Stand Your Ground

“The sun is sitting on whom I was in order that I can become the type of person that I wish to be. The beauty of twilight is that it enhances everything. Personal change requires the courage to let go of personal security and venture into a new worlds. I look forward exploring personal thoughts and behaviors, and probing community customs and rituals. I hope to meet new people, expand knowledge of the world, eclipse my egoistical way of living, and devolve a lifestyle that in is synch with the natural rhythmic flow of that governs all life forms that inhabit this crusty rock and the watery world of rivers, seas, and oceans. I resolve to accept witnessing the splendor of nature as sufficient to satisfy all my wants and desires while also seeking to increase self-control, and attempt to sprinkle kindness upon the doorsteps leading to other people’s hearts.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

I do not think there is a one of us who does not fight their insecurities, been marginalized in some way,  who have had to deal with condescension, who have been called too emotional, and too wrong. You see, because of attitudes towards women, we believe we are guilty, shameful, wrong, in so many ways and we may not have been at all.  A woman's competency is always in question...at least for women of my generation.  We were taught to not speak unless spoken too, to act like a lady, to not laugh too loud, not to cry, and all the other old tales that came from generations before.  Those attitudes towards us are still here, just typically more passively and more inferential.  In fact, our own attitudes towards ourselves, as woman, have the inner voices belonging to eras before women rose to a higher standard of equality.  We seriously quest for our youth. We are afraid to make waves, to cause conflict, by standing our ground.  At some point, would you not think we would give that up?  Our survival rate is as long as the body can sustain living down here on earth.  Where we stand, we are.  People either accept that we will stand up for ourselves or die of the stress of hanging on to the old ideology that we are inferior.

We have been demonized, we are 'put in our place' according to whatever un-enlightened soul makes the marks in the sand to show us where we should be, according to them.  Too add to all this, is that we age, and as aging women, there are more ways we are given to be controlled, or attempted to be.  Some of us have rankled, hard, but some have given in and given up and play the old games.  These games are as old as first woman and first man.  We were scary.  We could bleed and not die.  We could carry a child within us.  We could go through the agonies of birthing.  That kind of power has to have been intimidating to first men.  

Even today, we hear that we are too fat, too saggy, too baggy, to everything that we should fix, surgically, or any other way, to fit man's ideal.  And women have taken up the chant as well.  We do not hear much about women's thoughts on saggy, baggy, fat, men.  We simply accept, many of us, the fact that old women are expected to be denigrated.  

Sister, we carry great wisdom that has been passed down.  We do not have to carry the burdens of old male ideals.  In cultures that are more enlightened, aged women are valued, venerated, even.  Lord have mercy on the elderly women who are fed up with it all and dare to stand up and be and say and accept what they wish.  At some point we need to be content with who and what we are, and the changes that our body, mind, heart, and soul will go through as we fade away.  We have voices full of wisdom.  We must, must, must not accept any of the denigrating whispers and voices of today's society.  

We must learn to change our inner dialogue.  We need to rebuke those who would denigrate us.  We must refuse condescension.  We must refuse discouragement.  We must stop our own outdated perceptions so that we can take a stand against hearing it from others in jest, in comical cut and pastes, in everyday language.  We must know how to respond appropriately to those people, places, and things, that would try to have us feel 'less than'.  If we do not want to be bitter, old, hags, then we must restructure our own thinking about ourselves and elderly women.  

Do not allow others to try to diminish how brave, how courageous, what learning, what feelings we have.  Affirm that we are worthy.  Demand we be treated with respect.  God know, we have earned it.

©Carol Desjarlais 7.17.19