“In that small town of old women and
angry men;
They teach girls how to speak in a lower tone,
How to always nod their heads and never be brave enough to say No.
They teach them not to walk alone in an empty street.
They give them hundreds of rules for how to love, live and even dream.
They color their worlds in black and white; so that they couldn’t paint ones in
their own.
And those who dare to ask questions, to raise voices, to standup for themselves,
to be their wild most authentic selves, and to hit back are being my dear
called hoes , bitches and men wanna be .
In that small town of old women and angry men; to be born a woman is an enough
reason for you to be in an endless war with society and its trashy beliefs…”
― Samiha Totanji
We, women, born
between 1945 and 1955 are official Baby Boomers. We rebelled and enjoyed free love; were the
impetus of thousands of Self-help, empowerment, litigation groups, to gain more
and more equality/power; and broke free of left-over Victorian norms for women
to be barefoot and pregnant, in the kitchen, subservient to the man of the
house, and would no longer be seen and not heard. We believed and became privileged and ended
up uncertain as to what cultural norms were now in place. The stifling old prejudices and prohibitions
for women were shoved to the side and we wrote a new cultural story for women,
but that led to a problem. We had no
compass to follow. It became a bit of a
free-for-all with no real cultural restraints about this new feminine freedom.
There were splinter groups who tried to define women’s roles and as with all
things, we may have gone too far, or not far enough within global aspects of
women’s roles.
We, Boomer Women,
have raised our children, are raising grandchildren., and have comer to more
wisdom and continued freedoms that are at risk every day. We have grown up under the umbrella of
railing against rules and re constantly being manipulated to gain back “the
good old days of the pre-60s” by Patriarchy that is embedded so deeply that we
still have to march to drums and stand on soap boxes, stiletto-hell our way up
labor ladders, and can compete with the best of them , yet, imbalance in leaderships
of our country still would like to keep us in our place… an undefined ‘place’
because we are the new age women who , maybe, forgot to have end goal mission
statements or futuristic directives and
so we tend to be flailing in a sea of undeclared goals we have no idea of nor
how to reach them. So, we have turned to
self-acceptance, inner directives that are unique to every individual and w are
in splintered groups of women trying to reach some utopia...an undefined
utopia. We continue to be in transition with our very roles in continuing transition.
We have not
prepared our young women following after us.
They will most likely break away from what we deemed ‘traditional” for
us baby boomers and clump into another group of splintered groups trying to
their own undefined roles in society.
They, too, will rant and rave at patriarchal authority. They would ’stay in their place’, too, but
there I no defined ‘place’ for them either.
We all live in a fractured world.
The best we can do is find a path we feel right to follow and quietly
work on our interpersonal skills so that we are more resilient. At least that...
more resilient and less resistant to change. We al need a sense of purpose, a
sense of being ‘enough’, a sense of empowerment. May we find and teach those women following
after us, they way home.
©Carol Desjarlais
1.21.24
"She's Leaving
Home"
"She (We gave her most of our lives)
is leaving (Sacrificed most of our lives)
home (We gave her everything money could buy)
She's leaving home after living alone for so many years (Bye, bye)."
"She (What did we do that was wrong?)
is having (We didn't know it was wrong)
fun (Fun is the one thing that money can't buy)
Something inside that was always denied for so many years (Bye, bye)
She's leaving home (Bye, bye)."
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