Mack Notes

The Help Within

2011-08-19T11:35:00.000-05:00

Help Within

The recent movie, The Help, has let loose a fury of controversy: is the story historical fiction, nonfiction posing as fiction or just naive writing. Academic writing is different from nonfiction writing is different than fiction. With the former two, the writer must be committed to factual accuracy and authentic, primary sources to the extent they can be found. With fiction, the process provides more freedom to the writer as the characters begin to take up residence in the writer’s mind and begin to kick the walls of the cerebellum for attention. Most often for me it happens during a solo walk or weeding the garden, but always in the act of being solo. I think that every fiction writer is born growing these characters in their mind and listening to their voices, not unlike the schizophrenic but to a much lesser degree. The fiction writer puts the story down on paper/computer letting the story take free reign; the schizophrenic is trapped by the voices and the mind becomes trapped by their dominance. Most often the fiction writer’s stories never leave the privacy of the writer’s home. If they do find their way to publication, most die on the vine as far as generating sales, but many readers still find them enjoyable. When a book such as The Help garners a national readership and then makes its way to the big screen, it is precisely because the characters have taken hold of the soul of the reader and given it a vigorous shake. It is the job of the individual reader and viewer to decide what the cause of the rumble is for them.

Mack Notes: Baby Boomers Still In Touch with Love

2011-02-10T20:26:00.000-06:00

Mack Notes: Baby Boomers Still In Touch with Love

Baby Boomers Still In Touch with Love

2011-01-14T04:57:00.002-06:00

Recently I have been reading about how the “boomers” are steadfast in their insistence on breaking the barriers and stereotypes associated with their age. It was expected that when they were in their twenties, they should work, save money and find a mate. Instead, they grew flower power mentality, painted their clothes and practiced free love. It did not hurt that the birth control pill also made its debut at the same time.

In spite of a shaky start, they became the best educated generation to date, settled down and raised smaller families than their parents. The women put one tiny step ahead of another to forge career paths, created a glass ceiling and then eventually chiseled cracks if not major holes in it.

So now in their sixties, some still married but well over half divorced once or twice, the Boomers again turn their attention to love. With technology skills as refined as the children they raised, they burn up the pages of face book and match while juggling their smart phones equipped with applications galore to keep them updated and continuously in touch.

They still write poetry, sing with Dylan, Elvis and the Beetles, and play out the rituals of dating and mating with all the audacity, pain and tears they did when they were young. They hum quietly to themselves in the middle of the night after yet another stumble at love or scream out loud while burning up a dance floor with the familiar words of an era yet to go by: “Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed. Stay, lady, stay, stay with your man awhile”. You’ve got to love those boomers if for nothing else, for their insistence at working at getting love right, again and again.

A Beautiful Girl-A Beautiful Woman

2011-01-07T10:47:00.000-06:00

“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.”

Kahlil Gibran~

Little girls and then grown women are raised to measure themselves against the beauty standard. Roget’s New Millennium Thesaurus defines beautiful people as the “aristocracy, beau mode, café society, jet set, privileged class, the upper crust” to name just a few. It smacks of exclusion. If you are not aristocratic, famous or jet set, then you cannot be beautiful. Then, you must be un-beautiful, ordinary, and not highly valued?

Yet it is equally true that psychologists and anthropologists have supported the notion that as babies, children and grown adults, we will spend more time gazing at both members of the opposite sex whose facial features are symmetrically aligned, that over time, human beings have labeled beautiful. Those characteristics include widely spaced large eyes, high cheek bones, full lips and perfectly matched sides of the face. For women, additional standards of an hour-glass figure, larger breasts, and feminine, baby-like faces have been judged to be visually preferred by men. We know that it is within our nature to prefer stand-out beauty whether it appears in the male or the female. However, it is also both commonly known that girls and grown women are held to a beauty standard that is unyielding as stone as they grow and age.

Life tends not to be fair in that some women are more physically beautiful through genetic inheritance than others. What emerges as the core principal of beauty is that inner beauty lasts and physical beauty diminishes as we age. Although to be truthful, beautiful women I know who are in the seventies and eighties and who have retained their spark still maintain an edge over their peer group. Beauty that lasts does not live on the outside. Acquiring and keeping a spark is what the life force is essentially about, and then of course, passing it on.

A beautiful woman acknowledges how those who came before her have changed her life.

One of the phrases I find myself saying to girls of all ages is that we came into this world alone and that is how we are going to leave. By that, I try to remind myself and others that we have been given our own gift of life and it is not attached to someone else’s life force. The more I live in that understanding the more I am grateful to those women who came before me whose lives were filled with limitations, hardships and early and enduring losses. In spite of those challenges, there were women in my family that dedicated their lives to intellectual development and to the care of their minds, bodies and spirits. They were healers, teachers, nurses, physicians and philosophers in their own right. They inspired, suffered, and provided those of us women behind them with a model of what the female life can bring to others long after they have gone. We must be compelled to keep their stories alive within our family circles.

When my granddaughters were age six and nine, one asked me in front of the other if I was ever going to die. I could see by hearing their concern and looking into their eyes that they wanted me to tell them that I would live forever. I knew this was an important moment for us and I was being called upon to tell the truth. Perhaps it is because I lost my own mother at a tender age when I needed her very much that I recognized the importance of their question. Thus, I told my granddaughters that someday I would die. I went on to explain that everything that has life eventually will die while quickly affirming that I intended to live for a very long time. I stressed to them that when I am gone, I know they will miss me. But I wanted them to remember all of the good times we have had together, the songs we sang and the music we danced to. I want them to remember me and smile and be happy that we shared so much love together. They listen intently and I noticed a tear or two slip down their cheeks which still burns inside of me. The youngest will still ask, as if fact checking, if it is true that someday I will die and she blurts out that she does not want that to ever happen. Growing up happens in infinitely tiny steps over a long journey and I cannot deprive her of opportunities to grow strong by comforting her with falsehoods.

Just as it is important to acknowledge those women in our families that have impacted our lives, it is essential that we credit the Susan B. Anthony’s whether they were scientists, politicians, or social workers. The legal and civil rights won by them and the barriers they helped to rip down has resulted in improving the quality of a woman’s life that is unequaled in no other country in the world. Their work laid the road for all of us as we continue to press those issues important to us both as individuals and to women as a whole. Continued dedication and hard work is a must as nothing remains static: all reform improves or unravels.

A beautiful woman knows her gifts and limitations and accepts them with grace.

Why is it that when you give a grown woman a compliment, she will argue with you, or worse yet, tell you of her faults or weaknesses? Try saying to a woman you know well that she really looks wonderful. Is it because as women we are raised with the expectation that we need to do many things at the same time and to do them without error? We all have read that boys are given more constructive feedback and rewards than girls which may be why girls seek out feedback that they are accepted and loved.

Bury forever the lie that girls and women must be good at everything. It is not required of any woman to be perfect or perfectly good. That is what saying no and taking calculated risks is all about. Life is a limited resource and eventually that resource will run out. If we determine what are interests are, what our innate gifts are, we can be more efficient about creating our life work that is fulfilling, interesting and that sustains growth overtime. We will all need to work harder in areas we find less interesting. We must stay the course and discipline ourselves to grow skills in areas we find less appealing but nevertheless, are essential (financial skills). The point is that we do not have to do everything, nor do we have to do everything with the same zeal and energy. We certainly do not have to most things perfectly.

A beautiful woman’s life echoes a liberating simplicity.

Simplicity used to describe a woman’s life may seem counter intuitive. Yet, the happiest women I know simplify by focusing on those activities that are at the center of their hearts. To do that requires us to name our values and to say the names of those who are in our center of caring or influence. Once we can do that, we can limit our goals in order to build a life that is rich, centered, and thus simple. When we engage deeply in those activities and work that define who we are, we are more likely to produce positive energy and joy and less likely to be bogged down with anxiety, stress and resentment.

A beautiful woman can portray strength, leadership, and maternal caring.

Whether you are a man or a woman, life has a way of sending you as many trials and tribulations as it does joys and celebrations. Too many of us were raised in a culture that expects girls and women to be one dimensional, that is, soft, deferential and passive. While it is true that we expect men to be direct, assertive and in-charge, expecting a person to lead and be assertive generally produces a person that is receptive to assuming more responsibility and that behavior in turn, results in more opportunities. The lioness and female bear are instructive to girls and women in that they are tender and maternal yet they are also powerful hunters and protectors.

A beautiful woman is authentic.

We are our passion. Without passion driving us, we are driven by others’ passions. If we are not careful, we use up all of our own energy while reserving little for our own dreams. It is no wonder we see so many women exhausted, anxious and depressed with all they are required to do. They continue a cycle which reserves little time for their own rest, relaxation, meditation and work. It is easy to become resentful of our partner’s or co-workers’ successes when we feel as though it comes at our own expense. Years ago I visited my physician complaining of stomach pains and exhaustion. As he was examining me, he asked me a simply question that made me cry. He asked, “When was the last time you experienced joy?” I realized I could not remember. I had made my life unnecessarily complicated by trying to meet too many other people’s preferences and expectations combined with my own need to mother in the same way as mothers who did not have a full-time professional job! As women, we must become more focused on what is at the center of our value system, our net worth as a human being, as a mother, a partner and as an individual. The more we center on that which is our passion, the more positive energy will drive our bodies and our souls.

Authenticity requires reflection, timing and perseverance. That which is our passion can be resurrected from our girlhood. What we loved then is likely to inspire and bring us joy as adults. I have learned from many people that we do not change the core of our beings that much from childhood. We have a lifetime to grow and nurture our dreams and depending upon the choices we make, the timeline is different for each of us. Some women will have children early on, others later in life and still others will choose to have no children at all. Comparing our life with others and imitating it as the only right path will surely lead to anxiety, frustration and a sense of inadequacy.

The most important trait may be perseverance, the willingness to continue working on your dream, your work, and your art even if for only your own enjoyment and comfort. Perseverance also entails not giving into despair, losing hope and relinquishing your life force to darkness. We have learned so much from those who have been unjustly imprisoned, tortured and left for dead and from those that have been enslaved by depression. Life matters. Thus, at all cost, women must see the importance of keeping hope and, like the lioness, guarding their strength.

A beautiful woman is a mystery that is housed in the interior.

Many mornings, I light a candle in my kitchen or burn incense that reminds me of the Chequamegon woods of my birth. In winter, my favorite days are cold, sunny and snow covered. I am pulled north if I can leave and if not, I turn toward the out of doors and imagine that I am in the woods of Lake Superior. In the winter woods, you can hear yourself breathe. There are few if any human voices. Within minutes, my mind is cleared and restored and I begin to hear the songs of birds that have stayed the winter. I can trace the path of the rabbits, moles and squirrels in the snow. I can clearly see where the deer have bedded down in late afternoon or evening.

When I was a young child of eight, I loved to go out on the coldest of winter days for as many hours as my face and hands would tolerate. I could not go far from home so I trudged toward the outer boundaries of the forest and played under the arms of the towering pines. They offered protection from the wind and the cold, and if you went far enough under them, there was no snow at all. It was a perfect place to play, to imagine, to just “be” as a young girl. I claimed it as my secret winter domain. It was mystical and magical but as a child, I would have had no words to explain its power. I could only feel it.

The following year I moved to an urban city to live with my aunt. There were no trees, no hills, and no Chequamegon lands. I walked down newly paved sidewalks, lined with trees smaller than I was in a newborn suburb. I desperately looked for green seclusion in the form of wooded trees, but found none. I was soul sick, depressed and sensory deprived. I coped and adapted for the following nine years I remained but the concrete city would never be home. I now have words for what I experienced as a child: I had been removed from my interior life and it would be thirty years before I would reclaim it.

The interior life is attained by communing with our senses and our intuitive spirit. It is a place that triggers our senses and where our emotions flow with ease. The inner core of a girl and woman’s being will speak the truth to her if she learns how to tune out the world and hear its message. She has been given a life that is like no other. She is obligated to challenge herself, to lead, and finally, to leave her story for smaller feet to follow. By tapping into the Life Force, she will find her own path and live in splendor and grace.

The Rise of a New Life

2011-01-06T09:02:00.000-06:00

Cold air with glimpses of sun greet me this January morning. The house quietly rests and waits for its mistress to set the course for the day.

I am growing slowly in contentment with my decision to retire from my full time university professorship. While I maintain confident in my conviction to open up more space for my own pursuits with more leisure, the structure of my day to day life is slow to emerge. What to do! I find that I am falling back on the routines and pleasures of reading, of housekeeping and of writing.

I wake whenever I wish with no worries of having to get quickly back to sleep. I read when I want, watch Netflix movies on-line in my bed at the strike of a computer key and bring a tray upstairs to my bedroom from the kitchen with hot green-mint tea and toast when the sun is hours away from making an appearance. I love the quietness, the softness and the comfort of this well ordered life protected by Badger House.

It's Very Personal

2010-05-13T08:35:00.000-05:00

Jane Smiley, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, writes in the June Prevention magazine that she tells herself it’s nothing personal to get through life’s challenges. When her husband left her for her dental hygienist, she grabbed on to the sentence “There is nothing personal going on here” to get through the disaster. I could not disagree more! When people carelessly or deliberately intrude on the most precious parts of one’s life-their children who are small or grown, their mates, new or entrenched, or grandchildren, mine, ours or theirs, their dignity solid or fragile, there is nothing impersonal about it. When your child whether four or forty breaks down and sobs under the real weight of physical pain, emotional trauma and intimate bonds torn apart, it is only personal. While Smiley uses the literary tools of creating characters and a more interesting plot map to get her through, most of us need comfort and guidance of well chosen healers, friends and family who stand by us while we wrap our arms around ourselves to keep us from melting down, levitating upward or bursting apart. Holding on is very personal.

Female Assets

2009-11-20T14:18:00.000-06:00

While women have made economic and educational strides, many have found themselves outside of a solid economic mainstream. The loss of a job, the birth of an ill baby or a divorce, all extremely common events in the fabric of American life, can drop a woman from the middle rung of the middle class to a free fall off of a stable economic ladder altogether. Women, like men, have common needs, and these needs cost money. The culmination of assets is the means by which we meet those needs. Both men and women, independent from one another, require the growth of the following assets over a lifetime.

Assets for Female Economic Well-Being
• Earnings to sustain growth during a working lifetime
• Knowledge and skills to enhance those earnings
• Physical and mental health to fully use knowledge, skills, and other capacities, pensions for support in retirement;
• Insurance or other protection against risks—unemployment, illness, disability
• Financial resources to complement and enhance all of the former
• Networks of personal, community, and professional connection, and
• Community-based infrastructure of resources and services
Asset Development Institute, Brandeis University

Female asset development is directly tied to living out the values of an American dream-female style. It is hard for anyone of us to vision a life for our daughters, granddaughters or ourselves that does not include women having the same rights to build strong futures for themselves, on their own. Secure women require, not “may like to if they want”, the following traits during the various stages of their lifetime. First they need opportunity. Every young woman has her own right to choose what the good life is for her and to construct a plan that when steadily worked over a lifetime, provides her opportunities to grow and develop. A flexible plan accompanied with genuine life skills will help her to cope with inevitable changes, to make choices, such as having a family or to sustain her during serious challenges such as recovering from illness.
Female "assets are what women need to make choices about their lives; what they need to succeed in the choices that they make. When we possess assets, the future holds promise; there is reason to hope and strive for a better life”(The Asset Index).
Secondly, a female American dream requires fairness. Girls and women should be pushed to take part in creating financial skills of their own and having their voices heard regarding the very issues that are critical to their well-being. Girls and woman require increased information and encouragement to enter those careers and professions where their hard work, training and dedication will reap substantial higher earnings than those jobs and careers where women have super-glued themselves. It is time to coach our girls and young women the same way we coach our boys and young men.
As a result of reading the literature on female work and writing this chapter, I had a conversation with a young woman that I would have previously let go for the sake of not offending her. I was at my local bank when I struck up a conversation with a young female teller (the only gender of teller found in the bank). She was telling me she was taking classes beginning in one week at our local technical college. I assumed it was in the area of banking but she corrected me and said it was in cosmetology and barbering. I responded by encouraging her to explore the financial difference in moving up the ranks in the financial industry as opposed to starting at step one in the grooming industry. She replied by stating the stereotypical female thing—that she was really interested in cosmetology. I encouraged her to consider owning her own saloon eventually because after ten years at work, work is still work and you really want to be earning some substantial financial rewards as well. It is surprising how a good pay check can alter how much you like a particular career choice!

10 Truths

2009-11-09T20:52:00.000-06:00

Sally Gregory Kohlstedt,an expert on science in American culture,insists that women must support and direct younger women if they are to sustain the gains made by the women of previous generations. The first responsibility all women and men have is to tell girls and women the truth about what the economic nature of a woman’s life is today and the path to building a secure and happy life.
So let’s do that: get at the truth. Truth number one: “She” has to help herself. No rescues allowed. As women and men who have stable and secure lives, we can and must help our girls and women by helping them to set goals and supporting them as they go. We can’t do it for them and we can’t take away meaningful life lessons by providing for her in the same way that was done when she was a child—paying her full bill while she spends her earnings on fluff.
Truth number two: Women who work full time earn more security. They are paid more and receive full benefits. They are taken more seriously and receive more opportunities for advancement. Full time women workers have more support services to assist them in their work and have access to free training in their fields. They are more successful in moving up the occupational ladder as they establish relationships and credibility with their supervisors. They have made the necessary sacrifices and adjustments in their personal and family lives (less social time with peers) and may be recognized for this in the workplace.
Truth number three: Women should limit their work in all women service occupations such as waitressing, retail work and low ladder health care. If you must work these jobs, set a temporary goal such as “I will waitress only while completing my associate degree in business”. Avoid the traps of staying too long in these low paying with no benefits jobs, where everyone is your boss but you.
Truth number four: Education counts. The U.S. Department of Labor Women’s Bureau’s 1994 report advises that more education translates into lower unemployment. Women with less than a high school diploma have a ten percent chance of unemployment; with a high school diploma that rate drops to five percent, some college the rate drops further. The lowest unemployment rate is among those with a college education— 2.7 percent.
Truth number five: Women can balance work and family life and working will not make you a bad mother and ruin your children. Finding balance is a challenge all women face whether they work outside of the home or not. Women carry the bulk of parenting for young and the not-so-young and perform most of the routine and constant tasks required to maintain the care of a family and a home (preparation of meals, laundry, bill payment, supervising children, playing with children to name a few of the hundreds on this list). The problem is not whether a woman can find a balance in her already complex life as much as it is getting the other partner in the mix—namely the man— to assume a balanced role of his own.
Truth number six: Girls and women are assets over a lifetime and should view their lives as their own business. By learning fundamental principles such as— pay yourself first, invest in your training and education, the best sale to shop is one where you do not buy— shapes a girl’s and woman’s sense of vision and control over her own destiny. Financial management skills should be as important to teach and integrate into a girl’s life as watching a baby brother or learning how to prepare breakfast. Seeing a woman’s life as growing equity over time is the first step. Young woman need hands on experiences to start and grow a business of their own. If mothers and fathers have reasonable comfort with seeing their young daughter go into another adult’s home to provide care for their children (babysitting), it should be as easy to encourage her to deliver a service or prepare a product of her own. By practicing start-up small business skills of her own when young, she will be increasingly comfortable in shaping future ideas for business as a young adult.
Women who are either employed part-time or are full-time mothers are also prime candidates for building a small home-centered business. I have caught myself saying and have heard countless other working women remark that what they really need is a wife. For internet savvy women, there are numerous support services such as Home Based Working Moms (http://www.hbwm.com/) ready to assist creative women. Full time at home mothers can add substantially to their family’s income as well as acquire skill, knowledge and experience that will translate to employment in the workplace if and when they choose to enter the workplace in the traditional sense. While women recognize that staying at home with children is as much of a choice as working outside of the home with children is, so is working from a home business an increasingly wise and profitable option for women.
Truth number seven: Sell the hard stuff. Women are great talkers and even better at analyzing the details of a topic. Combined with sound interpersonal skills, it is no wonder why they are comfortable and successful in retail sales. Retail sales yields poor pay and few if any benefits, while selling automobiles, machines, health care products and home housing materials is lucrative. While the number of women selling automobiles has increased over the years, few women when compared to the total number of women who work as sales persons sell the hard stuff. The number of women selling automobiles has increased over the years. Women I know who do sell cars do incredibly well especially when you consider how the demand for new cars by women consumers has increased. The most challenging part for women selling the hard stuff is getting the notion firmly entrenched into their heads that they should and can sell them as easily as they can sell women’s underwear and dresses.
Truth number eight: Negotiate and get it in writing. If a man stays at home and takes care of the children while the woman works full time for pay, how will the man’s contribution be taken into account? If a couple under thirty is marrying for the first time, how will each know what the debt load is of their partner and what expectations they each have in assuming responsibility as a married couple in paying down both individually acquired debt and couple debt? How will the costs be distributed when a husband pays for the family health premium as part of his payroll deduction while the wife does not have any such costs?
Today, if two individuals are forming a legal partnership, e.g. marriage, the details of how the marriage will play out financially should be discussed, negotiated and spelled out in writing. While women’s language skills are generally superior to most men’s, I know of no woman who has accomplished reading the mind of others, especially her partner. If it is important to you, talk, negotiate and write it down.
Truth number nine: Girls and women are of equal value as human capital. Traditionally, economic policies were crafted with the eye on investing and protecting working men and their families whether the policy was Social Security, the GI Bill, the Homestead Act, or employment based health insurance and unemployment. Today’s society is light years away from the world of our parents and grandparents. Yet much of the mindset and most of the policies have not changed to address the changing nature of the workplace and families. Girls and women have both the right and the responsibility to develop their human capital—the cash income and benefits gained from their individual skills, knowledge, and experience. Human capital is acquired over a lifetime. Every girl and woman needs to be told a positive story about the life that waits for her by making choices that are commiserate with her potential.
Truth number ten: Activism matters. Many women have moved away from the activist roles of their mothers’ and grandmothers’ generation believing that most of their work has been successfully completed. In truth, at the end of the twentieth century, women’s value, economic, social and emotional net worth is at best eighty percent and at worst, twenty percent of men’s. Experienced professional women, be it in traditional careers such as teaching or nontraditional domains such as engineering, still are not represented proportionately at the upper ranks of their professions and are paid two-thirds of what men make. For women who work within the home and outside in occupations and jobs that are at the lower tier of the economic ladder, their fate has become much worse than women in similar lifestyles just ten years ago. For those women, the changing policies with respect to benefits, divorce, unemployment compensation, and lack of health benefits have all combined to put them at serious risk.

Banish the Princess

2009-11-06T15:24:00.000-06:00

Pretty Woman catapulted Julia Roberts from actress to superstar. The film debuted in 1990, yet is still featured on television networks all over the country. When it premiered, it was the latest in the Cinderella story line. But this time Cinderella is a prostitute working the streets of Los Angles when Richard Gere’s character, a rich, successful corporate raider, “rescues” her to be his paid escort for the time he is in L.A. The film grossed over one hundred seventy eight million dollars in the US alone and that does not include revenues from the video rental and television sales market. Roberts’ body is stunning but sleazily dressed until somehow Gere’s character decides to transform her into his princess. But he never lets you know his thinking about how he will integrate a high school dropout hooker into his upper crust life.
There is one scene that is embedded in my memory. Roberts’ character, Vivian, is attempting to earn her keep by making sexual moves on the Gere character. She asks him which color and flavor condom he would like her to put on him. While the viewer does not see Vivian perform oral sex, you get the picture that the act has been consummated—that she performs and he receives. After all, she is a prostitute. Could this be another stepping stone in the path that would lead middle level girls in years ahead to engage in oral sex in their school buildings, on their school buses and at preteen and teen parties? After all it worked for Julia as Vivian and didn’t she look great!
On their website The National Coalition of Girls’ Schools writes, “It’s a standard fairy tale scenario: The damsel in distress is rescued by a knight in shining armor." That’s fine for childhood storytelling, but the primary lesson of recent US multinational bank predatory lending taught us all that financial literacy is a much better means of achieving a happily-ever-after ending. "If she'd had her own money, Cinderella wouldn't have been sweeping floors, and she would have bought her own shoes!” And no doubt, Julia’s character would not be selling her body on the streets of Los Angeles.
To dream about being a princess is easy. To build a secure future requires personal and social responsibility. It is simply untruthful to tell girls and women that they do not have to take initiative in assuring that their basic needs will be met. Every social fabric of American life has changed. Each girl and woman must hold herself accountable in doing as much as she can to create the life that she imagines for herself on the one hand, and,at least,to maintain a life that includes safety, security and a social fabric on the other. Women, who develop their capabilities to a higher level by taking more risks and making more sacrifices, should reap the financial benefits we have come to expect from men who do the same. To continue paying woman,at best,eighty cents on the dollar is unacceptable. What can women do about current wage and institutional practices held in place by gender bias and discrimination? What would happen if every woman now earning her living as a waitress in the food industry stopped working for thirty days? Answer: First, a lot of name calling followed by higher wages!

Mother Attachment

2009-11-05T12:51:00.000-06:00

Ways of Knowing

There are many ways of knowing about mother attachment. One way is by firsthand experience. Shortly before my seventh birthday, I lost my mother to suicide. She was misdiagnosed after the birth of her last child and subjected to multiple rounds of electroconvulsive shock therapy. It devastated her on the most profound level. I have written her story in an essay titled “A Better Ending” which can be found on my website at http://people.uwec.edu/mackmd/.

Before the loss of my mother, I was a confident, feisty, outdoor girl running the woods of northern Wisconsin by daylight when not in school, and trying to decipher the words in my grandfather’s books in the evening. Two women, my mother and a paternal aunt, Margie, kept the large white house on a towering hill functioning as I ran in and out free as the wind. Years later I would recognize that it was Margie who kept the household together as my mother was already damaged from the “treatments” for what medical professionals believed to be depression. The image of my mother lying on a stretcher covered in her own blood hardwired on my brain where it remained for years. Like many families faced with the choice to survive or collapse under the pressure of a tragedy, my family slowly moved on in silence. I was left on my own to decipher the meaning of how and why mother died as she did as well as how to stop the image of her death from popping up continually during the day.

Within a few years, I moved from the freedom of a hilly rural Wisconsin countryside to the cement streets of suburban Milwaukee to live with one of my mothers’ many sisters. Within a few years, I also was deprived of all contact with my father. Reeling from the loss herself, my aunt thought it best for me and for her to silently leave the tragedy in the past and move on. She obtained a court order barring my father from contact as to see him triggered her own unresolved feelings about the loss of her sister. She transferred all responsibility of my mother’s death squarely on my father’s shoulders. She believed any contact I would have with my father would work against my acclimation to my new life. What she did not know is that the path to recovery from such profound losses requires survivors to release both the energy and the toxic chemicals produced from the survival moments or carry it inside where it will wreak havoc and increase in pressure to be released. As a child, you look for others to lead the way in making order of a chaotic loss and to assist you in retaining the memory of your loved one. When that did not happen, I held on to the only memory that remained of my mother: her moment of death.

That process of hanging on resulted in early episodes of depression and anxiety. I went from a rather securely attached child to an anxious, traumatized one without the assistance of a healer. As I continued to grow and regain my footing, I chose to forget my mother, to dismiss any memory or reference of her. In a way, I acted as if my mother never existed. Other girls had mothers; I did not.

What mothers and mother substitutes must accept and act upon is that the most important relationship for a young girl or woman is that between her and her mother.. There is simply no substitute for mother and mother’s enduring life force upon her daughter. The road to gaining or regaining security and confidence is the feeling and belief that you can take care of yourself. That development or healing leads back to mother.

Judgment

2009-11-01T08:33:00.000-06:00

Popular mantra is the chant that we should not judge one another. However, judgment is a necessary part of leadership, of standing for those who need protection and support: children, the sick, and the most fragile among us.

Women particularly have trouble drawing a conclusion without back sliding given the smallest of challenge. Is it because as women we have been conditioned to rely on others judgment? Women before us have given their lives, their blood, and sacrificed much so that women would have legal voice as well as many of the rights to collect assets for their own lives and to make judgments for themselves.

Yet, when pushed, women often vacillate, apologize, back down. Where does such backsliding get a woman when she does that? Most likely, where it got women before the Iron Clad ladies of change--allowing others to judge for us and to be the deciders of who we are and how we want to live our lives.

Finally, some things will never change for women. If we choose to bring children into this world, we must stand beside them and mother them until they grow into maturity and are strong enough to face the world on their own. Harsh judgments will continue to be made against mothers who walk away from their obligation to be the centerpiece of their children's lives.

Dating and Mating

2006-12-05T12:20:00.000-06:00

Warning: Dating May Be Hazardous to a Girl’s -Woman's Health

From Finding Center: Building Identity and Confidence in Girls' and Women's Lives

New Horizon Press, February, 2007

Maureen D. Mack

A mother of a twelve-year old, six foot, athletic son lamented that girls are calling him day and night and chasing him down like a dog on the scent of a rabbit. At the same time, she is acutely aware that the mothers not only think it is okay, but talk about which girls would make the perfect match and cutest couple with her son. The mother asked me, “What is going on with these mothers?”
What is going on is what has been going on for centuries. The mothers are match making. They are acting out a ritual that is associated with the “old world” and is not generally considered to be part of western culture. They also know what research substantiates. Well over ninety percent of all adults will marry. Men with the best social and economic capital will get the most choices and the women who are the most attractive will be picked by the most desirable men.
Enter into this mix the issue of girls’ developmental differences from boys during early adolescence. On the average, girls’ bodies are transformed from little girl’s bodies into woman-like bodies seemingly overnight. Boys will also go through this biological maturation, but for most of them, this stage begins closer to the mid-high school years. It is no wonder why girls look at boys their own age and lament to their parents that boys their age are babies. They become much more interested in boys older than they are and for some older boys and young men, they are equally interested in the twelve to sixteen year old girl, but for different reasons.

What Girls Want—What Boys Want
Preteen girls and their mothers may have one thing in common. It is entirely likely that they possess a naïve distortion of what dating is all about in today’s preteen and teen world. As a mother marches her daughter towards the inevitable first date night, she may have a vision of the experience that sounds something like this if she were to share it with her female friends:
James came to pick up my Katie at seven o’clock. I had spent the day shopping with Katie for just the right first date outfit. She bought; I mean I bought for her, a short skirt, with a soft sweater with a scooped neckline, and shoes with two inch platform heels. She spent hours on her makeup and her hair. They left the house and they looked so adorable. You know he comes from such a good family. His father is a lawyer and his mother is in advertising. I know that Katie is just thirteen but she is really mature for her age and James is such a nice boy. He’s a bit older, sixteen and in high school. Katie said they were going to a movie and then out for a pizza. I told James that Katie needed to be home by midnight. I heard her come in right around midnight—I called to her from my bedroom and asked if she had a good time and she said yes—she’d talk to me tomorrow.
Then, there is the description of how the date really went. The sexual scenario described below is factually based upon “Teen Sex That’s “No Big Deal’” published in Lilith magazine.
Katie and James walk from her house to the car. Once inside, James tells Katie that there has been a change in plans. A friend of his has invited them to a party at his parents’ house. Katie is somewhat put off guard, but wants to give the impression of being mature and sophisticated about the change in plans, so says sure when he asks her if she wants to go.
Once at the house, Katie soon discovers the other girls are somewhat older than she is. Some are coupled off, drinking beer and smoking. Katie declines the beer and cigarettes but hangs with the other girls who are not coupled with boys. As the evening progresses, one of the boys asks if they want to play lipstick. Katie has no idea what lipstick is but since the others do and the boys are very interested in the game, she takes the lead from the other girls. The girls dig in their purses for tubes of lipstick, looking for different colors as well as flavored lipsticks. They apply the lipstick in heavy layers to their lips. Each girl then took turns putting her mouth around the penis of each of the boys, leaving lipstick marks in a different place in order to create a rainbow effect as each girl takes her turn. Katie was humiliated, embarrassed and ashamed. She feels pressured to play along. She came with James in his car. Was she going to walk out when she does not even know where she is?
What girls think they want at this age is a boyfriend who will talk with them on the phone and be seen with them in front of their friends. They are looking for someone whom they can attach their feelings of love, warmth and caring to and someone who will mirror those same feelings of attachment back to them.
Boys want something very different. They experience strong, intense sexual urges which most boys will relieve through regular masturbation and/or physical exercise and sex talk with friends. If girls are available to them, it is friendship and/or sexual release that they seeking. They take their lead from other boys when in a group with boys. However, when alone with a girl, they will rely on a girl to lay down a boundary. If he is sexually active with her, he will more often than not see it as a single event in time, void of meaning beyond the moment and not in the context of relationship language that girls and women come in expect as a result of close intimate contact. For the overwhelming number of boys and young men, it is just sex.

From Dating to Female Relationship Abuse &Victimization
The description of the lipstick party is, unfortunately, not far from the reality that many girls and young women face in their dating encounters. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, one in five high school girls have been physically or sexually abused on a date, or both. Teen dating violence is common and at an epidemic level. A Harvard study reports that twenty percent of females reported that they had been hurt physically or sexually by their date or steady.
Dating abuse occurs at the same rates with ninth grade girls as it does with senior girls. This is particularly troubling as most of us would expect that eighteen year old young women would possess better developed decision making capabilities than fourteen year old girls. What is both sad and troubling is that girls who experience either physical or sexual abuse are not likely to turn to their parents for help.
One conclusion emerges. Many teens go to school with deep fear and anxiety about their safety, both in and outside of school. For sexually abused girls, school can be a field full of land minds. It is common place for abused girls to face their abusers in hallways or in the cafeteria, or worse yet, to be required to sit near them in their classrooms. They may believe they deserve the treatment they receive at the hands of the very one they have chosen as a dating partner. Serious depression, dangerous injury to their self-worth, distress and untreated trauma are constant companions to girls who suffer, and suffer and suffer alone.

New Language of Love
There is cause to be alarmed as the “dating scene” is controlled in a large part by ill-informed boys and young men who believe that today’s culture will allow them to act out every sexual fantasy that he or his boy pack can fathom.
Boys are not to blame for the current state of teen sexual affairs. Absent a strong presence and role of fathers in the world of boy teens and the steady pounding of sexually drenched advertising and sports media, boys and young men are trying to grow from boys to men while attaining some degree of status from their male contemporaries. Boys and young men are left to wander alone to figure out both their posture and obligation as they pursue their interests in meeting and interacting with girls and young women.
Based on the mass of quality research on the teen dating world, girls are in critical need of explicit discussions concerning the current trends and dangers of sexual practices and the harm that can be done by engaging in endless fast cooked microwave relationships. A young girl or woman who is on an endless quest to find her prince on a galloping white horse needs to stop dead in her tracks. The quest she should be on is not to ask if he is Mr. Right but rather she should be thoughtfully asking the question— what is right for me.

Four Rules
If the dating scene is to improve, girls and women alike need to stop making boys and men the author of their play book and write one of their own. The playbook I would suggest would consist of four basic rules that when practiced so well would be hardwired into their cerebral network.
Rule Number One: You come into this world alone with the gift of your life; that is the way you are going to leave. Each girl and woman is responsible for making the most of her life gifts and for determining how she will negotiate life’s path in order for her to develop those gifts. As the scholar, Carolyn Heilbrun advised women, “Let any woman imagine for a moment a biography of herself based upon those records she has left, those memories fresh in the minds of surviving friends, those letters that chanced to be kept, those impressions made, perhaps, on the biographer who was casually met in the subject’s later years. What secrets, what virtues, what passions, what discipline, what quarrels would, on the subject’s death, be lost forever?” To vision a biography at the end of every woman’s path requires each girl and woman to have herself at the center of her life story.
Rule Number Two: There is no prince. There is you. Each girl and woman is responsible for her own life and life choices. There is no one person who will come along and rescue her from the choices she has made or the problems she has created without extracting a severe penalty which almost always cost her independence, freedom and self-worth. No one is coming to hand over to her an easy life with permanent comfort. Many girls and women have paid the ultimate price for pursuing a fantasy without accepting responsibility for their own life.
Rule Number Three: Your spirit, your mind, and your body belong to you. You are the driver, the decision-maker, the chief-executive officer. In life, there are generally two ways to approach choices and challenges. Either a girl or woman can be in charge and direct her own choices, or she can give that power to someone else to make decisions and solve problems for her. To take charge is to reap confidence and strength but to give away is to become an instrument of someone else’s needs and desires and is the path of a perennial girl and eventually, a victim.
Coercion is a common occurrence in the dating and “romance” lives of both high school and college teen girls and women. Most of the offenders are boyfriends or lovers. Sex by its very nature is unsafe. Aside from the very real life long health hazards, hooking up, scamming for sex and other quick sex dates are especially hurtful to girls and women who want close, respectful and nurturing relationships. Sex is worth waiting for. If we care about our girls and young women, we will change the focus of their evolving lives from living for the attention of a boy or young man to creating a life of their own by helping them to construct their own life philosophy, ground rules and boundaries.
Rule Number Four: Find and live your quest plot. If we want girls to find and develop their interests and abilities, we must encourage them to find and live a quest plot, as we have done for boys and men for generations. We need to encourage girls and young women to find some event to transform their lives from waiting to be found to trying something unconventional, something new to them whether that is building homeless shelters or body building. The nature of the event does not matter, but the focus on performing, doing, challenging, dreaming or concocting the eccentric story is. Wise girls and women mold relationships with exemplary women—mothers, teachers, relatives and role models. Friends matter but not when it comes to influencing their sexual attitudes and gender roles. Adult women are important influences in the lives of girls, whether the girls have been abused or not. As adult women in the lives of our girls, we need to build female circles of influence and support in our own lives and then, systematically teach girls and young women that we know to do the same.