This is my mother's birthday month and as always, I'm thinking about her a lot. I wish I could say it was good thoughts, but it isn't. In fact, I've been pretty angry at her for the last few days.
I guess with most people, you're going to find a lot of complexity and contradictions. My mother, to look at her, seemed like the most unconventional woman she could be. She rarely wore makeup and had hair that was impossible to style. If she did anything to it at all, it was just to put it up in a bun. She wore whatever shoes would last the longest and were most comfortable. She owned some dresses, but she hated them. On a day to day basis, she was either in overalls or jeans and a t-shirt.
My mother could plumb, paint a house, drive a tractor. There was, really, nothing she couldn't do within the skillsets we normally associate with traditional males. She was independent in many ways. She really didn't need anyone else.
And yet . . . emotionally, she was as weak as she could be. She let men run all over her. She let them hurt her. She let them hurt us. She let them drive us from her home. She let them monopolize her time. She let them humiliate her and degrade her and destroy her life.
To this day, I just don't get it. She didn't NEED men. She literally did not need them at all. She was always the breadwinner. She was always the one making the decisions. She did everything. Every man she had in her life was useless and brought her nothing. If anything, they just destroyed what she'd built.
It frustrates me that this was her life. It frustrates me and it offends me. It frustrates me and offends me that she wasn't a better role model. It frustrates and offends me when people act like they don't need Feminism when I'm in my 40s and remember all too well how women my mother's age just lost basically everything because they were taught they needed someone else to validate them when they did not. They did not. THEY DID NOT.
It's going to be a rough July.
I made my daily writing totals.
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