Dawn Is Me

It wasn’t so very long ago that I decided that, even if I never manage to accomplish anything else of significance in my life, I can truthfully say that my life was not wasted because I have been a Good Mother.

I remembered that conviction even more recently when I came across this article I wrote about a dozen years ago, which at the time I called Some Reflections on Raising My Daughters:

I had always had a sense of owing something special, in the way of vigilance and encouragement, to my daughters. Perhaps that sensitivity is a result of coming of age during the ’70’s, at the height of the women’s movement. Much more likely, it was firmly impressed upon me by my own mother. She was born in the 1930’s, raised to marry and bare children, ultimately abandoned to the frustrations and burdens of single parenthood, and bitterly convinced by it all that her life had been stunted.

I watched her terrible struggle. She made no secret of her belief that her life might have been full and happy if she had been childless, and I felt all the sorrow that could be expected of a child who knows her mother regrets her existence. But, for me, the underlying message was crystal clear: women should not be homemakers or stay-at-home moms. Women should be emotionally self-sufficient and financially independent.

For many years, I believed that, too.

Then, I gave birth to my first baby. Nothing I had heard or read in any way prepared me for the intense and primal instinct I felt, to devote myself to the care and protection of that tiny creature. I didn’t even try to resist it. Emotional self-sufficiency was a laughable concept in the face of the bond I was forging with my baby. Financial independence suddenly just didn’t matter to me anymore.

But I was soon to discover that I had been born into transitional times. Women were not supposed to want to make the care of children their full time job. They were supposed to want “fulfillment.” Stay-at-home moms had become the butt of jokes on late night TV — the only women who could possibly want to spend their time with their kids must be too foolish or too stupid to do anything else.

Meanwhile, women who chose to stay home with their families were reviled by feminists as traitors to “the cause.” How could we possibly reconcile it with our consciences to turn our backs on the achievements of our “sisters”, when there was still so much more to be done? How could we allow ourselves to be brainwashed into living the ’50’s stereotypes that gave women-bashers their ammunition? How could we set such a poor example for our daughters?

That last accusation was a toughie. The jokes were easily dismissed; anyone who truly believed that caring for small children did not require the use of intellect had obviously never been called upon to do it. The remonstrances of feminists were as easy for me to ignore; I have always believed that freedom meant the existence of options, and I was not prepared to exchange one form of slavery to societal expectations for another. But it was not so easy for me to shrug off the notion that, by choosing to be a stay-at-home mom, I was somehow failing my daughters.

That, I thought, is one of the things that makes being a WAHM or mompreneur so special. It gives us the chance to be there for our children, to experience the uniquely feminine sort of fulfillment that comes of nurturing and supporting our little people until they are ready for us to set them free and let them fly. It gives us the chance to be there for ourselves, as well, to experience the satisfaction of knowing that we are making real contributions to the material comfort of our families, and the power and freedom inherent in earning money of our own. And, equally importantly, it means we don’t need a day to “take our daughters to work”; it gives us a chance to demonstrate that we can be, and are, more than “just mom.”

But at this point, I had to pause and ponder. More than “just moms?” Is there any such animal as “just” mom? Surely, there is nothing “mere” about being a mother, an experience so indescribably profound that it at once unifies women from all around the world, across every race, nationality, creed, religion, culture, class and language, into a universal sisterhood. There is nothing so vast or so vastly unifying in the whole of human existence. Once you have become a mother, what more could you possibly have to prove — to yourself or anyone else?

My daughter, now only nine, has a much more balanced attitude about the whole thing. She was born in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell, and is young enough to take the concept of “having it all” for granted. She fully intends to marry and have children, as her mother has done. She intends to homeschool them, as she has been homeschooled. She intends to tend and defend her home, as she has seen her mother do.

She has been watching me, this girl child of mine. She watched me last year, when I wrote the novel that I am still marketing. She has watched me over the last several weeks as I built my online business web site and she has watched me piece together [my newsletter]. Her little sister, a sprightly four year old, has been watching, too.

They both want to get married and have babies.

The little one wants to write stories on the computer.

The elder one wants to start her own business.

So much for setting a bad example, huh?

Things are a lot different now. At 16, my “little one” isn’t so little anymore. She started writing stories on the computer some time ago and she’s gotten pretty good at it, too. She has lost interest in doing it for a living … but then, I’m not sure she ever did want to do it for a living, now that I think about it …

“The elder one” is a 21-year-old woman now, an athletic training major and pre-med at Ithaca College. She’s not talking about starting her own business anymore but she is talking about having her own practice someday — which is essentially the same thing.

And I … I have just divorced their father.

I cannot even begin to describe how tremendous they have both been to me through this ordeal.

They have watched, furious, again and again, while I have been emotionally battered and bruised — and fairly often defending me when the Clueless Culprit had no idea that anything was wrong and I was just too exhausted to bother.

They have witnessed all of my follies and my weaknesses, and never passed any judgments on me. They are unswervingly supportive, having a great deal more faith in me than I have in myself … in much the same way that I have more faith in both of them than either of them has in themselves.

In fact, their love for me has been as unconditional as mine has been for them.

Healing will take some time, I suspect. Now the divorce is final, I am left looking around at the shambles of my emotional, psychological and material life, knowing that I need to pick up the pieces and wondering where to start.

It seems like a gargantuan effort, at my age almost more trouble that it’s worth. But I know that I will put forth that effort. I could say (and have said) that the best revenge is a well-lived life but that’s not even it.

Once I have left here and shaken the dust of this relationship from my shoes, I could care less about revenge or anything else having to do with Him.

No, instead, I am left thanking my Goddess for my daughters. As special as my sons are to me, my girls have made it their business to buoy up my life right now.

It is for them and because of them that I know I’ll be okay.

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I AM A WOMAN ON THE VERGE

Healing – Woman to Woman is our theme for February. Please join in the conversation by joining WomenontheVerge.net, on Twitter @WomenontheVerge, on Facebook or by listening and chatting on our monthly radio show where I am a panelist. Join us for a fun and intriguing conversation on our monthly theme on February 16th from noon-1pm ET on BlogTalkRadio.com/womenontheverge.

I am still learning.

One of the things I have learned today is that having the right friends can make all the difference in the world.

If there is a way in which I have allowed my spirit to be almost murdered over the past few years, it has been the degree to which I reneged on my promise to myself to nurture myself in all the ways I needed.

I have lost so much — in confidence, in connectedness, in the natural lightness of my own being. For awhile, just the thought of all the effort it’s going to take to rebuild my Me was enough to send me straight to bed in complete exhaustion.

How did this even happen? How did I ever end up in this place anyway? I thought I’d been here and done this already.

Today, I talked to a friend. I told him about the milestone step I took within the last 24 hours to set my feet back on the path to where I want to be, and how hard it was for me to do it.

I tried to explain to him why it was so hard, why it felt like it cost so much, what I felt I had lost and how I had somehow lost it without even realizing it.

And he said: Dawn, don’t ever forget how much you know.

Dawn, I want you to remember how many people listen to you.

I want you to remember how many people like you. It’s easy to do.

Dawn, I am proud of you.

Dawn, I believe in you.

I have always admired you and, now that I know these things about you, I admire you even more.

Dawn, you’re not alone.

(And because he is my friend, I know that I can believe all those things when he says them. That is one reason why I do not use that word ‘friend’ lightly.)

And suddenly, that simply, the game had changed.

I realized that I hadn’t really lost anything at all, no matter how much it feels like I did. I realized that I don’t really have to rebuild myself from the ground up, that I don’t need to do some mysterious something to make myself acceptable to the world.

It’s much more important that I remain acceptable to me.

It’s hard to remember this sometimes but what I really need, along with everything that goes with it, is simply to find peace.

Everything else comes from there.

You see? More than 40 years later and I’m still learning things from you, Dr. King.

I despise stereotypes.

I hate them like poison because they are the tool of oppressors. As a black woman (let’s skip the politically-correct and mealy-mouthed “African American,” shall we?), I have spent my entire life living down racial stereotypes.

I refuse to be defined by the color of my skin.

I refuse to be confined by the color of my skin — to certain foods or types of music or churches or neighborhoods or hobbies or friends or lovers or anything else. Freedom means the existence of options. Nobody takes my options away from me.

Beyond that, I detest stereotypes because I’m an intellectual snob and stereotypes are the product of sloppy, lazy thinking.

People are people are people. We are what we are. We are all the same. We are all different.

And so it is with gender stereotypes, like the question of ANGRY woman versus QUIET woman.

This is not a simple question. If you want to know which of these best describes me, for example, the answer is “Yes!”

Who are you, Dawn? is what you really want to know here. I can answer that question by telling you who I am from my own perspective, what it is like to live inside my own skin. Or I can tell you who I am from other people’s perspective, what it is like to be around me, to know me, to live with me, based on what they tell me and how they respond to me.

It will be a very rare individual for whom those two portraits of self are an exact match.

My children, who probably know me better than anybody, tell me that I am very laid back. It’s one of the things that my kids love about me. I am not very excitable, I tend to think first instead of just reacting, and that makes it safe for them to tell me things. Mom doesn’t sweat the small stuff. She speaks softly and, when she’s mad, she speaks even more softly — a terrifying prospect, or so I’m told.

I guess all of this makes me a quiet woman, right?

Not so fast. Inside my heart and head is a maelstrom. I am indignant about the many injustices I see around me. I am impatient with meaningless convention, especially when it is used as a substitute for meaningful connection. I grow easily annoyed with wilfull stupidity and I do not suffer fools gladly. Misinformation infuriates me. Hypocrisy makes me seethe.

I guess all of this makes me an angry woman, right?

Wrong again. All of this simply makes me a human woman — sometimes quiet but never silent, sometimes angry but never vicious, sometimes discreet, always passionate.

There is no such thing as a woman (or a man) who is always angry, just as there is no such thing as a woman (or a man) who is never angry, no matter how quiet she may be.

And, for the record, we experience a lot of other emotions, too, so that we are often neither quiet nor angry. I don’t know any women who are that dull.

ANGRY woman or QUIET woman?

Both!

Neither!

That’s what makes us so awesome. Women are all that and then some.

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I AM A WOMAN ON THE VERGE

Angry Woman or Quiet Woman is our theme for January. Please join in the conversation by joining WomenontheVerge.net, on Twitter @WomenontheVerge, on Facebook or by listening and chatting on our monthly radio show where I am a regular monthly panelist. Join us for a fun and intriguing conversation on our monthly theme on January, 19th from noon-1pm ET on BlogTalkRadio.com/womenontheverge.