Dawn Is Me

So, this month over at Women on the Verge, our topic is Women Changing The World — and we do, don’t we?

Further elucidation comes from Our Glorious Leader, Ana Lewis:

I am in awe of some of the things that people in our wotv community do on a daily basis. Women are changing the world – right here, today, and this is an opportunity for them to tell us all those things that they do every day to spread the message and achieve the mission that they are aiming to do – sometimes by themselves. They are no longer alone. We will help showcase how Women Change the World.

My very first thought was this factoid: in economic development circles it is well known that, if you give business development assistance to a man, he will improve his lot and that of his family but, if you give business development assistance to a women, she will improve her lot and take her entire community with her.

But that’s not what Ana was talking about. Not really.

If I want to turn the spotlight on myself, I could say, glibly, that any woman who is a mother is changing the world … one offspring at a time. That would be true, too, but that would be cowardly.

Sometimes, I hide behind my children. I love them passionately and will fight for the to my dying breath. But right now, where I’m at is all about me and what I like to think of as My Interrupted Journey.

Is it possible for me to think of myself as changing the world when I’m in a place that is All About Me?

So, what are you doing this year, Dawn, and what does it have to do with anything?

I am discovering myself and giving myself permission to be who I am and where I am most alive.

Where do I come alive? When I’m learning.

I find that everything about me is about learning.

My relationships consist of opportunities for me to learn from people. I learn from them about themselves and what it is like to view the world from inside their skin. I learn from them about absolutely anything about which they know more than I do. I learn how to connect with them. And, because people are continually evolving (or at least, the people I best relate to), there is always more for me to learn about them — so those relationships don’t have to end when I’ve learned all there is to know about and from a person. That just doesn’t happen.

I learn about things and then I write about them in my newsletters and my white papers and my research and my books.

I learn about myself and I write about that here.

I learn about my children and that helps me to parent them.

And, of course, there is the minor matter of returning to school. No need to state the obvious, right?

The fact is that everything I do is a learning opportunity, because that is the way I see it. It’s possible that nobody else on the planet sees it that way, but that’s not important.

So, what did I need in order to give myself permission to be this learner? I need to be physically, emotionally and psychologically safe.

I am an abuse survivor. Fear has been a very big part of my life so far. It gets in my way in more ways than I have time to describe here. The fact that I have continued to function has been itself an act of bravery.

So, in order for me to feel free to keep learning, I have to believe that (a) I can protect myself, (b) there will be people in my life who will love me and want to protect me, and (c) there will be times when I will get hurt or otherwise threatened but it won’t be anything I can’t handle.

My job, as I see it, will be to convince myself of that by figuring out how I got to where I am right now and, more importantly, finding ways to prove to myself that it’s true.

And where does changing the world fit into all of this?

That’s easy. What I learn, I share.

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I AM A WOMAN ON THE VERGE

Women Change The World is our theme for 2012 and for the month of January. Please join in the conversation by joining WomenontheVerge.net, on Twitter @WomenontheVerge, on Facebook or by listening and chatting on the WOTV monthly radio show (where I am a panelist) on January 18th from 7pm to 8pm ET on BlogTalkRadio.

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.