and mom would do on the weekends they got together, was go to the store for food so us kids and my dad could eat. Then the party’d begin.

I blacked out the first time I drank. I was around ten years old. On this particular weekend Donna, her husband Carl and their kids were staying at our house. Friday night Mom and Donna cooked up a big Chinese meal. The adults hung out drinking, smoking cigarettes and listening to country music. Mom always danced. It made me mad when I watched her sashaying around the house all sexy like. Saturday night the adults all went out to the local bar, something mom rarely did. Donna barely combed her hair, but mom fixed herself up pretty. Lips painted Oslo Orange, she left the house excited as a teenager headed to a prom.

When they came home dad dragged mom into the house by her hair. She had a tendency to be french kiss friendly with guys at the bar, which dad didn’t like. Trying to calm him down only made him worse. He tried to beat an apology out of mom, while Donna tried to distract him from his jealous anger, by reasoning and joking with him. Uncle Carl, an impotent sickly thin wino, hid out in the bedroom with us kids.

At first I hated hanging out with them. Everything felt out of control, unpredictable, but when they hung out Mom was happier than usual. She flounced around, joking and flirting with my aunt’s oldest son, and my dad’s uncle Freddy. I once caught her in a lip lock with him. When I walked in the kitchen she got real mad at me. She was sitting on the kitchen counter, legs spread, he was standing between them. They were kissing with their mouths open.

Donna had hair the color of a Robin’s breast, didn’t get dressed before noon, and was seriously overweight. For breakfast she cracked a beer. Her kids, although not much older than I was, were what I considered to be degenerates’. They all drank, smoked cigarettes, and weed.

Until I started drinking and smoking with them, I was bored when we were together. And no matter what I did, I couldn’t shake the constant uneasiness I felt, knowing the weekend would end in violence. Which eventually ended the visits. Since these wild weekends were our families only social connection to the outside world though, when they ended I missed them. Was angry at my aunt Donna for refusing to deal with my father’s violence. Felt abandoned.

Us kids, except for my aunt’s oldest son who hung out with the adults, found things to entertain ourselves. Early one spring we decided to go tubing in the Provo River. The icy water raged, rapids peaked at six or eight feet high. The day was terrifying, several of us nearly drowned. My brothers blue eyes, sky wide with terror, laughed hysterically through choking gasps. Purple lips. My tube got stuck under a boulder, slamming my head hard, it knocked me silly.

Walking back to my parent’s trailer frozen stiff and blue as bruises, one of Donna’s daughters pulled out a bottle of vodka. Another lit a joint. They next morning the pile of us came to and I panicked. There were red streaks running down both my legs, scraped raw from my scuffle with the river, I thought I had blood poisoning.

“I’ve got blood poisoning!” I shrieked frantically.

This made the rest of them howl like a pack of hyenas.  “You got the munchies last night, ate everything in sight. “That’s Kool-Aid,” they bellowed.

May 14 2012

More info on Mommy Meals

Despite a breast-feeding brouhaha kicked off last week by a Time magazine cover photo of a mom nursing her 3-year-old son, that’s actually the norm worldwide, experts say. But in the United States, breast-feeding children that old is practiced among a tiny sliver of mothers.

Some online are calling it “perverted” and “dangerous” to nurse a 3-year-old, but “it’s normal for our species,” says Katherine Dettwyler, a professor of anthropology at the University of Delaware in Newark.

“It’s not perverted, it’s not sex, it’s not women doing it for some perverse need,” she says. “It’s normal like a nine-month pregnancy is normal.”

Dettwyler, who has published studies on breast-feeding, found that most children around the world are breast-fed for three to five years or longer.

That’s a sharp contrast with babies in the United States. Numbers for 2011 show that about three-quarters of American babies are breast-fed at birth. By 6 months old, 44% are still being breast-fed, and by 12 months just 24% are, says Laurence Grummer-Strawn, chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s nutrition branch.

The number of moms who breast-feed two years and beyond in the United States isn’t known because the data come from a survey done of 18-month-old babies. But Ruby Roy, a pediatrician at La Rabida Children’s Hospital in Chicago, says that it’s more common than might be believed, and that moms are just hiding it.

“There’s so much negative social attitude that we just can’t know,” Roy says. “But I have had many women in my practice tell me that they are breast-feeding to two or three years. They’re doing a night nursing before the baby goes to bed, or in the morning — but they’re not going to tell anyone.”

The World Health Organization recommends breast-feeding “up to two years of age or beyond.” TheAmerican Academy of Pediatrics recommends that “babies should continue to breast-feed for a year and for as long as is mutually desired by the mother and baby.”

When Dettwyler studied 1,280 U.S. children whose mothers nursed them for more than three years, she found they were “perfectly fine and they didn’t need therapy and they didn’t think they were having sex with their mothers.”

The children were nursed between three and nine years, with half being weaned between ages 3 and 4. The mothers tended to be middle- and upper-class women, the majority of whom were highly educated and worked outside of the home.

“This is not the stereotype of the Earth Mother nursing the child until he’s 5, and she also grows her own cotton and weaves her own diapers,” Dettwyler says.

Multiple studies show that breast-feeding is beneficial for both mother and infant. Breast milk contains immune factors that protect children against infection while their own immune system is still developing.

There also appears to be a programming effect on the body such that babies who nursed have lower rates of disease long after they are weaned.

Overall, studies have shown that breast-fed babies have lower rates of ear infections, eczema, diarrhea, lower respiratory tract infections, sudden infant death syndrome, obesity, leukemia and childhood diabetes.

Mothers who breast-feed have lower rates of breast cancer and ovarian cancer, says Grummer-Strawn. The longer they breast-feed, the lower their rates, he says.

It’s also possible that we evolved to nurse children until they’re around 5 or 6, says Dettwyler. Breast milk is one of the only sources of long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids that build brain tissue, she says.

It isn’t until age 5 or 6 that “95% of brain growth has been reached, and that’s also about the time that the child’s immune system is ramped up to full production,” she says.

May 14 2012

Yummy Mommy

I’m so excited about this Time magazine cover! Bravo to them, [and to the young woman], for having the guts to print it. It definitely got my attention. This young mother is sexy as can be. Not the way we most often think about the nursing mom. Mom is to be appropriately covered and, well, how should I put this, motherly. The child should be an infant; if they are to meet the standard of purity expected, required even, for a woman to get away with nursing her child. And God forbid she nurses said child in public. Like menstruation, menopause, and the bloody details of giving birth, these are all things women keep to themselves. Many times even from each other.

So here we have this vibrant young mother with her toddler son holding her nipple in his mouth. Very provocative indeed. I wonder would the reaction be different if the child was a female?

The Doc that’s behind the thinking being promoted in the article is pushing attachment parenting. He talks about babies and toddlers being plugged into mommy as much as possible in order to be emotionally healthy. I’m not sure how I feel about this as I don’t think we have enough truly connected men to support that process. What I mean is men who come home and [happily, willingly] do housework, laundry, cook and babysit so she can work, play, or whatever she needs to do to remain vital as a being separate from her child.  A man who will, as the commercial once said about women: Bring home the bacon, fry if up in the pan, and, in this case, never-never let her forget she’s a woman. Many times a married woman with children ends up being no more important to her man than the couch he falls into at night.

That’s in part why it’s hard to ignore this photograph. This woman is hot. Not an easy one to ignore or put into a clean little mommy box where she becomes completely non-threatening. What do we do with that? Looking at the image made me get a tiny tingle in my groin and I’m a heterosexual mom who nursed her children.

In thinking about the concept of attachment parenting, the picture gets much bigger for me. I think of male children who at a certain age are encouraged, almost threatened, by other males, and some females,  into rejecting their connection, attraction, and emotional need for their mother. Which in turn ends up being a deeper rejection of all females for anything other than sex. Which in truth requires that they reject a large part of who they are innately. Females who observe their mothers in these “less than” roles, where many times they become invisible, then end up rejecting mom, and therefore themselves, too.

In thinking about it from that perspective, assuming that the woman is fully supported by a male [or female] partner if she chooses to have one, this movement could be a real opportunity for WOMAN to reclaim her real and innate power as a FEMALE.

I think enough years have passed now to prove that we as women can in fact do almost anything a man can do. Many times better in fact.  Deep down though I am wondering how many women still want to? How many are really satisfied by it?  I myself am more interested in what a truly empowered FEMALE looks and feels like.  It’s pretty obvious that we aren’t there yet as the women in this country are more divided than we’ve ever been. I myself am getting tired of the  ’it’s all the man’s fault’ excuse. Come on. Really?

It seems to me that the liberation process for women, [as we have known it thus far], has cut far to many women off from who and what they truly are. I know I’m making a loaded statement here as women like to believe, and tend to back each other up in, we got it all covered. But I don’t see that as true. I see many highly masculinized women. Women who look the part, with or without silicone boobs popping out of their Victoria’s secret bras, like a fruit from a cornucopia, yet, they think, and lack connection to what they feel, very much like men. In fact to be anything other than that, is to risk being thought of as a wishy-washy emotional weakling, who insults her warrior sisters. The women who believe themselves to be the trailblazers of our freedom.

I wonder if this budding new movement might not be the beginning of something new for women, and men.  The end of images that do not serve the whole of humanity. Something deeper, richer, than the women and men from The Stepford Wives, Desperate Housewives, and even Sex In The City. Women and men, who have the courage to surrender what doesn’t truly serve them, and the whole. The tenacity to not back down and fall into old roles that no longer work.

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