Sacred Life Sunday: You Raise Me Up...

She was 12 years older than me, a recovering alcoholic with a long span of hell behind her. Foul-mouthed and fat. Crusty, outspoken, strong. She smoked like a haystack. She had skin the shade of coffee with a wrinkle or scar that marked all the passages of her life. She always wore bright colors, all the tones of the earth. Orange, green, brown, deep red and plum.

I was in the thick of what would be a very long climb out of the abyss. Lost and confused with this life, not knowing why I was here or why I should remain here. Knowing I didn't really want to be here but believing suicide was wrong, one day followed another with that drip-drip-drip stagnancy that can drive a person insane. I'm not good with dates but she came into my life sometime in the early 1990s.

When I would complain, she would say, "you are where you are because you choose to be there". At first I thought she was terribly unsympathetic and harsh. How could she possibly believe that I would choose to be so miserable?

It took a few years for me to realize the gift (and the exhortation) she gave me was powerful. It changed my life from one track to another. It was the proverbial four-way stop. It was the radical idea that I/we always have choices. It was the radical idea that we own our own existences. We are not cogs in a cultural wheel or products of social custom. Naturally those things influence us but they don't define us. Life is a series of choices, one thing or another. Sometimes both or all in a new configuration. Sometimes, as Neitzsche said, when something is tottering, we give it a final shove and move on to something entirely new and different.

That simple. We always choose. We are always choosing. Big choices and little choices.

I wrote a yellow post-it note and put it on my refrigerator. "You get to choose."

There was one on my bathroom mirror as well. "CHOICE!"

This might seem rather odd to those who have come along in the generation or two after mine. My generation of women were taught to be compliant and deferential. The idea of choosing what we would do, be or have was outside our reality. We were chastised to never be haughty or demanding. We existed to serve. The idea that we could design our lives as we saw fit was revolutionary. Our job as women was to serve men and serve children. The first wave of modern feminism which took place during my late teens allowed that we could then join another type of servitude ~ to an employer instead of family. The essential message didn't change in substance, only in the packaging.

The practice of learning to make choices was frightening as hell in the beginning. I thought the earth would shatter, the heavens would open and mass destruction would occur at the very notion that I would make a choice that someone else might not like.

Oh, my God! I'd be disliked, culled from the herd, rejected, sent into oblivion. I would cease to exist!

And, in fact, that did happen. I've written here previously about it, the time spent in complete isolation from any adequate support systems or friendships. And, yes, it was hell. It was also a transition. Without that, I wouldn't be where I am now.

It's been a long, hard road, this journey to finding likeminded others, women and men who are not afraid to make their own choices, chart the course of their own lives, make decisions that suit who they are instead of who they were conditioned to believe they should be. I'm only beginning to get comfortable in my own new skin.

It goes on, this learning and experimenting. These days though, I wouldn't have it any other way. I love the idea that I make choices, that I am responsible for those choices and that I have the internal strength to deal with the consequences.

This wouldn't have happened without that unusual friend who shattered my world and guided me in picking up the pieces.


~*

Female friendships...

Note: Some of you have captchas (verification words) that are grey.. on a grey marbled background. They take me six or seven tries.. and then I frequently have to give up. I can't read them. Just know please that I am reading and enjoying you... but will no longer be able to comment. Sorry.

~*

Many, many years ago I read a book about female friendships. It was essentially a history of women's friendships over the years, how they were valued and nurtured.

In all honesty, my female friendships mean far more to me than romantic relationships. Now that I'm older (and perhaps always without my recognizing it necessarily ~ more on this another time), I have little to no interest in romantic relationships. There's something in the dynamic that just doesn't appeal to me.

These days, I completely value my female friendships. I could easily spend the rest of my life quite happily living with my closest female friends, offering each other support as we get older and creating a quiet, safe and stable life.

My female friendships have always had a depth and quality to them that I've never found in any romantic relationship, including my marriage. When I was married, there was always a tension there. We are different by nature, men and women ~ as it should be ~ but it seemed more energy than should be necessary was devoted to navigating those differences. Those differences were ultimately accepted as natural and the tension remained. In some ways, he saw me as a foreign creature and I saw him the same way. I had to give up large chunks of who I am to be with him and I'm sure he gave up large chunks of himself to be with me.

With my female friends, there is an understanding without words, without explanation, without tension. While our lifestyles and even some values might differ, there is a bond.

I find it interesting that two of my closest female friends are gay. I am not but on some level, I completely understand their preferences. I just don't have the hunger for an exclusive relationship with anyone so I can't imagine a gay relationship any more than I can imagine a straight relationship, even though one of my gay friends said I should "try" it.

Since my last attempt at having a romantic relationship, I spent a few months thinking about it and realized it is just not going to happen for me. In fact, truthfully, I don't even want it any more. In thinking about it, I came to that realization that I don't want to navigate those differences.

I'm quite comfortable in my world populated by females. While I do have a few male friends, the relationship is entirely different. How wonderful it is to be free to be who I am and so completely enjoy my female friends without strange dynamics running in the background like some unix script; unseen, unnoticed and hidden.

We females come with the internal "software" and know inherently how to support and nurture each other. We inherently know how to form community and community bonding.

Over the past 40 years or so, this has been devalued for a more aggressive, competitive woman who is encouraged to be just like a man. We've lost so much of what it means to be and have female friends as corporate and market values have replaced family and community values, using a perversion of feminism to reinforce it. When I look back and remember the early days of feminism, it was all about celebrating women. It was all about knowing that we did have value as human beings and that our roles meant something in the larger community as well as our own homes.

Now women are pressured to "get out there", even if they are content to stay home and keep the hearth.

Market values have ruined many things but perhaps the worst casualty is that connection we have to each other and the value we once placed on our role as the hearthkeepers, mothers, sisters, daughters and friends.


Peace,

~Chani