Caireen :International Day of the Girl

 

 

“…the International Day of the Girl is … about celebrating girls. Girls, who are so smart and capable. Girls, who are funny and interesting and interested. Girls, who — given the chance — can change the world.” – Bustle.com

All, any girl, at any age (including our Inner girl), wants to be defender of each other, like Caireen, the Irish Protective Mother goddess, who is patron of children, especially girls.  All girls want, that are open-hearted, deep-souled, is to live free of misogyny and gender-based violence.  All those girls want is to be what they choose to be, not what others want them to be.  All intelligent, wonderfully conscious girls want is to evoke social change.  What was your response to Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg is a Swedish environmental activist who is known for challenging world leaders to take immediate action for climate change mitigation?  Were you a champion of her or did you buy into the patriarchal ideology that young girls know nothing they are not scripted to believe? 

I, for one, championed her, wanted to stuff Holly leaves in my hair and dance around a fire sharing some stories of some girls I knew and cared for in my career in the far North.  Oh, yes, there were some Gretas there too.  There were girls who wanted change in their communities.  There were girls there that Christ has wept for, yet, there they were, every morning at school bell, and they were mighty in their desire for change.  They were there, leading who they could, towards changing their communities.  There were girls there who wanted nothing more than a future; education, heath, safety, as they matured in thought and actions.  There were girls there who wanted to be the kind of mothers they heard about, to raise healthy happy children, themselves.  There were girls there who set boundaries and cared and nurtured those with disabilities, who wanted the world to be kind.

Yes, they often got the best ideas from the internet, from television, from foreign places that they could only dream of having… including… this that was for the youngest of girls.. and us, yes, and us: 

 

 

We, women, sisters of young girls, mothers, grandmothers, aunties, community women, need to remember it takes a whole village to raise a healthy young girl.  We need to be willing to take up their chalices, to wave the banners of the missing and murdered girls.  We need to raise up the girl in us and be, perhaps, the sole support, girls might have. 

In Your Stead

Oh sister, hold me,
I am afraid
of dark
and rock
and death
as much as you,
but I fear yours
more than mine

take my hand, walk me
to my destiny

shelter me in arms
for just a moment
before you turn

I can not bear
this beating alone,
nor can I stand
to have you watch

after you let me go,
turn, run,

make quick posse
to hide in hills,

or row to islands

while they are busy
with me

©Carol Desjarlais 2008

Yes, it is time for us to get behind the girls we know and the girls we don’t and brace their backs.  We should be willing to sacrifice ourselves (and our semi-tidy little lives)for their good.  They will run the world one day, if we do so.

©Carol Desjarlais 10.11.21