45 years ago, at my Smith College graduation, the college president celebrated the fact that we might just be the first class heading out into the world with the opportunity to have it all, a great career, meaningful volunteer work, a husband, children...words to that effect (and unspoken was the assumption that we would always have a home, and food on the table!) We now had the tools for a completely satisfying journey, one that would be personally challenging, but also enrich the world.
What I didn't understand back then was the reality that, in order to do all these things, I would have to engage constantly and effectively with "the patriarchy". Heck, my all-girls' schools and all-women's college were part of that system of male power; birthed to address its inequities, yes, but still functioning within it. And what I didn't understand about myself yet was that my core adhered to feminine principles that were effectively the complete opposite of society's. I've spoken many times about how I functioned worse and worse as time went by, achieving none of those goals that had been so well-meaningly promised...It's like being a plant, at 21 transplanted into non-nurturing soil, given uneven amounts of rain and sunlight, barely hanging on for dear life -- but having a solid stem that stubbornly refuses to die. I've had, and still have, so little personal connection to male leadership, perhaps because I knew I couldn't follow it! My dad, bless him, was too empty to provide guidance, my brothers stayed at arm's length, I never married, I couldn't enter the all-male profession I would have liked to enter, I rarely had male bosses or supervision at jobs, I never earned significant amounts of money, and I have no investments (having "inherited" $725 which went directly into a trip to England!) I only spent about a year of my adult life living with men who at times tried to think for me (and that was about all I could take!) For a few years, I owned funny old cars, but never "real" property or a home.
I don't recommend this freedom path to any woman, because of how excruciatingly hard it is. "My freedom" probably won't look like freedom to many people. But by the same token, as all of us try to make sense of the events roiling around us, and we hear grand phrases about "freedom" and "history" and "tradition", I guess my wish is that we women try to refocus, if only within ourselves, on our freedom, our her-story, and the traditions we might have started, left to our own devices. What, in your heart of hearts, constitutes "freedom" for you? Also, what might "independence day" look like to Mother Earth? -- surely not millions of cars and RVs on the road, the sky over-filled with airplanes, the lakes with motorboats, and tons of trash from fireworks and millions of cookouts.
On Monday, I'll celebrate the fact that no one owns my soul, my brain, or my body. Somehow, as hard as it has been to stay alive, I have been "free" for 66 years. (Fireworks are going off within!)
