The First of Many: On Womanhood
I am continuously having so many realizations at once. It happens like that, usually, I think. A cascade effect. The dominoes sighing in relief as they finally fall in tandem. The reverberation of deciding my own worth, the allotment of belief in my own abilities. To ask for and create the full life I want and deserve. Understanding the internal and external factors, my role in each, and the complexities that lie in between. Understanding what I can do, which is really anything, which parts of my life I can control, and which narratives are best left to their own devices. I have added into my life the pleasure that accompanies surprise, the unexpected that trickles in when there is space left open. There is that in life which I want to grab by the neck and claim as my own, or in other words, to try my best and work my hardest to achieve, and there is that which I want to splash in the water and just see where it lands.
I feel freed in realizing that some of my thoughts are still truly my own, and that I mustn’t assume the responsibility of explaining everything to everyone. I can choose what to care about, what to speak about, what to write, what to share. There are vulnerabilities I can keep hidden within my own corners. Maybe for later use, maybe forever, and just because I have the ability to, doesn’t mean I have to articulate every thought and feeling. I feel so powerful that I, alone, am allowed to decide.
I am realizing what it means to be a woman. To relish in my furiousness towards the lack of authentic representation of womanhood. The hollowness of our selections. The offensive portrayal of our values, the lack of effort put into translating the magnificent beauty and depth of female friendships from experience to media. From pen to paper.
The way in which women are painted good, and dull, and one dimensional. Place neatly into a box and asked to sit still. How “unlikable” women (non-comfortmists) are denied space to be seen, heard, or accepted. The way in which women as humans (multifaceted, flawed, full, alive, reckless…) are perceived as wrong, are looked down upon. How tiresome a narrative.
We are forced to cling to the shoddy attempts in media and pop culture to capture the dualities of women, desperate to a feel a connection. We search for the dark and the light, the root and the leaf, the curving bends and lakeside fires of womanhood to feel less alone, to feel more alive, to feel full, to feel less shame of the dark feelings associated with caretaking, the resentment intermixed with the pride of motherhood, to feel less confused about our constant awareness of being perceived, and its ability to be both the hands that cause the suffocation and the air we need to breathe. To see ourselves as the struggling heroine that does not have time to lust for the (slightly predatory, but ever celebrated) savior of a man in her search for safety and security in this life.
I have realized how to recognize when my awareness shifts from soul to ego and how to shimmy gently back over the threshold.
Together, the aforementioned concepts feel a lot like the first days of fall. When sixty degrees means warm coats and chills running the length of my body. The cool, crisp sixty opposed to the warm, sunny sixty of spring. It is a change that comes with a death through sacrifice, shedding as a predecessor to rest. I watch the leaves fall softly onto the riverbank.
I do not have to be everything all at once, and I can be everything all at once. It is so sweet to love oneself so deeply that I allow my branches to embrace the bare. I shake the birds from my shoulder and consider how we share the same freedoms. I walk through the orchard and take a bite from each apple as I place it in my basket.
In the words of Debbie Millman, I continue on with the “dogged perseverance in the hope that I [have] one notch more optimism than shame.”
On Feminism:
And I continue to be ever fascinated by human experience, by how we are shaped by this world. This vein of thought born firstly for me, to try and comprehend the complex emotions around myself, my body, this world, and the relationship between the three. To take back ownership of my own body and mind and understand how I lost it in the first place.
I have long believed I wasn’t educated enough to speak on women’s experiences, on feminism, on the ways in which we are treated unfairly or held down in this world. I have looked into a master’s degrees in women’s and gender studies time and time again to finally grant myself the allowance to share my thoughts. I am so tired of feeling like I can’t speak on the experience of women- the way in which misogyny is so deeply embedded in our society- because I let myself believe that I need to be more prepared before I was able to share my experiences. I woke up one morning last week and thought, fuck that, my credentials lie first hand in my experience. In being a girl, a woman, a female in this world. Of understanding how people look at me differently, lesser than, hungrily. How fear is a reflex when someone’s eyes linger for one second too long, understanding that I have learned to become small as a safety mechanism- to minimize my presence, my thoughts, my personality as to not ruffle to wrong feathers, to not differentiate myself from the tribe or make too loud a ruckus about my needs. I have learned my nature should be sacrificial, and I should ask for what I want, but only to a certain degree, of course. I am emotional because I am angry, because I am alive. Because I am responding in a healthy way to the external ideals that have been placed on me, not because I am intrinsically wrong, never because I am too much, too dramatic.
I now have an understanding, a belief, that my experience/ thoughts/ opinions are worthy of sharing, that I matter. My desire to take up space, to be listened to, to speak out is insatiable, and I acknowledge that I can speak to the feminist narrative without claiming to be anything but human and flawed and broken and whole and open and honest and vulnerable about the whole experience- feminism as a lover of women, as a lover of humankind wholly, asking for equality and working for an increased openness of all people. A recognition of the complex relationship of each way we show up in this world, that our beings at our core are juxtapositions. I am a feminist, but I still partake in societal norms that wouldn’t be considered inherently feminist. No one can be any one thing all the time. The human existence itself is a creative act and the way in which we choose to project ourselves an art piece.
I am not trying to be perfect in this endeavor or say that I have it all figured out or that I know all the answers- I am saying the opposite, that my insecurities, my flaws and constant learning, my humanness is what makes this all the more important. I am trying to be the best version of myself I can, to do the most good and create small changes for the better in this world and stand up for what I believe in. So the following is me trying- to help create understanding, connectivity, to allow space for others to join, to feel seen, to be challenged by a new perspective, to take whatever they need or want and leave the rest to rot. I am not here to become anything. I am here to share.
Which is to say, sharing my experience with others, being vulnerable, being unafraid to say I feel… without an apology, excuse, or validation following it is what I consider to be one of the greatest acts of feminism. To call attention to the human experience through every lens and in turn remove the need to internalize our true reactions while projecting some sort of pleasantry that makes others more comfortable. It shifts the relationship from competitive to supportive. Women push against each other to claw for the top of a system that will never allow them past a certain rung on the ladder. Women are powerful. Alone we are capable of a riptides, tornadoes, hurricanes, together, we would burn the whole fucking place to the ground. And by that I mean just every rule, standard, nuance, that doesn’t serve the equality of women. We are not asking to take away rights of others, simply to restore balance to the justice of all.
But the patriarchal ways of our society are so deeply embedded in our history, that one word too far and you disrupt the delicate balance of gender inequality, one feather too far and your request for equality has turned to insanity, to irrational, to unappreciative, to too much. The mere act of holding up a mirror to society’s own face and asking for introspection of the privilege inequalities incites panic rooted in fear. We are encouraged to respect and empower women with the caveat that no actual change ensues. Because the fact of the matter remains that there will be an absolute inability to devote an equitable amount of respect to women without an acknowledgement and release of privilege from men. A shift in ownership of power, a ripping out of each unwritten and nuanced way our society leans in towards men. Water as it runs down the hill. A disruption of the boys club we have all resigned to live within.
You are not wrong to say I am a mad woman. I am angry, but emotion is allowed to live at an intersection with truth. Anger grounded in fact does not make me irrational, it makes me human. The crazy thing would be to recognize these truths and to not act. To not use the anger as fuel for enacting change. I no longer want to just tease the waters but to instead submerge myself wholly.
On Motherhood (Excerpt):
The miracle it is to see a daughter love a mother. To roll her eyes as she says I love you
To feel the most fiercely for and against the woman of her making
To be held to the highest standard and stitched within her mothers skin for safekeeping
The attachment to and from mother and daughter is the utmost example of juxtaposition
Personification of an oxymoron
The layers are intricately woven into braids falling upon my shoulders
I have never seen such a visceral love
Strings stitched violently from gut to heart born from a passionate protection
Her love pulled upward through my throat blocking any attempt at a true articulation of experience. Yet, the knowing is held by each woman via woman on this earth.
Intense need of approval, comfort, support, love despite standing or state of relationship
The clinging of my arms around my mother’s neck while I scream for the autonomy I desire. My tears drying not upon my cheeks but within the cotton of her shirt
This is the complex love, the complex process of growing up. The realization that while I may age, part of my identity will forever be daughter and part of my mother’s will be as my keeper. That we do not outgrow this love and while the shape may change the foundation remains. These are the parts we search for in representation. The messiness of attachment, of need, of want, of love and anger intertwined.
On Friendship:
True female relationships. Not the competitive pettiness that is portrayed so often but the depths of loving support and understanding. The warmth, the way their love makes you feel chosen. The way in which it does not make you whole, but reminds you of the wholeness you already possessed. Of conversations not of boys and makeup and periods (though those topics are surely allowed) but of fears and healing and growing and regrets and hope and pride. Friendships that are shallow (without morality) in a playful manner, when appropriate, when lightness is called for, but more accurately friendships that carry the weight and the depths of humanity on its shoulders. Friendship personified as Hercules.
There is a purity to the joy that is shared between exclusively female company. There is no shame in expression. There is no fear of being too much. “Girls dinner“ or “girls weekend” defined as being able to be yourself fully; to jump around as high as you can, to feel the gold shoot from your fingertips, to roll in the rainbow and let the colors seep deep into your soul. There’s a safeness in the absence of judgment. There is no guilty pleasure. There is just pleasure.
