Mother's Day honors women that have given birth to a child; doesn't matter how they treated them after getting the child here. It misses those women that wish they could have a child and haven't. It is painful for those women that had a still born child or a miscarriage. It is heart wrenching for a variety of reasons. I explored how I felt about women in my teen years; Equal Rights Amendment was making its rounds. I felt it sounded good until I did my own homework. I decided that anything backed by wealthy men and lawyers had to be flawed. I also learned that you can't legislate attitude. Either you respect women or you don't. Unfortunately, I was raised in a home that 'Girrllls' was the dirtiest word my dad used to put someone down. It wasn't until I was in counseling that I finally told him it was not ok. He hasn't used it in my presence since then. I thought a lot about what it is to be a woman. I read several books. I am not going to mention titles since most of them had their own twisted thinking and wasn't much healthier than I was taught at home. The odd thing was my mother disliked womanhood more than my dad. Misogyny was a word I learned much later but knew fully what it was. My mother expected me to go without food so my brothers could have seconds, after all they were growing boys. The lists could go on and on about how my mother treated my sister and I like third class citizens in our own home. I did not honor my own femininity. I set out as a teenager to understand my role better. After I married, I chose to stay home and have children. I decided that instead of calling myself a housewife, I didn't marry a house, I called myself a Home Engineer with 6 ongoing projects in different stages of completion. I studied scriptures and realized Jesus values women. Some of the greatest sermons he gives to women. He showed himself to a woman first after his resurrection. So this attitude in my childhood home was not based in Christ gospel. It wasn't until I had breast cancer that I was really pushed to define the role of women and to learn to honor that role. With the encouragement of one of my professors I did a photography show about my emotional reaction to breast cancer. The show was titled, "Baseline" a reference to the first mammogram at age 40. My cancer was caught with my second mammogram. It was still in the very early stages so surgery cut out the cancer without added chemo or radiation treatment. One set of images was 20 pictures, 19 women and one frame with the number of women that died of cancer in 2005. Each picture was a different woman with a single word or phrase describing an attribute that woman have. It was an amazing experience photographing women that do not consider themselves model material. Pictures of professors and students, professionals and homemakers, beauticians and Mary Kay direct, amazing women that I encountered in my life. For weeks, I prepared these pictures. I displayed them down the long wall of the gallery. I learned from this experience that women are amazing. I included my mother as a teacher. I knew from helping in the classroom that she was great with teaching students. My daughters and daughter-in-laws allowed themselves to be included. Neighbors and friends let me invade their home and their space with my camera equipment. I learned that if I wanted to get the picture I desired, I needed to shoot lots of pictures and get the women talking about the things that they love. I learned to admire these women and I am proud to be a woman.
http://weareone-ruth.blogspot.com/2012/08/inner-cleavage-to-me.html
http://weareone-ruth.blogspot.com/2012/08/inner-cleavage.html
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