women unbound – half the sky

At least Mao said something worth hearing.“‘If you cry out, we will kill you,’ one of the told Dina. So she kept quiet as, one by one, the five men raped her. Then they held her down as one of them shoved the stick inside her.

When Dina didn’t come home, her father and friends bravely went out to the fields, and there they found her, half dead in the grass. They covered her and carried her back to her home. There was a health center in Kindu, but Dina’s family couldn’t afford to take her there to be treated, so she was cared for only at home. She lay paralyzed in her bed, unable to walk. The stick had broken into her bladder and rectum, causing a fistula, or hole, in the tissues. As a result, urine and feces trickled constantly through her vagina and down her legs. These injuries, rectovaginal and vesicovaginal fistulas, are common in Congo because of sexual violence….[where] everyone knows that rape is routine…it is the troops’ right to rape women.”

This is but one part of one of the stories that come from this book. It will open your eyes, change your mind, and inspire you. Of course most of us here in the West agree violence against women is wrong, even though rape is prevalent in our own society. But this book not only chronicles the stories of extraordinary women, it changes how we see these problems and what solutions are available and achievable. Most require less money in foreign aid, not more.

Here is just a snapshot of a handful of the things I have learned in reading this book:

- The “Girl Effect”: giving women equal rights and access to education can raise GNP and national savings rates as well as cure a whole wealth of social ills from poverty to malnutrition to terrorism. Yes, terrorism. Because security experts have noticed the countries that breed terrorism are also the ones which marginalize women.

- The modern global slave trade is larger in absolute terms than the Atlantic slave trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was. (citing Foreign Affairs)

- Rescuing girls is the easy part. Combating poverty and shame is the hard part in keeping girls from seeing they have options other and deserve more than to go back to the brothels. Because it’s not about shame. It’s about basic human rights everyone is entitled to, no matter their past.

- Violence against women has mutated into new forms: hurling acid into the faces of women and girls, burning brides, and throwing chili powder and lit cigarettes into…well, you can imagine where.

- Over and over again, the saving grace? Education. Education in a multitude of ways and for a million different reasons. So women know what their rights are. So women and girls know they are not alone in their suffering. So they know it is possible to speak out and to demand better. So they have the tools they need to achieve better.

- What prevents them from getting an education or having better lives? More often than not, the answer does not lie in sending more money. The answer lies in looking at the individual community or situation and innovating better, more efficient solutions.

- Usually these solutions are stupidly, stupidly simple and cheap. Solutions like putting a girls’ toilet in schools and giving the girls maxi pads so they can privately change and keep clean instead of skipping school for being humiliated one week each moth. Solutions like iodized salt to eradicate health problems associated with iodine deficiency. Solutions like allowing women to work from their homes so they don’t have to face potential rape and violence on the streets of dangerous, war-torn cities.

I think what prevents most of us from acting is the feeling overwhelmed by such huge problems. That we don’t know where to begin and we feel we face forces much larger than ourselves. What this book shows is a different story: solutions aren’t easy, but they’re not so difficult as we might imagine. It’s not about making men the enemy. It’s not about making Islam the enemy. It’s about re-envisioning approaches and showing how easing the oppression off women not only save the life of the individual women, but it can save nations and eradicate problems that affect everyone.

Reading this book will transform you. It’s the only nonfiction book I’ve ever stayed up half the night reading, and I owe my mother-in-law a credit for drawing my attention to it.

feed-icon-green-32If you like what you see, please add me to your reader!

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Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

4Comments

titmt – i’ve learned…

…cynicism is often a mask for fear. It does not necessarily make us any wiser. It only means we have become afraid.

I’ve learned that instead it takes much more courage to hope. To take a leap, even when you are standing on the edge of a cliff, knowing there is the swirling mad abyss below.
TITMT-learncourage

It takes more courage to stare the darkness in its face and say, “Though I know not where I land or whether I fall, I must try.”

There was a time in my life when I was afraid, oh so afraid. Waking up at night with cold sweats, hands quaking, cannot see straight afraid. My heart had been shattered and the fragile pieces were thrown into the fire. Repeatedly. Phantoms in my head. Danger around every corner. But I dared hope, even when the naysayers feared for me. It wasn’t just hope that got me through, though. It was damn dogged work. Changing how I deal with problems. Smashing boundaries to bits and setting up new foundations. It was determination that above all else, it could work. Even when it didn’t before. And I was lucky. It could easily at any moment have gone another way, were it not for a refusal to let a precious gift die. And that gift, gives every day, and every day, and more and more, in impossible ways. But what really got me through, beyond work, when logic and reason failed, was every morning waking up and making a choice. And choosing one day more to make that leap of faith.

Some days, it took so much courage to leap.

What lessons have resonated with you in life? What have you learned or discovered?
TITMT-learnhope

The Rules
I think there is real power in the human voice, as flawed as it may be. And when the voices speak together, when you have a multitude of voices speaking, patterns begin to emerge and there you can begin to understand truth. So in the spirit of the personal narrative, I am hosting a weekly challenge every Tuesday morning, where I will post a topic (ranging from the banal to the intimate) and ask readers to respond. I would love to see everyone’s answers and how similar and different they all are.

You can respond in any way you choose. You can give a fictional response or a true one. You can use words, sentences, and/or photographs. If you have a blog, you can link it with Mr. Linky below. Please be sure to include “Tell It To Me Tuesdays” in the title, and link back to this post. Feel free to use the “Tell It To Me Tuesday” button available to the right. If you don’t have a blog, but want to join in, you can just leave a comment. Please follow the rules. I don’t want to have to delete links. I like links! Don’t make me delete them.

TITMTNext week’s challenge: Friendship

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Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

6Comments

the road we take

“But his kind will always lose in the end. I know this, and now I know why. Whether it’s wife or nation they occupy, their mistake is the same: they stand still, and their stake moves underneath them….Even a language won’t stand still. A territory is only possessed for a moment in time. They stake everything on that moment, posing for photographs while planting the flag, casting themselves in bronze. Washington crossing the Delaware. The capture of Okinawa. They’re desperate to hang on.

But they can’t. Even before the flagpole begins to peel and splinter, the ground underneath arches and slides forward into its own new destiny. It may bear the marks of boots on its back, but those marks become the possessions of the land. What does Okinawa remember of its fall? Forbidden to make engines of war, Japan made automobiles instead, and won the world. It all moves on.”
– The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver, p. 384.

Our politics today make me tired. I’m so bloody tired of hearing the same old diatribes repeated ad nauseam, over and over like wheels on a tired, creaky, aged wagon. They talk and talk and it’s like buzzing in my ears. For they say nothing new and none of it even applies anymore. It feels like they’re talking about Spaceman Spiff, when the rest of us are staring at moldy cheese in an empty refrigerator. They talk in the language of the Cold War, and the rest of us are sharing DVDs with the Japanese and watching You Tube videos coming out of Iran.

We have real problems and real concerns. And they’re still talking ideology. The world doesn’t operate on ideology. It operates in the handshake between neighbors, the crops grown by farmers, and the earthquakes and hurricanes that steal our homes away. Who cares about ideology when you’re staring down the barrel of a gun?

I hear the noise and it makes me tired. I hear the lies and it makes my bones melt. I hear the anger and I feel sorrow.

But when I turn off the noise and look at people, I see a different story. I see people buying produce from local farmers. I see people biking to work. I see people wringing their empty pockets to give to others in need. I see people ignoring corporations, eschewing industry and taking the path less walked. Home schooling. Midwives. Etsy. Blogs. Project 3/50. Interracial marriage. News, products, food, and information home grown and shared neighbor to neighbor.

We throw the pills that cause atrocious side-effects down the drain and we eat better food. This is not a revolution. This is not the masses rising up in revolt. This is the world moving on, like ants marching steadily out from under the boot through the gaps in the platform of the sole.

So you can have your soapbox. Let the potentates feed the lie. Let the corporations write our politicians’ speeches. We’re not listening anymore. Because while you sit there spouting and playing your chess games and lining your pockets while everyone else suffers, one by one, we take the road less traveled by.

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Monday, March 8th, 2010

1Comments

flattery…

…makes me itchy.

I like compliments. Compliments make me feel warm and loved. But when one compliment turns into three or four, when flatterers pound at my door…

…I get itchy. And feel like the world is playing a prank on me. And I didn’t get the joke.

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Monday, March 1st, 2010

0Comments

tell it to me tuesday – fodder for comfort

(And coincidentally, my 200th post!)

So it figures, I chose this topic and then cannot narrow it down to just one book or one movie. If I were to have a weekend all to myself, and just wanted to turn to a book or movie that I knew, time and again, would give me pleasure…well, the list is small, but the choice difficult.
TITMT_comfortbooks1For books, it is easier. As much as I love books and have a long list of favorites or important ones, the one set I can turn to without fail is the Harry Potter series and in the following order: Book 6, Book 7, Book 4, Book 3, Book 1, Book 5 and Book 2. Two was always my least favorite, and I love Six (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) above all the others for the all the things Harry learns, for his love, and for his pain. It is most special to me and there are always more hidden gems of wisdom and connections to make, even though it ends as it does.

Movies, on the other hand, I am far more moody with. If I’m feeling sentimental and totally girly and looking for the happy ending, I know I can always turn to Pride & Prejudice – the A&E version ONLY, because of course there is no proper pride without Colin Firth and no duly understood prejudice without Jennifer Ehle. But if I don’t have a full 6 hours to devote to allowing my heart to swoon over Pemberley, then Love Actually is my modus operandi.
TITMT_comfortbooksMmm…still thinking about Colin Firth. And the look upon Mr. Darcy’s face when he hears Elizabeth does love him. Be still, my heart!

Ahem.

However, some days, I am just in need of a good cry. For that, I turn to either Meet Joe Black or Playing By Heart. I can always count on the masterful performances of Anthony Hopkins and Brad Pitt to bring the daddy’s girl in me to a weeping puddle. And the ‘Goodnight Moon’ scene in Playing By Heart unfailingly and unflinchingly tugs at my heart strings.

What about you?

What book or movie do you turn to when you are in need of its comfort?

The Rules
I think there is real power in the human voice, as flawed as it may be. And when the voices speak together, when you have a multitude of voices speaking, patterns begin to emerge and there you can begin to understand truth. So in the spirit of the personal narrative, I am hosting a weekly challenge every Tuesday morning, where I will post a topic (ranging from the banal to the intimate) and ask readers to respond. I would love to see everyone’s answers and how similar and different they all are.

You can respond in any way you choose. You can give a fictional response or a true one. You can use words, sentences, and/or photographs. If you have a blog, you can link it with Mr. Linky below. Please be sure to include “Tell It To Me Tuesdays” in the title, and link back to this post. Feel free to use the “Tell It To Me Tuesday” button available to the right. If you don’t have a blog, but want to join in, you can just leave a comment. Please follow the rules. I don’t want to have to delete links. I like links! Don’t make me delete them.

TITMT

Next week’s challenge: Finish this phrase: “When I was a child…”

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Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

8Comments

tell it to me tuesday – i wish i could say

I wish I could say I were a little bit taller…
tallerHaha, just kidding. (sort of. not really.)

I wish I could say…

…what I mean to say, when I mean to say it.

But no. It only comes to me hours later, when I am left with nothing but a very satisfying monologue in my head. But when I am in a heated argument, my defense mechanism is to shut down and turn off. As if my mind has decided for me that it is better not to feel at all than to respond inappropriately. And so it is only much later than I come up with the witty repartee or snappy retort.

Of course, I would only wish I had this ability if I also had the ability, in the moment, to choose to use it or not. Because it might be worse if I said things that couldn’t be unsaid, than to have never have said anything at all.

What do you wish you could say?

The Rules
I think there is real power in the human voice, as flawed as it may be. And when the voices speak together, when you have a multitude of voices speaking, patterns begin to emerge and there you can begin to understand truth. So in the spirit of the personal narrative, I am hosting a weekly challenge every Tuesday morning, where I will post a topic (ranging from the banal to the intimate) and ask readers to respond. I would love to see everyone’s answers and how similar and different they all are.

You can respond in any way you choose. You can give a fictional response or a true one. You can use words, sentences, and/or photographs. If you have a blog, you can link it with Mr. Linky below. Please be sure to include “Tell It To Me Tuesdays” in the title, and link back to this post. Feel free to use the “Tell It To Me Tuesday” button available to the right. If you don’t have a blog, but want to join in, you can just leave a comment. Please follow the rules. I don’t want to have to delete links. I like links! Don’t make me delete them.

TITMT
Next week’s challenge: Comfort book or movie
If you had a weekend all to yourself, with no one to see and nothing to do, what book or movie do you turn to time and again? What book or movie satisfies you no matter how many times you sit down with it?

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Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

11Comments

women unbound – reading lolita in tehran

reading-lolitaReading Lolita in Tehran is a powerful account of a woman’s journey through the Iranian Revolution and the gripping challenges her young students had to face as the society underwent cataclysmic changes. Iran went from being a country that could rival many of its Western counterparts in the freedoms and liberties it offered its citizens – even the women – to one that became among the most repressive regimes ever seen in the modern world.  The different generations of women lived in different time zones, it seemed, with the older generations experiencing more freedom than the younger ones could.

Some of the earlier chapters are the most poignant…after a while the book did get a little repetitive and difficult for me to wade through (especially since I’ve become a pro at skimming – thank you, grad school). But I pushed myself to read it in its entirety. It is worth reading, to catch a glimpse behind the veil. To see what these women had to endure and how they found inner resources to help themselves survive imprisonment (on multiple levels), fear, violence, erasing of self and theft of their rights to do even the most basic things like express who they are and love whom they choose.

But the part I loved most about this book is that Nafisi, who is a university professor, collected a select group of her top female students and invited them to weekly meetings in her home – free from the oppression of prying eyes and suspcious ears – to read literature together. In these classes, the students read everything from The Great Gatsby to Pride and Prejudice to, of course, Lolita. And through the literature, these women were able to find themselves. They used important themes from the texts to discuss the world around them and to understand their place in it. The literature gave them a forum in which they could break down the barriers they had around them and begin to talk about their own lives; first, obliquely, and then more assertively and directly as they gained confidence and built mutual trust and respect. Indeed, the book itself is divided into four subsections, each one based on a different piece of literature. Each subsection draws from its literary namesake to highlight themes Nafisi faces in her own life as the Revolution begins, when the oppressive regime comes to power and she is forced out of job and under a veil, until the time when Nafisi plans to leave Iran and the students must make their own plans for survival.

It is for this reason I love this book. It highlights and illustrates so well why books are so important for us. We have our favorite books: ones that entertain us, that uplift us, that comfort us. If there is a lesson here, it is one we already agree with and and maybe already intuitively know. Or, perhaps it is something we can just appreciate, even if it differs from our own experience. But then, we have our books that touch the essence of who we are. They help us see our own world in a different way, and maybe help us understand who we are and what our situations are a little bit better. Reading them is like an epiphany. And sometimes it rocks you to your core.

I have one such book that has been important in my life: Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts. Shantaram almost isn’t even a favorite book, though it is a really entertaining read. But I’ve only read it once; it’s not one I go to for comfort or escape. But it speaks to my heart. And why should I be able to identify with it so much? It’s a book about an Australian convict who escapes and flees to India, gets involved with some humanitarian work, the local mafia, the movies and eventually the muhajadeen. It’s quite the adventure (and based on a real story) – but far from my life. But the main character is a powerful narrator, and under the adventure was pain, loneliness, emptiness and a swollen and bruised heart. And that I understood. I was in that place and his words made me understand the blackness, so that instead of staring at a gaping, dark hole, I could begin to see fragments and facets of life. Dimensions to hold on to, and through understanding, grasp and clutch my way towards finding forgiveness and redemption.

It has beautiful quotes like:
“Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears.”
and
“The past reflects eternally between two mirrors -the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn’t do or say.”
and
“In this way justice is done…because justice is a judgment that is both fair and forgiving…justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.”

Do you have a book like this? One that has changed you or been important to you in some way?

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Friday, February 12th, 2010

3Comments

tell it to me tuesdays – an invincible moment

Is it Tuesday already? Where does the time go?! All right, if you’re ready, this Tuesday’s topic is an invincible moment – a time when you felt empowered.
Fist

I equate my first time really feeling empowered with the first powerful epiphany I had. When I was a junior in high school, I had a fabulous AP English teacher, Mrs. Garrity. She was one of those teachers that you always remember, who really sticks with you. In our classes, we used to read literature and then she would hold Socratic seminars. We would all arrange our desks in a circle, and she would prompt us with questions about what we were reading and try to provoke a discussion about it. The questions were always challenging, and we really had to think about how to respond.

But there was one day – I don’t even remember what we were reading at the time…maybe it was Ellison’s Invisible Man or Dorris’ A Yellow Raft in Blue Water…could have been something else entirely – but somehow out of the discussion came an epiphany. It didn’t even happen during the discussion. Something was said in the discussion that stayed with me, and I chewed over it as I walked to my next class. And there in the middle of the crowded hallway, with teens throwing things at each other and friends calling out to each other, I had an epiphany and it was like a flash of heaven and light in my head.

It occurred to me that I didn’t have to do anything at all. There is nothing in life I have to do; everything in life is a choice I make.

We always tell ourselves we have to get good grades, have to get a good job, have to be able to buy or do certain things, have to cross off all the items on our to-do list. And it can be all at once satisfying and exhausting to always be chasing the “have-tos”. But in truth, there is no such thing as “have-to”. Of course, if you want a good job, then you should do well in school. If you want people in your life, you should treat them kindly and with respect. There are boundaries and trade-offs, calculations and proven paths. But everything we do is because there is something we want from having done it, and what we want is worth whatever it is we try to do, or at least, is better than the alternative.

I have to get up in the morning to get to work, because the rewards of being on time are better than the consequences of being late. But I can be late. There’s nothing stopping me but my own will and desire. Sometimes people do things to us we don’t like, or they hurt us in ways that are demeaning and unfair. We can’t help how we feel when they do so, but we can choose how to respond. We can respond with blame and anger in return, or we can choose to respond with honesty, decency and respect. But therein lies the crux of the biscuit: I make a choice.

Realizing that was an incredibly empowering moment for me. I’d been chasing “have-tos” and to suddenly realize that nobody was forcing me, that I alone had the power to determine my actions, and that everything I do comes down to a choice I make…that made me feel powerful.

Nothing in my behavior might really have changed with this realization, but it is “the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high”, which makes for all the difference in the world (Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, 512).

Understanding this also meant taking responsibility for myself, but I would rather accept those consequences, come what may, than choose to allow myself to feel dragged into anything. I choose to be powerful. I choose to be me.

Has there ever been a time you felt powerful? Like you ruled the world for a day, or even just a moment? Tell us about the time when you felt invincible, or at least empowered.

The Rules
I think there is real power in the human voice, as flawed as it may be. And when the voices speak together, when you have a multitude of voices speaking, patterns begin to emerge and there you can begin to understand truth. So in the spirit of the personal narrative, I am hosting a weekly challenge every Tuesday morning, where I will post a topic (ranging from the banal to the intimate) and ask readers to respond. I would love to see everyone’s answers and how similar and different they all are.

You can respond in any way you choose. You can give a fictional response or a true one. You can use words, sentences, and/or photographs. If you have a blog, you can link it with Mr. Linky below. Please be sure to include “Tell It To Me Tuesdays” in the title, and link back to this post. Feel free to use the “Tell It To Me Tuesday” button available to the right. If you don’t have a blog, but want to join in, you can just leave a comment. Please follow the rules. I don’t want to have to delete links. I like links! Don’t make me delete them.

Next week’s challenge: Complete this sentence: “Sometimes I….”
TITMT

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Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

2Comments

turns out i wasn’t out of control

pumpkin_muffinsI’ve always been the first to admit I’m a chocolate fiend. I love desserts of almost any variety, and a little sweet bite after dinner has been a favorite way to round out the meal. But over the past few months, I’d been noticing my sweet tooth has been getting more and more demanding. Instead of wanting a piece of chocolate, I’ve been needing ice cream. Cheesecake. Brownies. Pie. Anything sweet. And sometimes the cravings wouldn’t stop even after indulging.

I hated it. I felt out of control. I hated that it was insatiable, and even after I was full, my body was still demanding more sweets. And on top of that, add guilt for my over-indulgence and fear because diabetes runs in my family and the last thing I need in my life is to develop insulin resistance. It got to the point where I had two slices of cheesecake in one sitting – which I’ve never done before and could never fathom before – where I finally realized something had to be wrong.

So I did a little research and discovered that one possible reason for intense sugar cravings is a lack of seratonin. When seratonin levels are low, it causes your mood to depress and the body registers sugar cravings. But sugar only boosts seratonin for a short while. Then you crash and need more sugar. But it turns out that protein also boosts seratonin, but it does so at lower and much longer-lasting levels. So it could be that the real culprit behind my sugar cravings was not a sudden lack of self-discipline but a lack of protein in my diet!

When I thought about it more, it made total sense that this problem would have become apparent over the last few months because in that time span, I had started shopping more at the local farmer’s market and food co-op, and eating more vegetable-rich meals. The vegetables were a good move, but I had also been eating less and less meat. I’ve heard before, too, that women often don’t get enough protein in their diets, so it really did begin to make sense.

Once I realized all this, I started re-introducing protein into my diet. Figuring that protein takes a bit longer to digest than sugar does, I started having a protein snack a couple of hours before dinner: some chicken or cheese, for example. And immediately, and I mean immediately that very first day, the sugar cravings stopped cold. I no longer needed or even wanted dessert. Every day since I made sure to eat protein, and every day since, I’ve had no problem with sugar cravings. Some days I didn’t get a protein snack before dinner, but had it during dinner. After eating, I felt a vague desire for dessert, but I just waited it out. Less than 20 minutes later, all sugar cravings were gone. Even when I went out to dinner and imbibed drinks (which are a sure way for me to cascade into gorging in desserts), and everyone at the table ordered a dessert (chocolate lava cake with raspberries and whipped cream, no less), I had absolutely no desire to even taste it. I sniffed it and gloried in the scents of chocolate and raspberries…and was satisfied.

What a change that is! I couldn’t believe it. Obviously I need to be sure not to overdo the protein because that’ll lead to it’s own problems. But making sure to get a small serving of lean meats, legumes, or low fat cheese or yogurt into each meal seems to be going a long way towards keeping my body happier and more in balance. I came up with a Lentil Mint Salad I’ll try for lunches on days I can’t eat at home (recipe in post below). I think I might even try doing a food diary to track what I eat and how it affects my energy and satisfaction levels 20 minutes, an hour, and multiple hours after eating.

I can’t tell you how amazing it is for me to not need sweets. The past few months have been the worst, but I could always find desire for dessert. Of course I’ll still enjoy sweets now and then…but to be in total control of the desire? If I really can manage it through protein…it will literally change my life.

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Sunday, January 31st, 2010

3Comments

confession

The past year has been a little rough on me. It was the first year of my husband’s and my marriage, which while blissful, is a transition. But add on top of that another shift for me: I had decided to take the year off of teaching to focus on getting my dissertation research done. I was in the data collection phase, which required doing a lot of interviews and observations “in-the-field”, thus requiring a flexible schedule that teaching just did not allow. We’re very fortunate that my husband makes enough for us to afford me not having a salary for a year without too much financial strife.

But I did feel a heavy, heavy emotional burden. In ways I didn’t even articulate to myself, I felt I was a burden. My husband didn’t do anything to cause this per se. This was guilt I put on myself. Since leaving my parents’ home, I’ve always brought in my own salary. Through college, I weaned myself off their financial support and slowly built up my own financial independence. Money isn’t important to me, but somehow the fact that I make money for myself meant a great deal to me. It meant I was independent, strong, capable, responsible. It made me feel good about myself (or at least contributed to my sense of self-worth).

But this year of not only not making money, but also incurring student loan debt on top of that as I finish my degree, made me feel like an incredible financial burden. And in ways I didn’t totally articulate in my head, I tried to “make up for it” by doing more around the house: more than my share of cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, washing dishes…to “earn my keep”. Trouble was, it’s not like I wasn’t working at all. I was still working on my research, writing, and keeping a fairly full schedule…and then doing all the household work on top of it.

My mom and my husband’s stepmom both saw something was afoot and warned me several times that in marriage you can’t think of money as “his money” or “her money”, but as “our money”. But none of this really made an impression on me. I agreed, but that did nothing to assuage my feelings of guilt that I wasn’t putting in my fair share. And because I didn’t feel I was putting in my share, I cut back on as much of my extra expenses as I could: I stopped getting haircuts, I stopped wearing more than a minimum of makeup, I stopped going to yoga, and so on. Meanwhile, my husband freely bought the things he wanted (within reason, of course). If there was something he knew I wanted, he had no problem buying it for me (so generous, I thought in my head). And so he believed his wife wanted for nothing. Except that if I had a desire for something, I had to ask him to help me buy it: in essence, I had to ask his permission. So on top of the guilt feelings, I also had a deep sense of male patriarchy and inequality in our relationship.

Even after I started teaching again, I kept up the patterns that had started to develop. And that’s when the burden really began to add up. I became grumpy, disenchanted, and positively sour. A serious expression was my default face. My husband’s stepmom even tried to offer to help out financially so I wouldn’t have to teach…because she could see I was changing. I wasn’t the same person anymore. My parents started getting concerned. Finally, over Christmas, my mom had me watch a film called “The Human Face” with John Cleese (if you have Netflix, you should really look it up – it’s fascinating, funny, and less than an hour long). This film was all about how our facial expressions have subconscious effects on our relationships. She said I always used to smile, and she wanted me to watch this because I’d lost my smile.

I didn’t think very directly about all this after watching the film, but I know something was happening underneath. I’d finally had enough of my self-imposed burden. Shortly after the new year, I talked to my husband about it. We talked it through and he simply said I cannot and should not feel guilty, that this is what marriage is about, it’s sharing, and it’s helping each other when we need help and not feeling like we owe each other like tallies on a tally sheet. I don’t know if it was what he said, or if I was just finally ready to hear it, but ever since then, I haven’t felt guilty and I haven’t felt unequal. And we’ve reasserted fair shares of the household chores back to the way we used to do it.

And I’m making greater efforts to smile, and discovering my smile comes back easily again.

I think this speaks partly to the new generation of feminism: figuring out the proper roles, since they are no longer defined for us. Before society told us what was fair and what duties belonged to whom. Now we have to negotiate that for ourselves. It gives us greater freedom, on both sides in a way, but with freedom comes the need for communication and negotiation. Part of the negotiation is with our partners in life, and part of it is with ourselves, so that we can let go the burdens we try to carry, even when they’re too much, even when they’re of our own making.

What have I learned from this?

Marriage Lesson #1: Learn to share, and that sharing means knowing how to give and to receive.

Life Lesson #3,486: Sometimes we smile because we feel happy. Sometimes we smile in order to feel happy.

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Thursday, January 21st, 2010

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