If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. That is what the old saying, sooth or otherwise, announced to the children to whom it was taught along with nursery rhymes, counting songs and the like. “I learned this when I was little,” was what my Mom would tell me when she was teaching me things she learned as a child. Sometimes she would add information about who taught it to her, or her surrounding when she learned it. No matter how the nuances split away from the main story to create the specifics of the thing she was teaching me, I recognized the main big lesson that underlay them all was that things repeat, life is a line that spirals circularly through time creating the illusion of sameness or repetition. Someone taught her, and now she teaches me, and someday I will teach others. I had the comfort of knowing this was true, that life had constants and I was a part of that cycle.
I so wish every state had a repository of women's knowledge. One of the great things about the beginning maturation of the internet is that women are using it to collectively share, and also archive, women's knowledge in a way that has not only been not only difficult but discouraged for centuries, if not for millennia. It should be a place for women to write, to study, for projects focused on preserving previous generations knowledge and skills in all areas.
Women's culture is different, and more expansive, than men's culture. I won't argue that point here. It is a given in my understanding of the world. I see it everyday in the groups I follow and in which I participate. I participate in a group called, GBE2, for bloggers. Every week the organizer of the group posts a writing prompt for the week. This week the prompt is free writing. This is my free writing product that happens to incorporate the prompts for the previous three weeks as well.
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