I'm touching base on this topic, even though I wrote about it once before (in July of 2016) and even though, at this point, I am nearly reader-free! I am not sure my blog is what the world needs right now, but I plow ahead because I need to write. It is like breathing. And because somehow I trust that there are some little crumbs of truth scattered through "The Liz Path" over the years that perhaps some future readers will benefit from.
I am slowly making my way through two extraordinary books. The first (The First Free Women) is a small book of poems edited and "reimagined" by Matty Weingast; the writings are by some of the world's first Buddhist nuns. I can only read, at most, one of these short poems a day. They are poignant, universal, timely, and muse upon freedom in many forms -- freedom from (husbands and families, belongings, food) and freedom in (a spiritual path, wisdom, the daily minutiae of life). To say that the "nun" in me resonates with each and every page is an understatement.
Then, at a used book store I found a 1980 book, The Moon and the Virgin: Reflections on the Archetypal Feminine, by Nor Hall. The first chapter alone speaks to me in a similar way, even though modern and almost academic in tone. Hall helps readers get beyond the superficial definition of "virgin", and really see the word as referencing a woman's freedom to keep her own counsel, be true to her own nature, to be unfettered.
I sometimes don't fully appreciate how free I have been. This journey has at times been so terrifying and so humbling/humiliating that I couldn't see it clearly. Yet through the lens of these books, I can see the truth, which is that I have been unusually free. I've been either rejected or relatively unchained by most of the male constructs in our world. I don't own a house, which means I'm essentially homeless but I don't owe money to the bank. I've never had a husband or life partner, which has been extremely lonely, but it also means I was always free to make my own decisions without compromise. I was not able to pursue the life path I would have preferred, but this meant that I had perhaps hundreds of very unexpected learning experiences and delightful adventures. Being a free woman comes at a high cost, but would I go back now and change any of it? No.
