Over, Under, Around, or Throug

Obviously I am doing something wrong or something someone did prior to my efforts is wrong. The monitor in my new office location simply will not respond. My computer guy is not available to me right now, and I’ve unplugged and replugged and off’d and on’d everything I can.

So, it’s column by iphone today.

October is national everything about women month. It’s breast cancer and losing a child and sexual and domestic violence month. Really they ought to move women’s history month to October and we could just celebrate the whole package.
I love being a woman even though it has brought me much heartache. I broke a gender barrier in the church twenty five years ago. First one through the wall gets bloody. But nine women came immediately after and that’s what true sisterhood is like. God loves female leadership, or so the Bible and Torah state. My namesake happens to have been one of the strongest leaders in the texts. Deborah was asked to lead a particular battle and her response was “Well the men are supposed to do this but if they won’t I will”.

In my life I have experienced two different kinds of women: women who are not competitive with other women, and women who are clawing and scratching their way to the top. I like the former better and feel sorry for the later. There are two other kinds of women, also: women who’ve been raped and faced their pain and cried their tears, and women who’ve been raped and never healed and act out all the fear and terror every day in every way. I definitely feel sorry for the unhealed victims. They don’t get to appreciate the joy of being a woman. Somewhere in their sub and un conscious they are reliving their attack everyday. I can remember being raped, but because I’ve healed and told that little girl she’s OK and I will protect her from now on, I am not a prisoner of being raped. I am free to be secure and happy.

Having had the privilege of going to an all women’s college which, by the way, has just been rated by The Princeton Review as one of the top sober colleges in America and equally so a “Got Milk” schools ( no beer guzzling either) I have enjoyed the profound warmth of sisterhood. It has been seriously grievous to meet women, on the outside, who consider me an enemy or competition to be overcome. Wow! They are missing a lot!

Women of America: though our culture still dictates a necessity to be creative in outsmarting naysayers who would have us fail, do not let the process take away your woman’s heart. Feel the pain, heal the pain. Learn to cry. Tell the truth, the real truth. Face your inadequacies. If a married guy wants to have an affair, tell him where to put it. Hone your skills, live your passions. Know who you are without a partner. Laugh, love, live. If you find yourself becoming strident or fearful, call a friend. Be your best self, your best woman. Be secure in the gift you are to the world. Remember you have the power to say “You can’t do that to me! You also have the right to say,”Here I am world!” Smile! Being a woman is not the booby prize it once was. Pun intended.

Love,
Deborah