someday when the gen X women start arriving to heaven in droves, I would like to request that there be a sign waiting that says, here are the women who turned it around. and I would like the generations who came before, who through no fault of their own, gave us so little, and the generations who came after, who through our devotion, strength, sheer force of will and complete and total exhaustion, received so fucking much, I would like all of them to just take a knee for one brief moment. I’m sending this audacious request all the way to the top because it just seems like it’s the least they could do after we did so much.
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what I’m trying to say is that we were a bridge. most of our mothers through no fault of their own had both feet still firmly planted in the old ways of wives and mothers. this means we were the ones getting all that in one ear while in the other were the whispers and let’s be honest - demands - of the early versions of feminist liberation which involved doing things outside the house like men and still doing everything inside the house like our mother models of women. do you see what I mean by a bridge? and you know what happens with bridges right? they stretch and hold on while ushering people from one place to another, right across their backs. if this sounds a little melodramatic, we’re happy to lift up our shirts and show you the footprints.
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when it looks from the outside like your life has become a total and complete flailing mess, I really hope you have at least one or two people who look over at you nonchalantly (but also very intensely) and say - I know what the rest of them could be thinking, but I know you, I KNOW YOU, and I can’t wait to see what you’re gonna do because I trust and admire you so fuckin completely. you’ve been alchemizing shit into gold from the time I met you and I don’t know why anyone would think you’d start making exceptions now. I truly can’t express how much I trust you to handle all of this, remarkably and mind-blowingly brilliantly.
it really makes all the difference.
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I wish our girls and daughters weren’t still starving themselves and hating themselves and trying to control themselves and be something other than themselves, not to mention still just as likely to be sexually abused and assaulted as they were when I was a girl and a daughter. there is something different though, and it makes an enormous difference - in the air you can hear the sound of voices calling bullshit on all of that, and those voices are much much louder and easy to tune your radio frequency to than they were when I was a girl and a daughter because you know whose voices those are? I think you know what I’m gonna say.
Yes yes and yes!!! Thanks for so beautifully describing this journey , this stretched out bridge , this tension from old to new. I’m still stretching , still a bridge but feeling more grounded, firm , stronger , more towards an understanding of who I am , not the past. I love your writings , I love the call for action , power, grace and love .