We dream for our babies, our children, nieces and nephews, those we teach, and those we heal.
We women are used to situations that do not make sense. I struggle with this myself. I know I spend much more time trying to unravel the knots in logic that are fed to me by various data-streams from the world at large into my little corner of the world than most women I know.
Some say I do this because I have more time than they do to do this. I have 24/7 just like everyone else. Some say I do not work. I will not even honor that with detailed debunking. I do all the work that women have always done, plus I have three other primary jobs. Yes, I am a researcher and anthropologist by nature, but I learned and studied how to do these things toward which I was drawn through my 18 years of schooling and through another 20 plus years of work in institutions of higher education. I work on books, websites, help my husband with his company when he is overwhelmed by research and teaching at the University.
I have set out on my own exploration which I share through my writing.
My opinions most often are based on research and have value. I have references for things I say or cite. Just ask if I do not list them.
I have been knocked down and dragged through the mud and excrement more times than I can count.
I was born dirt poor, a pig and chicken-raising, egg-selling farmer’s daughter, on a small, mixed-crop farm in Indiana. My mother raised me to believe I was sickly, that there was something wrong with me and this led to isolation, loneliness, and depression as a child and which has moved right along with me as I age.
My stubbornness and tenacity kept me alive. Literally. I did not do the #metoo disclosure, but I support others who do. I am not a joiner. I have dedicated myself to a group trying to achieve an end at a couple points in time. I was a successful person in these endeavors in that I achieved my end, but I did not work and play well enough with others to make many close friends. I just never got the hang of close social bonding.
I was born to mother who told me that she never asked for me to be born, and that whose comforting of me as a teenager experiencing suicidal self-doubt and fear, was to say that I while I was not pretty, just plain, true, but that it wasn’t all that bad.
Imagine being thrown in to the nasty world of the teenage social milleau without the preparation of real peer interaction through school immersion in grade school. I was absent as much as I was present in grades 1 through 8. I did not have the slightest idea about girl/boy relationships as I entered high school. It did not go well. During the next 15 years I was sexually assaulted and raped several times. My first time was rape. I was assaulted again by another older male within six months of that. I withdrew from that world and lived in social isolation until I found a boy who was slow moving and predictable a couple years later.
During those critical late years of high school I was being groomed for seduction by an adult male who taught and had other roles in that school. I turned 18 and graduated from high school the same month. Within a few weeks of graduation he had convinced me to have sex with him. It took me a couple of years to get him completely out of my life and realize how it was sick and abusive to have sex with him.
I moved in with the slow-moving smart guy and lived with him for 13 years. It became an emotionally abusive and controlling relationship. It was not physically or sexually abusive at first. I was probably a common law spouse, the state had common law on the books, so the next rape I experiencesd was marital rape. It took me a few years and a couple of moves, the last one across country, to escape from Mr. Slow who turned into a stocker.
Of course there were other usurious guys in my younger days, but nothing with them that approached assault. Inappropriate workplace behavior is another story. I ran out of fingers counting those. I left the university after a boss told me as a way conveying condolences after my brother’s death, that “he had so many things he wanted to do before he died; he’d never slept with a black women.” I was cornered in isolated library spaces by supervisors. A trusted mentor suggested we travel to a professional meeting together when there was no reason for me to attend and when his marriage was on the rocks.
I have seen most of the sleezy ways in which society can treat women. Yes, that includes unfortunate specialization in dead-end professions where I worked for, and had to fight to get to the upper end of, the $20,000 a year range at the very end of the last millennium. That was when I quit working for anyone other than myself.
It took about 10 years for healing to occur through counseling, learning to trust my instincts and my knowledge, after I left the university. I also had to to repair a marriage in which my husband did not know how to support me through a very turbulent time and severe depression, but in which we were neutral at best and downright destructive at other times. This was during some of the absolutely hellacious teen years of my vivacious daughter.
This was when my mother and another brother passed away and my remaining two brothers developed dementia. It was also during that time that I finally realized my mother and I were in a possible Münchausen-by-Proxy relationship and definitely a factitious-by-proxy relationship in my early life, which lead to other factitious relationships through my twenties.
The past eight years I have written publicly about personal things. From this I learned even more about healing myself. I will never give up on learning until I reach an old age filled with dementia and drool.
I try to apply what I learn to the world at large. As a social scientist I see patterns of behavior across culture and how I also am a part of creating and being created by those patterns.
This past year has been no different and I am now ready to talk about dangers I see in political communication and societal constraints that have shifted dramatically in the country in which I live and the democracy in which I participate. Yes, in many ways this is the same old same old, but I see some areas in which I can find hope.
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I feel like your story is my story, and most likely the story for so many women around the world. Thank you for sharing and for putting into words that which is often hard to express, much less to see and understand what is going on. We live in this culture, and like fish swimming in the water do not ask “how is the water?”, we become used to the water and do not always see or think to ask, “what is our culture?”.
In a world where snippets and memes rule, I feel like nuance and complexity are needed more than ever if we are to understand where adjustments are needed. Either/or and black/white analyses schmoosh together bad behavior with heinous atrocity. Rude comments and femicide are very different beasts though they are hatched in the same dark cave. Our stories validate and we can learn from each other as we share our strengths and weaknesses in responding to injustices; we are our best resources.
I find that people only acknowledge as work the work that other people pay you for. Like you, I find my writing, research, photography, and artwork is my real work whether other people pay me or whether other people acknowledge it as work. Making money through that work involves doing research in making money (which isn’t generally my favorite topic as there are much more interesting things to write about), plain salesmanship, finding or making things to sale, or finding affiliates, sponsors, donors or grants — all of which take time away from the real work. This “making money” is a job onto itself. I think of making money as the chore you have to do to pay bills. Words like vocation/avocation, work/hobby to me are false dichotomies because inherit in them is that only making money validates work. In my opinion, the value of work should also be defined in how many people learn something new from your work, how many people are entertained or made happy, how many people are changed, how many people are excited to try something different, etc. And it doesn’t have to be a popularity contest or large numbers, if you change one person (hopefully for the better although better is a value-ridden term; my better and someone else’s better can be radically different) or make one person happy or one person learns something, then you have done your work. Blogs allow us to do and share our real work as you have done.
Women writers have always have a tough haul. But everything you say is true. We write for love, for need, sometimes for money, and now we write for each other and the world. Women sharing our stories is not only empowering it is essential for us to advance as women and for all of us to advance as people. Thank you for your thoughtful reply. You know what it is like. I find that I cycle though gung-ho charge ahead certainty to middle of the night soul-wrenching questioning about writing publicly and encouraging others to do so. But as we must – we persist.
Reading about the various abuses you’ve endured makes me appreciate you so much more, Nancy. If you have men question you about your motives for running an only women blogging group here in Tucson, this post might be a good reference point to illustrate why the voices of women are so important to you. I’m not certain if I hold out hope for our democracy. I waiver, which is one reason I seek out community through blogging. I participated in this pet blogger’s challenge. One of the other blogs I visited had been around for years. The female blogger wondered if blogging has become passe, which really struck me. If writing becomes passe, god help us all! And in those moments I find a spark of hope.
Perhaps the letters between the early Americans such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson or Mary Hays and Mary Wollenscraft were passé. Women have always written since we could claim a pen. And the internet is feminine in structure so of course we have taken to it for all sorts of communication. I have used the “read my post on it” in conversation with men who question various beliefs or behaviors… but mainly I ignore them (just ask my husband!) 🙂
Nancy, what a vivid portrait of a world that, from what we hear, too many experience. My growing up was so different that it’s hard for me to comprehend the one you lived. But your writing lets me see into you, your traumatic formative years and their aftermath. The things that have created your passion.
Passion emerges from the soul, and much of my writing does come from the knowledge and perhaps wisdom the inner me acquired along the way. Thanks Bee.
Many phrases of this post stick out for me. The predominant feeling I am left with is frustration. I think of all of the wrong things that were said and never corrected and all of the maladaptations that developed in my personality that now need to be reformed, refined, and/or polished. I know that these experiences leave people suspended in time, without validation, growth, or direction. I also love the hope in your post. How it dwells in the ugly authenticity but emerges as authentically in the truth that, if we can survive this and arrive on the other side with the faculties (for the most part) in tact, we have, not only something to give back to women in need, but the ability to change the systems that brought us to this point.
I wonder what “triggered” this post and also admire your ability to shape these experiences into ideas and relatable words. You have always been authentic and able to confront your strengths and, if so, limitations. I am also quietly amused that you were too stubborn to post a #metoo statement directly for your unwillingness to be a “joiner.”
Nefertiti, I think you see the real me. I am stubborn, and I do not coddle. If I can heal, a whole lotta people can heal. What triggered this post? Two things, a dream that I was an imposter and had no authority. I did a lot of thinking upon waking, and decided to write a brief piece about why I have authority. I also felt I needed a post I could link to in other writing, so I don’t have to write about it again and again. We do have the ability to survive, reintegrate, and re—emerge and do good work from that new place. Thank you for seeing the integrity, hope, and even humor that I do try to include. It is hard to constantly have to see what bitter roots exist and grow back in mutated shapes time and again. I still have the ability to unleash a poison pen that is quite similar to one of my mother’s defining moves. We all have improvements we can make, always. Thanks for the thoughtful reply!