Growing Girls With Purpose

I’m going through a massive transformation — it’s spiritual, it’s emotional, it’s physical, it’s psychic, it’s creative, it’s an upheaval of my soul and it’s awesome!

Christiane Northrup, author of Women’s Bodies/Women’s Wisdom, says that as women leave the hard labor years of young child birthing and nurturing and enter into their peri-menopause and near- and 40ish years they go through a massive psychic shift. They reframe their past and go through an emotional and psychic cleanse, casting off old baggage. They renegotiate their marriages, relationships with their children and other family and friends. They venture out more ambitiously into careers and the outer world. They redefine who they are and who they want to be for the next phase of their lives. If their spouses refuse to budge, they leave. If their friends take another path, they wish them well and go on their way, forging new friendships. If their careers no longer fill their needs, they start new ones. They reap the wisdom of the first 40 years and all the pieces start to fit together and they say, “I won’t make those choices again. I learned these lessons.” Ailments start to show up to point out what’s not working for them, if they listen they get well. If they don’t, they get sicker. If they renegotiate their lives and let old things go, they flourish like never before, if they don’t they decline.

This is happening to me.

As such The Girl Revolution is changing. I’ve been laying off the Watch Dog role, mainly because it makes me feel angry and frustrated and I don’t want to feel angry and frustrated. So, I will pass the torch to other fabulous bloggers who are much more passionate than I am about those causes.

The Girl Revolution sometimes dips its toe into spiritual waters. I’ve had feedback from readers saying I talk about God too much or I don’t criticize religion enough. If I try to please everyone I won’t please myself. If spiritual or religious matters offend you, seek elsewhere. I will write about it. If you have a desire to read criticism of certain religions there are plenty of blogs filling that role. There are plenty of religions that do plenty of damaging things to girls and women, that’s a fact, but I don’t go to those churches and you don’t have to either. I also don’t have to put my focus on their evil deeds. That also makes me feel frustrated and angry and I don’t enjoy feeling frustrated and angry.

The Girl Revolution has spent much time delving into the ways in which girls and women have been and are being discriminated against. This will stop now. There are plenty of blogs filling this role and thus I am not needed in this capacity. I believe in Law of Attraction and gender discrimination is not something I wish to attract for myself or for my daughter or for any other girl or woman on this planet. I do not wish to ignore it when it happens, but I do not wish to focus on it either. Again, it makes me angry and frustrated and I do not choose to feel frustrated and angry. I’ve given it a lot of thought and I’ve realized that the truth is I have not felt certain types of gender discrimination since leaving Texas. I have not felt other types of gender discrimination since the early 2000s and it’s now 2012 and I want to let it go and believe some things have changed. Honestly, I would have preferred a little gender discrimination in my favor when I became a new mother to allow me an easier time at working and raising a family because I now realize that I DO have different priorities than the majority of fathers I know — especially the one that lives in this house — and if that offends your sense of what equality should look like well, the numbers support my thesis.

Also the truth, I realized, is that my daughter has never experienced any real damaging gender discrimination. She is among the top of her class, always encouraged in her education and given the support she needs and desires. She is on sports teams. She is told she is pretty about as often as my son is told he is so dang cute. She is told she is smart and creative more often than my son is. He is told that he is more athletic, only because he is. The media’s gender messages effect her only as much as we allow media into our consciousness, into our home, onto our computers — it’s limited. We create more than we consume. She sees women in politics, she sees women doctors and dentists, we have women friends who own businesses and are professionals and we know stay-at-home-moms and her grandma is a minister and yes, one of our friends is also a beautician who wears mini-skirts and sits in hot tubs drinking mojitos quite often and we don’t think she sold herself short, we think she’s a business owner who made choices that work for her. I don’t believe my daughter has any reason to expect gender discrimination. She is not raised in a family or church that tells her to bow down to men. She is expected to go to college. She is encouraged to pursue her passions and dream big by everyone around her.

So what am I “fighting” for? What am I spending my energy pushing against? The past. My past experiences that are over now. I have already won. The joy is already mine. I am just going to proceed, look forward and rejoice.

So, what will The Girl Revolution transform into? A lot of major things are in the works that I’m not at liberty to discuss at the present moment. But, they are extraordinarily transformative. If you are meant to, you will travel with me. If your needs are better served elsewhere, I wish you safe travels and a life full of abundance and joy.

Share and Enjoy

Last year I wrote a post about Jess Weiner’s body issues. I feel bad about it. I want to apologize and make amends. Jess Weiner’s body issues are Jess Weiner’s body issues. They are her issues whether she chooses to talk about them in public or private. My point could have been made without calling her out directly. Or I could have let the point go.

I don’t normally call people out personally, even if they are famous. I think it’s an international cop-out “they’re famous so they signed up for the entire world to say whatever they want about them.” No they didn’t. They’re famous and they are people and the entire world just uses this justification to allow their mean flag to fly.

This is one of the most effective ways we silence girls and women, especially politically and in important social activism roles. I’ve often thought that I’d make a good politician with effective with out-of-the-box thinking and lots of new ideas. But, I love myself and my children too much to go through the insane nonsense that we put politicians, especially female politicians, through in this country.

Oh, you made gang-bang porn with a Sarah Palin look-a-like? Hilarious! You forwarded a Photoshopped photo of Sarah Palin in a bikini carrying a semi-automatic weapon at a pool party to a billion people? So funny! Well, she did disagree with your politics and your sense of social right. She deserved it. (Yeah, not so hilarious. Really. Disgusting and disrespectful to all women is more like it.)

You’re a horrible mother!

You’re too fat!

You’re too skinny!

I can’t believe someone would marry you!

She’s a practicing Witch!

She’s a whore!

A woman would have to grow emotional armor the thickness of a T-Rex in order to withstand, to willingly subject themselves and their families, to this kind of treatment for being willing to serve . . . from other women who are supposedly on their own side (in their own political party or of their own social activist realm or religious denomination or whatever group or category a woman tries to make headway in).

So, to Jess Weiner, I’m making a public apology because I made public my criticism.

Share and Enjoy

It’s a brand new baby 2012.

What I wish for you I wish for myself. My wishes come from the Sermon on the Mount. It is the Law, as delivered by Jesus, retold by Matthew.

What you ask for you will get.

Ask for better and more, expecting the abundance of the entire Universe.

Be more clever in your questioning.

Be wise enough to accept the answers.

Release that which no longer serves you to make room to recieve that which does.

What you seek you will find.

Be very selective about what you seek and where you seek it.

Remember you can only find snakes in a snake’s den. You won’t find a cuddly bunny there.

Look within. You won’t find self-worth in someone else. You won’t find your body image in advertising.

When you find what you seek, may you be brave enough to face it with a core of strength and boldness of action.

Knock and the door will be opened to you.

Though you tremble when you knock, may you dare walk through only the right doors with your head held high.

You don’t want to knock on every door you come to. Focus is the key to success. “For straight is the gate and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life and few there be that find it.” (Matt.7:14)

You don’t have to walk through every door you knock on. You can just peek and let your inner wisdom change your mind.

Some Holy Warnings

Do not settle.

When someone tells you he’s a dog or swine, believe him and then collect your holy pearls and move on.

If you’re sitting under a tree that keeps bearing rotten fruit, ask better questions, then go find one that bears nutritious and delicious fruit.

If someone looks like a sheep, but you feel like you’re about to be eaten by a wolf — believe yourself — you are about to be eaten by a wolf. Run away.

You are wiser in 2012 than you were in 2011. Your life will be richer and more abundant because of it.

Share and Enjoy

Reagan: Not A Viable Candidate for 2012

I find it so irritating when pundits declare a candidate “a waffler,” claiming that they lack a moral compass or they stand for nothing if they have had the good sense to change their mind about something in the last 30 years.

I call this growth and maturity. For me this is a primary criteria for relationships of any kind. If you have lived for over 30 years and you haven’t changed your mind about anything, then I don’t trust you enough to have a vote in congress or to be President of the United States.

Changing your mind signifies a couple of vital things:

• Admitting you could have been wrong about something in the first place. Changing your mind shows humility and a willingness to admit when you’re wrong. It shows you’ve got your ego in check.
• Acknowledging that something in the world has changed. Changing your mind shows that you agree that new research not supporting your original opinion or hypothesis might have been presented between the time you made your original opinion and your current one. Changing your mind only shows that you have been paying attention.
• Illustrating there has been some personal growth. If you don’t grow from personal experiences and that growth doesn’t inform your opinions and positions, then I don’t I trust you as my political representatives. Humans are meant to grow.
• A willingness to be educated or enlightened. Changing your mind is sometimes about being educated about something you really didn’t know anything about before, or about letting go of an unfair judgement about a group of people you really didn’t know before or even just saying, “I don’t get this, but I see that it’s important to you and it really doesn’t impact me, so I’m willing to concede the point and give you what you want.” It’s about allowing light and compassion in.
• An ability to compromise and listen to your constituents. A senate and house of representatives full of stubborn people, on the extreme right or left, who believe compromise is a moral flaw is a broken system going nowhere. Nothing happens. The deficit grows. Laws don’t get passed. No one gets anything they want. Because our lawmakers are being pigheaded. I think I can speak for the majority of Americans when I say, we’re sick of your childish pissing contests. We want balanced budgets. We want to pay off the deficit and we are willing to make sacrifices, though bitching and moaning on the Internet might be our hobby. Conceding a point or a position and allowing the other side to get something that’s important to them doesn’t make you a pussy and it doesn’t make you wrong. It moves things along. Stop thinking about your next election and do the next right thing. If the next right thing is raising taxes, raise them, equitably. We’ll suck it up. If it is outlawing second-trimester abortions, trade that for more funding of more forms of birth control like Plan B. If it’s letting gay people get married, just let them already; If you want to protect marriage, work on your marriage because it’s the only one that’s any of your business. Stop being dicks about everything. Pick your battles. Decide what’s really, really important to you and the people who voted for you and draw the line there. Don’t draw the line everywhere because at this point all of the people are sick of all of you.

Voters, consider the political, technological, medical, pharmaceutical and information advancements of the last 30 years and ask yourself why many candidates are using the same canned responses about teen pregnancy, drug addiction, crime, health care, abortion, education, immigration, world politics, global economics, the domestic economy, social security, entitlement programs and taxation as Ronald Reagan did. If it was such a great plan would we be having the same problems magnified now? If a candidate doesn’t understand that everything has changed since 1980 then we don’t want them in office in 2012.

If a candidate believes they knew everything they needed to know while cheering for Reagan at the Republican Caucus in 1979 or even if they solidified their political ideology while campaigning for Barack Obama in 2007 and they haven’t experienced a shift in perception about anything since, then they won’t serve us well in the present or the future.

We need candidates that are ready to respond to the issues that concern today’s rapidly changing global economic structures; who have new and reasonable ideas about our vastly changed and changing medical and pharmaceutical landscape and can achieve an affordable and equitable system; who understand today’s shifting global political climate and can be wisely diplomatic; who can look at new education research and can consider the possibility that all kids don’t think and learn the same; who can look at a correction system that fails us all; who can look at both parties and see one people.

We want people who understand they don’t know what’s coming next in the waves of advancement, but who have histories of responding to the flow of ingenuity, change and rapid upheaval with optimism and out-of-the-box thinking rather than digging their heals in the sand and screeching that the end of the world is near.

I want candidates who will say, “I didn’t foresee the impact of the Internet when I was in college,” “I didn’t have a full understanding of this issue when I ran in 1994,” “I was overwhelmed with anger and passion when I voted for Iraq and didn’t foresee a decade-long, extraordinarily costly war if I had I would have insisted we finance it differently, but I also feel there was a legitimate threat to world peace in Iraq,” “I wish I wouldn’t have spoken so adamantly about not raising taxes, I think that might be a good idea now to help balance the budget,” “I didn’t understand the impact of sex education or how Plan B really worked when I said that,” “I was an ardent supporter of the 2nd amendment and I still believe in the right to bear arms, I just don’t think you need a rocket launcher or an uzi to kill a dear or to defend your home, and also think gang members and teenagers probably should have less access to them.”

Whatever the position or opinion that has changed, I hope voters can spot signs of maturity and growth and signs of immature pigheadedness and realize that the latter serves only their own ego.

Share and Enjoy

Since I had the babies and have been on a journey to get back to my optimal weight by improving my lifestyle, learning to love exercise and eating consciously and intuitively I’ve learned a lot about my body. Since getting a thyroid condition and gaining the weight back it has occurred to me that there are two things about weighing 125 pounds – my goal weight – that scare the crap out of me and which I have a bunch of left-over negative feelings about.

1. The way other women treated me when I was thin. In general, when I was thin, I made very few new female friends. Women would call me “intimidating.” They would often be downright mean to me. I had several coworkers and bosses who took such an instant, vicious disliking to me that they made my life a hell whenever I had to interact with them. Fat girls, especially one in particular, would be especially cruel to me saying backhanded things about how “if they looked like me they would be married to millionaires” or “their life would be perfect, so they didn’t know what my problem was, why I was having all these normal problems with men.” (hint: because much of the male population treats women like shit, all the more so if they are thin and pretty.) Often other women, especially my fat friend, would sleep with my boyfriend or have phone sex with my lover and use excuses like, “but I’m fat, you don’t know what it’s like, I feel so bad about my body, I had to prove that I could get him too.” Sadly, it took me far too many years to finally ditch said friend and leave her to her big fat excuses. Since gaining 30 pounds I find that women are 1,000 times nicer to me, they approach me, they ask me to lunch, they don’t refuse my own overtures of friendship. I guess I am less intimidating. They don’t feel it necessary to tell me they “hate me” for being thin. I have far more female friendships than I did when I was thin and I like it. It’s more fun for me. A part of me wonders if I will be sacrificing my approachability if I go back to being thin. I don’t think I’d be okay with that.

2. When I was thin men treated me like their plaything. Not all men. But enough to make me wary of going through it again. During my thin years I was flashed by a drive-by masterbater, a movie-theater masterbater sat next to me, raped by a supposed friend while I was asleep, sexually harassed at every job I ever had from blatant comments like “I want to do you in the snow” from a 40-year-old married dude when I was 16 (he was not fired when reported, but they did move him across the aisle – generous of them huh?) to being fondled by a dirty old man as a waitress for $3 tips (yeah, I took him to court and lost and it was humiliating), catcalled about every time I walked down the street, men tried to pick me up and offer me money for sex when was waiting for buses, fondled and molested at every straight dance club I ever walked into, stalked and kidnapped by a boyfriend I broke up with and knocked around by a boyfriend who could overpower me. I could go on. Most girls have an experience like this to share. But, this many? Whether or not this was directly related to me being thin, I associate this type of male attention with being thin, mainly because when I gained 30 pounds the behavior stopped. Men stopped giving me all their abusive attention. And it was a relief. A huge relief. I’m not anxious to go back to that treatment. I make jokes and tell my body, “Don’t worry dear, the wrinkles around your eyes and your laugh lines will serve the same purpose as the 30 pounds.” But, I don’t think my body believes me, so she hangs onto the extra 30 pounds no matter what I eat or how much exercise I do.

In order to be thin, I have to release my fear of being thin again and risk women hating me and men treating me like their entertainment. Am I ready?

Share and Enjoy