Conference turris::womannotes-v2

    
    
    I guess I will start by trying to explain my experience.
    
    I have lived most of my life in Northern Middlesex county
    in Massachusetts.  When I was growing up this was a somewhat
    depressed area.  My mother is Irish Catholic (she is more so
    now then when I was growing up), and my father is first generation
    American (his parents came from Sweden) with no religious affiliation.
    My last name has been mistaken for a Jewish last name (this in an
    town that had no Jews or Blacks).
    
    Somehow because of all this or in spite of it, I have never felt
    part of the mainstream of society/culture.  I do not understand
    the dynamics necessary for being "accepted", being part of a group.
    I did not hang out with a group of friends nor did I play sports
    so I never experienced that kind of bonding.
    
    I have spent a lot of my life experimenting with different sub-cultures
    or loosely knit groups on the fringes of society.  The culture that
    I have always felt kinship with is the mix of Native American cultures
    from the Plains and the American Southwest.  I am not sure when
    or where this identity came from  but it has caused me to have a
    more "life" oriented outlook which most of my peers did not have
    or even know about.
    
    I guess what I am trying to say is that since I have never understood
    my peers I never understood how they experienced society/culture
    and since I almost never talked/trusted them I never heard their
    stories, except what was written about in books, and magazines or
    on TV or in the movies.
    
    _peggy
    
    		(-)
    		 |
    			By acknowledging that the Goddess is in 
    			each of us, we have a common point to begin
    			talking and listening from.
    
    
    				
    			

Peggy,

  Could you add a few examples of the kind of thing you're looking
for?  It's not clear to me.

Meigs

    
    
    This is not clear to me either - but I know that the way I have
    experienced our society/culture is different than a lot of other
    women who on the surface seem to be similar to myself.
    
    At the last workshop that Pat and I led there was a simple discussion
    about "I love to cook but hate to clean up afterwards" that led
    one of the women to say that she would love to live in a house with
    a number of other women who would do the cleaning, laundry, child
    care and she would do the cooking.  This woman is married with two
    children.  I very innocently said "Why would it have to be women?"
    There was a long, ackward silence.  She finally responded in defence
    of her husband.  Which was something I was not even thinking about,
    more that the work she/they were describing is traditional woman's
    work and we should all make the effort to see that men are capable
    of doing this work the same as women doing traditional men's work.
    I then stated that my son is a better house keeper than my daugther.
    But I felt this awful gap in understanding between us that I can
    not see anyway of mending because I do not understand the problem.
    It is as though I was trying to carry on a discussion in a foreign
    language with a different set of life-experience symbols.
    
    I still do not know/understand what triggered her response.
    
    _peggy
    
    	(-)
    	 |
    		This happened during the break - the whole session
    		was very open and moving.
    

I don't want to derail the topic, but I just want to say that I feel that
admitting ignorance and working to correct it is a LOT more positive then
assuming/demanding that I KNOW how another person or group of people feels or
thinks.

Hear Here! for Peggy...

JMB 

Peggy,
    
    It sounds to me like you may have raised the consciousness of 
    the woman in your workshop.  The fact that she felt the need to
    defend her husband (as though you had attacked either him or men
    in general) indicates this to me.  Did it ever occur to you that
    it may be SHE, not YOU, who has a problem??
    
    Nancy Smith

    I'm the oldest of two daughters; my sister is six years younger
    than I.  Dad is a retired Sergeant Major, U.S. Army, and was in
    the Army throughout my entire childhood/adolescence.  We didn't
    move around as much as some, but we sure didn't settle down and
    sink roots.  Mom never worked outside the home, although she did
    do what volunteer work her health permitted.
    
    Dad had only one sibling, a twin brother who died shortly after birth.
    My paternal grandparents died before I was born.  She and her twin
    brother are the youngest, they have two older brothers.  My maternal 
    grandmother died while my mother was a young woman; my maternal 
    grandfather died a few minutes before I was born (my poor mother).
    
    Dad's father was Irish, his mother was German.  Mom's people are
    Scots/Irish with some German.  Dad's mother moved to the US with
    her family as a child.  Mom's ancestors helped settle South Carolina.
    I guess I'm about as [non-native] American as they come!
    
    Mom was brought up Baptist, but joined the Presbyterian Church.
    Dad was brough up Catholic.  Throughout Dad's military service,
    they (and my sister and I) attended the Protestant services at the
    base chapel(s).  Now, as far as I know, they don't attend church
    at all.  My sister is married to a wonderful man whose parents
    emigrated from Mexico - he's Catholic, and my sister sometimes attends
    Mass with him.
    
    My husband was brought up sort of Methodist and sort of Baptist,
    but doesn't attend church.  I converted to the Church of Jesus Christ
    of Latter Day Saints twenty years ago and am still at it.  I raised
    our children in the Church, but my oldest daughter and my only son
    are not now active in the Church - and looking at our family history, 
    I guess it's not surprising!
    
    Because of Dad's Army career, and our lack of grandparents (and
    in Dad's case, siblings) we made home wherever we were stationed.
    I feel somewhat at a loss when people ask me where I'm from.  I
    was born in North Carolina, but that's not home.  My parents retired
    to Colorado Springs, Colorado, but that's not home.  I married a
    Sergeant in the US Army and we spent twenty years moving around,
    too.  We retired to Merrimack, New Hampshire, but that's not home
    either.  BTW, when I say retired, I mean from the Army, not from working
    - more's the pity. ;)
    
    When I was a child I wanted desperately to be a boy, I don't really
    remember why now.  Possibly because (I was born in 1948) girls weren't
    allowed to do all the fun things that boys did.  Nevertheless
    I had lots of fun and did some of the "boys-only" things
    (tree-climbing, walking the pipes, wandering in the woods, reading
    Robin Hood, Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Toby Tyler, Homer, Shakespeare,
    etc.), and when my mom broke down and allowed hightop sneakers and
    jeans (you younger women are probably drop-jawed) I quit worrying so 
    much about being a boy and just had fun.     
    
    I also enjoyed ballet, and singing.  Three of my favorite toys were:
    my bicycle, pogo stick and stilts.  We didn't play house much, but
    did play pioneer (my dad made us the greatest covered wagon - probably
    the only OD canvas covered wagon in the history of the west).  I
    never got the hang of hopscotch or marbles, but I still hold the
    title as jacks champion of my and my husband's families (I unseated my 
    mother-in-law for the title but I'm sadly out of practice now) and 
    pretty hot at tiddley-winks as well.
    
    My best friend was a girl, most of our other friends were boys.
    
    Adolescence was miserable.  Or I was a miserable adolescent.  Or
    both.
    
    Womanhood has been, for the most part, great; and I have loved
    being a woman.  Marriage and motherhood brought great joy to
    me, and I'm glad that it worked out that I didn't go to work until
    my youngest started kindergarten.  Motherhood palled a bit with the 
    onset of adolescence, maybe because mothering, working, and home-making
    are all full-time jobs or - and even more likely - maybe
    because I still have such unhappy memories of my own teen experiences.
    Still, time must have softened even those memories, because I am
    enjoying my youngest daughter very much and she'll soon be fifteen. 
    Nevertheless, I'm glad that the older two are in their twenties!
    
    My marriage is in the process [I believe] of biting the dust, and
    I'm sorry.
    
    If the best part of my younger womanhood was marriage and babies,
    then the best part of my late twenties and thirties was friendships
    with women.  In my early twenties I, like many women of my [then]
    age, was proud of the fact that I preferred men as companions
    and friends.  As I matured I began to treasure fellowship with my
    sisters.
    
    Now - into the forties, and as I continue to grow I am (finally!) 
    beginning to treasure sisters *and* brothers - people.  I'm still
    not fond of teens (or even children) as classes, though I'm
    attached to some individuals.  
    
    You know, in many ways aging is indeed a crock, but I wouldn't go back
    - not a day, never mind a decade or more.  Vanity, though - I wouldn't
    mind looking as I did when I was youngers, and I definitely preferred
    that metabolism. :)       
    
    As I age (mature, grow, wither, live, what-have-you) I become more grateful
    to my parents, who love me and my sister and gave us our childhoods
    in a home (or homes) where we were loved and believed in.  Also,
    as I continue to live, I see what we missed in having such a nuclear
    family.  But we gained a lot, too.  So, I suppose, it must be with 
    most life styles - there are losses to be mourned and joys to be 
    celebrated.  Or, as Digital teaches, there are differences - let's
    value [understand the dynamics of] them.
    
    I feel, for the most part, neither completely one with nor completely
    separate from the groups in which I find myself, or choose.  I think I 
    most often feel, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12:20 that "But now are
    they many members, yet but one body."  Or if I may paraphrase, being
    united does not mean being all alike.
    
    aq