addendum

Not only is the month of November a return to blogging, I’m also running 4.5 miles every other day (today is the ‘other’ day) and back to my regular yoga routine.

Yes, this eleventh month is my reset button; in my world, dominated as it is by the Squam calendar, this is my quiet time. That rare hour when all the kids are bathed, asleep in bed, dishwasher’s running and I still have enough energy to sit and knit while watching Suits.

You know, metaphorically.

All of which to say, this morning is my normal dash/stream of consciousness blast through the blog. 

Green smoothie at my right, dogs snoozing below my feet after a walk by the river, a second coffee — lukewarm but good enough — at a careful distance from my keyboard (it only takes one coffee spill / keyboard death to teach that lesson).

Yesterday, I stopped reading on page 57. This morning, I picked up the magazine and turned the page. 

Page 58 begins a story whose timing could not be more amazing if my life unfolded like a novel. Above is a snap from the article on Riad Sattouf, a French-Syrian artist who is one of France’s best-known graphic novelists. 

Seriously? Well, alrighty then. Back into Paris I go with a deep dive into the “masculine power and its violent rituals” that are at the heart of Sattouf’s work.

Again, a subject way too big for me to tackle under any circumstances, let alone a blog post– but will that stop me? 

Please. My blog, my rules.

Here’s the thing. What I wrote yesterday could be seen as so much naivete, a priveleged, American, white woman’s starry-eyed admonition to kindergarteners to “all play nice.”

Nope. I am super clear in what I see and believe. We have all lived in a world with a profound imbalance between masculine and feminine. The masculine’s beautiful strength, desire to protect and commitment to loyalty is beyond distorted and corrupted. We live with its full blown shadow side: insecurity and fear masked as arrogance, cruelty and an insatiable need for power. The feminine’s extraordinary ability to endure, celebrate beauty, and nurture life in all of its exquisite forms is crushed within an inch of its life. That we have all been poisoned by a perverted image of beauty and sexuality is only one of the spiritual crimes. We are poisoning everything – the plants, the earth, our food, the air, the water. 

How we treat the planet, the animals, all living creatures – all of life, basically – is a direct reflection of how we treat women. For me, the connection is indisputable.

And, that was what I was trying to say yesterday, which of course, I can’t articulate because I am not taking enough time to shape my thoughts and words because I am blogging here, not writing a magazine article and 25 minutes is what I’ve got.

So, without the rich earth of careful exposition beneath them, my thoughts translate as jejune. Oh well. 

To sum up, my basic perspective is that women have got to stand up and own their lives – no one else is going to do it for you.

Yes, I believe it is that important. And I know it is hard, I know it so painful. And, I know that holding on to our depression, our anxiety, our overwhelming sense of hopelessness is a deep pattern that comforts us somehow.

But, I am gonna call on my friend Melissa McCarthy when she counsels her friend who has hit rock bottom to get off the couch.

Because, the good news in all this is that women don’t have to do it alone. 
We gather up with our friends, we circle, our strength is how we link together.

bisous, e

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