Woman

 

 

My fourteen year old son asked me the other day why women's rights were so important to me. My immediate response was that it's because women have not been given their due throughout history. We briefly discussed it and I was satisfied at the time with our dialogue, but as the days went on, his question lingered in my soul and I asked myself, "Why do I care so much about women's rights? The question stayed with me for many days and I've determined why I feel so passionately about this.

 

I grew up in an abusive, strictly Catholic family environment. I was the youngest child of seven - five girls and two boys, one of whom died as a teenager before I was born. I know I was not planned. I've always felt that. As a young girl child, I was deemed a burden. My parents didn't affirm at all my innate place in this world. I was never guided to learn of my value, my worth. I was only another girl child in a world where girls held no worth.

 

From a distance I witnessed my mom's life: for she was too occupied with working as our often only income bringer; I saw her submit to my dad's violent, drunken rages; I let her in the house by my bedroom window when my dad threw her out. I saw that she had no power. 

 

I went to Catholic school and learned that woman was the root of all evil. I learned of Adam and the wicked Eve who brought about all sin. Original sin. The sin that we are all born with only because we are girls.

 

I learned from my sisters who all get pregnant as teenagers, that sex with a boy gave attention. Something none of us had at home.

 

I grew up in a time when song lyrics went like this, "She blowing me crazy 'til my ammunition is dry
She's using her head again," and "I got my camera, Make a star outta you. Let's inject it, photograph it, down to the subway let the boys have it ." I learned that if I gave to a boy what these song lyrics suggested, I would have all the attention I craved.

 

I spent years of my life trying to find my self-esteem, my worth, my place in this world by going from boy after boy, man after man to get a sense of who I was. I never had an assertive, healthy, positive female role model who could show me that being a girl, and then a woman, was beautiful in itself.

 

I lived like this for a very long time, until about a year ago, after I left the Catholic church and all its misogynist ideology, and I came to question and rebel about all that I thought of as womanhood. I rebelled against the ideas that society places on us women: that we are less important than man; that we were created from man and made to serve man; that we are here for man's domination. I studied various spiritual paths, especially ancient Western European spirituality, and found in Paganism, a respect and reverence for women that is non-existent in Christianity.

 

With my new-found self awareness of being a sacred, honored woman, I took this new, magical self to Idaho to visit an old friend who I trusted to hold me in the light that I now held myself. He completely led me to believe that he was as enchanted by my soul as I was to have found my true self. I was so completely ecstatic to show this rediscovered, magical me in a completely platonic way! The perfect opportunity to connect with a male who wasn't just after sex, at the perfect time of my life!

 

Well, it didn't turn out that way. It turned out that all his posturing, support and affirmations of this beautiful, free, spiritual woman I had become was only a way to get me to go out there to have sex with him. It was in that moment when I insisted he leave my hotel room, and I spent the next two days in Idaho totally on my own (which as a blast!!!), that I came to realize how many women go through their entire lives being prey to unenlightened men, that I could use my voice and wisdom to not only change the lives of women, but more importantly, to raise a better generation of men. Men who honor women for their innate power of life. Men who are self-sufficient. Men who don't use women to their own ends.

 

I want for every girl and woman to live in a world where her value and worth is measured by what she deems important, based on her own merit. I want the women who grew up with the same messages I received, and the similar fear and shame-based existence that so many of us have lived with to know there is something so much more sacred to ascribe to.

 

And most importantly of all, I owe it to my son, this young man who asked that all-important question, "Why do you care so much about women's rights?" to pave the way to a more enlightened, respectful manner in which to approach his understanding of sex and women. I am so incredibly grateful that I have the voice, the courage and the wisdom to fight for the right of girls and women.

 

We are sacred, made in the image of the Divine Mother, and it is time we take our rightful place back.