WHY I CELEBRATE MY PERSONHOOD THIS DAY
In my family's dynamic, nobody is considered a valuable player unless he or she is willing to play the game the way their elders believe it should be played, and with no relief or calm caring. This game might include women giving power away to a male entity whose wisdom goes no deeper than his superficial code for indignity to others.
Thus, for me, there can be no Father's day worth celebrating within a family context. I had to find my fathering influences outside of family life altogether. The teacher we all should have while our powers to discern may be yet upgraded, the elderly comrade with a sympathetic ear and a wise shoulder to cry on, have held me together when family didn't. These had their advantages over an empty familial feeling that praises no one for any real achievement.
We are scandalized when others challenge us to believe such a story, yet it is an all too commonly mistaken conception, how everyone gets the same chances at a successful life. This is not unknown to the public, merely being passed over for the more easily resolved issue. And there are those whose lives were traumatized or undermined in ways those with steady income or family background would find hard to identify with. Yet, it is the same story everywhere.
My life experience has led me to know many a woman whose life could not be imaginable to those with ordinary lifestyle and stable family background. Their strife can be summed up so easily to some as being a fault of character or some other such lacking quality. "Perhaps if she had applied herself," some might say. That undervaluing tone is quick to ladle the blame over everything one is taught to endure in childhood. For some people, it is like being enchained to the system, for they will never be released from its yoke.
A woman whose life plan included a happier marriage than she was given, a tribe of children and grandchildren worth caring for, a household held together as a cradle is for an infant so that family life may go forward in its self-supporting fashion--these are the women we would vilify for not having taken measures to be stronger in the world. And perhaps their goals had been too small or otherwise objectionable in the eyes of society. Yet, somehow it can be a mighty burden trying to carry on without the requisite skills or education, in particular when one is past one's prime and may have other pressing concerns to juggle.
Then, too, we might not recognize the potential of such a woman whose family life did not give her at least some modicum of worth in it eyes. The woman must first believe in the family system in order to believe she had any value while in its care when younger. The woman we would believe in readily most likely will already have had every advantage we deem viable. She would not need the help of others to exceed her family's reach. For her, with a little challenging effort, life will be better than it would be for the one whose father beat her as a daily consequence to her rising to be more herself. She would also hold better societal position at outset, being mild enough in mood to be further appreciated once out of the nest or on her own. Further, she will have chances to recoup should more challenging circumstances arise such as a divorce or spouse's death, a major illness, or loss of some faculty. Even our underinsured patient with a decent enough family to count on will find she can have further advantages over a lone woman of lowered value according to a family's worth for her.
The people who count most in a girl's life are those whose trust she would enjoy. What happens to her if there is no trustworthy advocate ready to nourish her Soul and give her peace? Every breath she would take must be a worry, and every sigh not one of relief. A woman soon loses her sense of pride when downtrodden. She may continue in this way for some while, hardly recognizing it herself. She may not be awakened to her own true worth enough, or even at all. A woman's worth, then, cannot be held against her when the chips are down and she must struggle. A woman's worth is to be prized above riches, although we are hardly equipped to give her the better feeling.
For the fathers, we are taught to spend a day honoring what they will obligate themselves into, even though our coarsest concepts of what that might entail seem better over the backyard barbecue grill or picnic table.
It is not that I mean for anyone to merely take pity on those whose fathers were the worst influences for them to endure. I want us to remember this day how millions of women suffered that do suffer yet from abuses of a variety it would be hard to describe in so small a format. The family worth bases itself first on the mother, and how she might be valued in her son's eyes is often a work of the husband she has chosen. And, if he turn out to be any better advocate for a peaceful household prospering to its own, then so much the better. For a woman to remember she is valuable despite a lack of sympathy or ready feeling in family life might take her whole adulthood to achieve. Or, it might remain an unresolved issue that is burdensome for any official to believe in or even merit as worthy of a lasting commitment of the public resolve on her betterment.
What a woman wants from her husband is generally protection with encouragement, or even that respect we deem worthy. Without her selfworth intact, she might choose another abuser to father her children, and this might make for a further selfesteem drop for her to contend with later in life. It may even mean she will neither care for herself nor respond when others are genuinely caring toward her, for she won't know their offerings to be genuine.
When a child knows her family is secure, all's right with her world. And this is true straight across the board, whether here or abroad. The mothering influences meant to start us off in life will be further augmentable by the true worth that is given them in a father's eyes. Given that the many households I know of will not venture that far in the improvement of their own worth, it is an oddity to find one happy child, let alone a blessed student, out of the fold they would provide.
So today, while fish are being caught, and hymns are sung in praise of fathering, when excursions may be made into the great outdoors toting every cooler or picnic basket laden with the goodies to be enjoyed in celebration of Dad's day, I will neither join in nor find it anything of consequence for my own worth.
Instead, today I will honor the woman in me who fled in order to have her peace of mind restored, the mother whose every conscious effort got undermined by a school system with little concept of what a single mother might be enduring, the wife whose misery ended a marriage in chaos to be emburdened by low support, the woman in me who was led to believe squalor would be the only value given for her time on earth as legal citizen who would violate no code for assistance nor view herself as somehow a lesser form of entity for having asked for that assistance she would finally be granted. And I will remember how I was misled into thinking I had no worth whatever to a family's lifestyle or future, how I was held as mere example of how not to be a "good daughter," simply because I could see that very evil all must be aware of sitting opposite me at the family dinner table.
I won't be scandalized anymore by these stories worth reporting. The number of women I've met who've been willing to share such stories are to be lauded for their attentiveness to what is real. They must not be squelched nor turned down if ready for our applied activity in response to their need of our help.
Let it not be forgotten today, then, how we meet those challenges we are handed when young only as society would allow us to. Let us also never be forgotten again, even though there may come yet another war or some other terrible consequence.
Let a woman be a woman who is valued only as herself, not for anything she would become, and everyone's thoughts would turn to the value inherent in others.
It is time we embraced our real value together.
It is time we were brought together as one gigantic national family, ready to take on new challenges for each other.
Let this be Family's Day, a day for reflecting on how families affect the greater political freedom we would all prefer. And let there be peace in the American family.
Thanks for the read, people.
Peace
PW
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Comments
Just in case you'd like to do me the honor of reading another post that I keep, there is a LINK for my Almanack in the LINKS column on the left of your screen. Hope you can find any offering there enjoyable.
And I'll be along directly to find out more about my newest visitor.
Gabby Abby: Thank you. I appreciate the thought. It is a tough day for some. I usually just try and hide out, apart from other people for the day, making my own day, of a sort, as you see here.
Well done.
Kim: Thanks for coming by. Your comment is most welcome.
Rated with hugs
so sad. but I see your point here. thank-you.
Wright Sight: Thank you. I'm glad we concur. In honoring the family, not just the mother or father, we then include all children, along with any childless relatives without their own day to be honored. Even children deserve to be honored, found worthy, regardless of their circumstances, their past, or any other factor. Likewise, anyone with neither spouse nor family.
Linda: As I do honor to those brave men with hearts big enough to let me know I was worthy of any affection they had for me.
dolores: I see it everyday in my own world. The numbers of people without any idea of the value of their citizenship suffering at the hands of petty thieves and low appointees to offices important to the survival of the downtrodden. It is hoped we are all learning at this time by our past mistakes so that we might join together for the right causes and go forward--with everyone inclusively added to the mixture that makes up this country.
al: We could not agree more. It is important to remember it takes a whole society to raise any generation. I like your philosophy. There has to be a way that won't disturb our equilibrium, one that affords peaceful coexistence.
What I am most struck by today are the number of OS writers who suffered extreme cruelty at the hands and/or mouth of their fathers. It makes me wonder just how much this is going on around me. I have a sense that we have slowly moved into a new paradigm of fathers' role in the raising of children. I seems to me that fathers today are more likely to be a part of the nurturing, protection and socialization of their children.
But what if I'm wrong. I could be way off. And that would mean that little girls and little boys all around us are being terrorized in their own homes. I feel powerless right now.
Lezlie
Leon: I'm sorry that I don't quite relate to what it is you are saying here. I mean no disrespect. Only, I cannot fathom why anybody with a decent world wants into this one I've described. Pm me, if you wish. Or not, if the wish is for silence beyond this comment.
Lezlie: I know the powerlessness you speak of. We mustn't be silenced, that's the point. That others are being treated cruelly almost never stops on Earth. But wake up your community, however big or small, to the problems inherent in the fight for survival these children must face, even in adulthood--if they make it as far as that.
Write about it, if you want to.
Tell your Congressman/woman how you feel, that it's time we reexamined the poor, primarily those in danger due to ill health of any kind.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Tell them you want libraries expanded, children's lives augmented, our elder citizens better cared for.
Tell them it's worth it.
Tell them we all have a responsibility to help those suffering.
And then DON'T BACK DOWN.
You are a wise woman. If this is in your path to perform you'll know it through and through. And if not, there are others we may reach out to. You are tenderhearted, too. And I appreciate you.
If you believe in prayer, then simply ask with all your might for the best changes possible to our system. That in and of itself, is doing something--maybe something powerful.
Please accept a longdistance hug from yours truly. {{{Lezlie}}}
And the idea your proffer, that there would be a day to honor families sets well with me. But honor in what way? As a concept? As an actual thank you to ones own family? As an event professing that it takes a village? Whatever it turns out to be, there will be those who feel left out, somehow disinfranchised because it doesn't match their experience; doesn't reflect their personal belief. Yet if such a day were to occur, I'd suport it for those who see its need.
Therefore, it saddens me that on a day of recognition, there are those whose own experience suggests that the recognition they feel is one of disdain ... maybe even hate. I wish everyone could feel as I do. But should the negative feelings of some negate the desire of others to recognize those parents who were good?
Personally, I am thankful that there is a day set aside to specifically pay tribute to both my Mom and my Dad ... both long gone. I feel that way every day, too. But on those specific days ... like a birthday ... it offers me a chance to do more; make it special ... even now, though they are gone, and back then, when they were alive. I have reason to be thankful ... as do others ... and I am thankful that there are special days to celebrate that. Is that wrong? I struggle to see how.
But {{{R}}} for your always good writing! ;o)
Rod: It is not that easy a situation to impart in one sitting. I'm guessing yo may see me merely as the bitter loser who would change up others' experiencing of such a national holiday.
I cannot be blamed for deeming it necessary to bring out of the closet a truth or two connected to Father's Day.
I was never very chummy with my father. And the truth is, he can be mostly harmful, if not downright dangerous.
That does not mean I cannot appreciate the loving care some may receive from their father or stepfather, grandfather, or uncle.
What I do believe is, there is little protection for the ones suffering--an enormous number of them exist, are waiting to be helped.
I mention here the many women I know who've been damaged greatly due to a failure of others to protect them. It cannot be said enough. We were not reckoned on before, and are not welcome to tell our story to the wider public. Yet, without the real content behind what it is can set a person on a road to failure or unfaithful behavior, what we are left with is a mere shadow of that help which I believe would signal a repair, if not complete recovery in some.
The vicissitudes of having been left on my own due to a family controversy over what is real cannot be expressed except by degrees, owing to the pervasiveness of its nature.
You will forgive me, but we are not through here yet.
Ultimately, I hope to reveal the tattered remnants of a system not set up to govern itself properly, let alone help those in need. There is more to be done here than may be said with any one discussion. We'll get to it, tho'. Rest assured, I do take it in degrees to this public forum in that I know no one would be ready to grasp everything at once--much as I would not be able to describe in any accuracy the damage done, the multiplicity of disfavor, or the eyes of the mighty watching their wallet and not our peace of mind.
One thing at a time, I guess.
Oh, and BTW, it's not a matter of disdain in some, nor even hatred. One must hate oneself in order to remain hateful. I don't desire to breed contempt, only a broadening of the mind for the public's concern.
What would we do for the elderly were it known how badly off some of them have been? Or the naval officer who cannot be peaceful after he's seen to much action in the field. Or the quadriplegic in her chair without the proper advocacy. Even, the woman without the protective nest a family might provide when the chips are down.
These issues remain unaddressed in their deepest content.
We must begin to refocus toward better family relations in national terms in order that others be preserved. This I outlined for you. I hope it has not been misconstrued as mere invective. I do not intend to create new thinking ways for the people of this country via angry means.
All the same, it can be a bitter pill to swallow to have one's family fail at caring for its own. So, some of this bitterness will have to be gone over before our full discussion may be said to be at its natural end.
Thank you, Rod, for the sharing of your own thought here. In any family that is functioning, we need fear no repercussions for having been forthright or honorable enough to express our true quotient to this our equation of democracy.
you say I "sang your tune"--as I had hoped to make it real,that is very high praise indeed. Thank you.
Rated for peace