One week from now I will be up this early preparing for my first day on the campus of Converse College. For the most part, I am fending off the doubts and anxiety. Mostly, I am excited to be immersing myself in the two topics that I love … art and women’s interest. There have been moments this week of comparing myself to other artists and feeling as if my work is still immature. I explore and paint from the depth of my heart yet there is still something lacking. Those moments have been accompanied by the fear of being inadequate. I share a trait with one of my children. I want to know how to swim before I take the swimming lessons. It is difficult for me to remember that I am there to learn the things that I don’t already know. That is what this process is all about.

I have been working through some thoughts about my writing and trying to narrow my focus for this blog. I am probably breaking a cardinal rule for not writing blog posts about blogging right now and another for having written this much and not yet referencing the post title. Just like the movie, there’s multiple threads here with one underlying message.

Discontent with how I am engaging with my message is stirring up again. I am asking myself the questions about who I am writing to and what I want to say,  The answers have been a bit convoluted. I will say that I write to leave a legacy for my children, a record of who I was and the things beyond them that were important in my life. I will say that I am writing to the woman like me who is trying to figure out midlife and approaching menopause and the feeling that someone else has inhabited her body. I will say that I am writing to the mother who is unschooling her children, feeding her family on a budget, keeping harmony in the home while trying her best not to lose the her sense of being in the chaos. I will say that I am writing to the spiritual seeker; the one whose questions have led to more questions and beyond. But am I? It’s felt a bit trivial lately. But in saying that am I devaluing the chit chat that makes the path to the heart-revealing conversations.

I’ve contemplated what to do and whether or not I have the drive, time and energy to continue writing and to develop my initial vision for my online presence. I changed my One Voice Is facebook page from a community to a personal blog and had also contemplated removing the blog description on the sidebar that talks about OUR voice or even my voice. I really felt like this blog would just become more of a personal journal.
Then two things happened.

First I began reading Gender Knot: Unraveling the Patriarchal Legacy
Unitarian Universalist fellowship we are attending. 
The book is revealing the roots of a patriarchal system that is greater than the individual injustices that we try each day to overthrow, to overcome. It challenges one to look beyond just breaking through gender inequality and seeing the very system that allows gender inequality to exist. Here’s a quote that I believe illustrates quite rightly the theme of the book:

“It is easier to allow women to assimilate into patriarchal society than to question society itself. It is easier to allow a few women to occupy positions of authority and dominance than to question whether social life should be organized around principles of hierarchy, control and dominance at all, to allow a few women to reach the heights of corporate hierarchy rather than question whether people’s needs should depend on an economic system based on dominance, control and competition. To allow a few women to practice law than to question adversarial conflict as a model for resolving disputes and achieving justice. It has even been easier to admit women to military combat roles than to question the acceptability of warfare and its attendant images of patriarchal masculine power and heroism as instruments of national policy. And it has even been easier to elevate and applaud a few women than to confront the cultural misogyny that is never far off, waiting in the wings and available for anyone who wants to use it to bring women down and put them in their place.”


Even if a tree is cut down, roots have a way of sprouting and growing again. Is it possibly to resist this system? What is the point? The author, Allan G. Johnson, points out repeatedly that the system is there; we have to acknowledge that. We may not be able to change that but we can change how we participate in the system. Maybe one day that will bring about the complete uprooting of the patriarchal systems worldwide.
But I am just one person, with one voice. One very busy and distracted person. What difference could I make within a centuries old system? Many days, I want to just delete my entire online presence and just go back to being a stay at home mom, maybe dabbling a bit in paint when I can. I’m tired already and my real challenges haven’t even begun.
Then I went to see Happy Feet 2 and
I was reminded of my mission. I’ve been chastised by some for not seeing the great message of Tree of Life and by others for seeing so much in the original Happy Feet. What can I say? Maybe it’s the cute penguins or the music or maybe it’s the way that George Miller tells a multi-layered storyMalick.

What did Happy Feet 2 remind me of?

That we are not so distant from each other.

I sit under the same moon as you do
I rise in the morning to the same sun.
I wish upon the same stars.

Wishes for a good life for my children, for a purpose in my own, for a place where my voice is heard and understood.
That we are connected and interdependent not only to each other as humans but to all of nature. 

Somehow I believe that my choices affect you, wherever you are, on some cosmic level. My one action today reaps rewards or consequences in future time and space. When I honor your value, I honor my own just as when I honor my own, I honor yours.
That each one is needed in the whole, each one can make a difference, no matter how big or how small.

This is the most important reminder because the belief that every voice matters is why I am here. It is why I am attempting to create a safe haven not only for my voice but for your voice to be heard.  It is why I in exactly one week, I will be leaving for my first classes in art and English composition. I want to write not only about injustice but about what fosters injustice. I want to paint the freedom, wisdom and power I am encountering on this journey. There are songs to be sung, poems to be read, rhythms to beat, dances to dance.
The voice is here. It is my one voice. It is your one voice. It is our ONE voice echoing to the stars and back.

Let’s do this, shall we?

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