Take 9: I know you're fed up, ladies, but keep your head up

From the beginning of my life, I was always strong-willed.  I knew what I wanted, and I always felt that no matter what life threw at me, I could make it happen.  When my parents went to their first parent teacher conference with my kindergarten teacher, she told them that there was a bit of a battle between the two of us regarding who was in charge in the classroom.  Then, when I was in third grade, my teacher informed my parents that she “knew my looks”, especially when I was unhappy about one of her decisions in the classroom. While my parents were likely a combination of being entertained and mortified by these comments, I think of them as reflections of my strength as a young girl and my unwillingness to concede to that which didn’t feel right.  I see it as a reflection of a time in which I didn’t understand that being female meant something different than being male and that whatever I wanted was a possibility.
 
I was never taught that being a girl meant that there were limits to what I could pursue and achieve.  My parents encouraged me to be strong, to set goals, and to push myself toward achieving them.  They taught my sister and me that we needed to be able to be independent, and that as a woman, having a career is important in order to always be able to support ourselves without needing to lean on a partner, just in case.  We saw our mother go back to school, get a master’s degree and pursue a new career in her 40s while balancing home, school, and work life through it all.  I was taught, and then put into action, the belief that if you want it, you can make it happen with hard work and perseverance, no matter someone’s gender. 
 
At the same time, it seems that there were some unspoken limits to what women felt like they could pursue in our world, and as I got older, they became more obvious to me. As I reflect on my childhood, and the status of female empowerment in the mid 80s and 90s, versus now, so many emotions arise. In some ways, my early childhood was a time of female empowerment and in other ways, the ceiling that prevented women from advancing in any areas of their lives felt more unbreakable than ever.  While women were encouraged to pursue careers, there were jobs that our society classified more as “man’s work” versus “woman’s work” and any female that pressed, stretched, and expanded those limits had to struggle with balancing her own feelings of being a trailblazer to some, and a power hungry bitch to others.  A man who knew what he wanted and pushed for it was strong, a woman was opportunistic, or arrogant.  I grew up in a time when women were going to work in professional settings more so than at any other time prior in history, but at the same time there was a limit to how high they could set their sights in the organizations they worked for and (still to this day) women felt like they were forced to choose between careers and motherhood and were criticized no matter which path they chose.  Men who didn’t get married were thought to lead a “bachelor lifestyle” or “sewing their wild oats” while women were considered spinsters or undesirables if they were single past 30.  How confusing it was for me, to be raised to be strong and independent and forced to witness a society that seemed to challenge these important lessons that my parents instilled in me at the very same time. 
 
Women have slowly eroded the wall between “less than” and “equal to” with blood, sweat, tears, muscle and mind.  We have fought long hard battles and have had to celebrate even the smallest of wins as if we moved mountains.  When you are the “less than” gender, your voice is stifled, and your message gets lost.  Expression of emotion was unrightfully designated as weakness and expression of wants as needy instead of the actuality and recognition of the strength it takes to do so.
 
So why this topic now?  There has never before been a time in my career as a therapist in which the world at large is intersecting with the mental health of my clients, my colleagues, my family, and my friends at every turn. With the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I am feeling broken this week.  This woman was a champion for women.  She empowered us, she fought for our rights, she fought for our equality, she fought for our health. I have sat for over a decade with women who have been used, abused, torn down, raped, assaulted, and so much more.  I have listened to men and women alike revictimize these women stating how they probably deserved it and even allowed it to happen.  I have heard people say that, “well if they were a strong enough woman, no man would try to hurt them” but haven’t we also proven that being a strong woman isn’t desirable either?  So, the battle rages on and the right to choose what happens to our own bodies has been the longest, hardest, and most grueling battle that we have had to face. This battle is fought in our homes, in our social media, and on the senate floor. We are constantly being revictimized when we are victims, and our right to medical care is being threatened.  I am challenging my clients who are feeling the feelings associated with this battle as anger, sadness, frustration, fear, and everything else in between to feel them.  To own them.  To know that this shows their strength. And, I am challenging myself to do the same, to find that inner strong-willed girl and not concede to that which does not feel right. These feelings that we are currently feeling are not bad feelings – although society will want to make you believe that.  They do not make you weak, nor do they in any way make you a snowflake.  These are the feelings that will drive us, give us strength and keep pushing us to break through walls, ceilings, and anything else that society puts before us.  And, I suppose if you want to call us snowflakes, I hope you are ready for a blizzard.
 
I know many of you, after reading this far are probably thinking that this therapist should not be getting so political in her words, but unfortunately too much of this is beyond politics at this point. I just finished the book, “The Pull of the Stars” by Emma Donaghue.  It took place during the Spanish Flu Epidemic in 1918 and one line keeps resounding in my mind, “My head was spinning. I said, faltering: I really have no time for politics. Oh, but everything’s politics, don’t you know?”  So, there we are.  Everything is politics, and everything feels heavy.  But still we are here.  And Still, we fight. 
 
And, now I leave you with the powerful words of Tupac that feel more applicable now than they did when he wrote them in the early 90s.
 
And since we all came from a woman
Got our name from a woman and our game from a woman
I wonder why we take from our women
Why we rape our women, do we hate our women?
I think it's time to kill for our women
Time to heal our women, be real to our women
And if we don't we'll have a race of babies
That will hate the ladies that make the babies
And since a man can't make one
He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one
So will the real men get up?
I know you're fed up, ladies, but keep your head up
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