FLYING: Confessions of a Free Woman

            In my country, there is to the mentality that every family has to own the house where it’s living. That’s why, like a lot of other young families, after some years of living in rented flats, we couldn’t rest until we’ve bought a house.

            The “crises” arise during pregnancy. “We have to raise the baby in his home?” The feeling of not owning the house where we are raising our child, could lead to feeling like we did not ensure our child solid roots to develop properly. We are afraid that moving from one place to another (laws don’t protect the statute of tenant very much) could damage the child’s identity or something like that. So, like other families worldwide, we bought a house. But it’s a sweet illusion to be the “owner” because as long as we have a mortgage for 30 years, the bank is the owner. So we have to live with first contradiction; the ensure is in bank benefit. We are just administrators, until I’m 58 and my husband 64!

            I don’t know if it’s good to tie your life with possessions: for sure these material things won’t pass over. We make the mistake of putting pieces of our souls in these objects that keep us in one place; the garden, the trees we plant with our hands, the walls, fireplace, and so on. It is a nice, beautiful feeling to make long term plans regarding the design of your house or garden and all the investments, but isn’t this a trap to keep you stuck? We said, “At least my child won’t owe the bank, I’ll leave him this house”. But what if your child doesn’t want to live in his parent’s house? He will grow and he will move, maybe will leave the country, who knows? Another contradiction.

            Our case is like this. We moved outside Bucharest to a lake area with a half hour or forty minutes commute to work, it’s very nice. Everything is good, but sometimes we realize that we cannot adapt to locals habits. It’s much better to say that uneducated locals (there are a few families near us) cannot accept our “laws” of being quiet or not throwing garbage on the shore of the lake, common requests that could make all our lives nicer.

            After several conflicts and verbal threats from them, we understood that we couldn’t educate anyone here. The rural are too aggressive to keep up with. We thought, maybe before moving somewhere else, we could “check” the neighborhood much better. It’s a word in Romanian that says “boss, parents and neighbors are pre-assigned”. Besides, it’s difficult to move with this trail of mortgage behind us.

            We regret being owners. We try to build roots, and pay with our nerves. I think in economy of Time (with a capital T), to have a miserable life somewhere because of some stupid neighbors is pathetic and illogical. But we have to “thank” them for this cold shower of a situation we’re living in and the questions regarding the possibility of going to a completely different place, maybe another country, where we could find what we’re searching for and not be afraid to build again from almost nothing.

The Guardian reports that a new drug, originally tested as an antidepressant, has been shown to increase sexual desire in women.

Women who took the drug during the six-month trial reported more satisfying sexual encounters and higher libidos than those who were given a placebo.

Doctors involved in the study said the drug may prove to be an effective treatment for low libido, a problem they estimate affects between 9% and 26% of women, depending on their age and whether they have been through the menopause.

The drug is flibanserin, and was tested in Germany as an antidepressant. Turns out, it was a lousy cure for depression, but women taking it reported a wonderful side-efffect: an increase in sexual desire.

The new drugs raises several questions for me.

1. How quickly will it be approved by the U.S. FDA?

2. Will insurance companies pay for this drug the same way they currently pay for male ED treatments?

But I have other questions, too. If both men and women go through periods of diminished sexual desire, (assuming that this is not a permanent condition), then can’t the decrease in sexual desire be seen as a natural rhythm in the life cycle? Are there times when nature simply doesn’t want us to have sex?

My most important question is this, however. We already have a horrible time in this culture accepting that women have sexual desires. We still categorize women by either the “girls-gone-wild” hook-up culture or the “Purity ring-wearing not-until-I’m-married” group. We think we’ve made progress on this, but evidence suggests otherwise. How quickly are women condemned for deviations from the sexual norm? How quick are we to label sexually active teens girls as somehow wrong in what they’re doing (even if they are being responsible and using birth control).

And what about the ultimate form of punishment: The withholding of contraceptive knowledge from sexually -active women as a form of social control. We insist on teaching abstinence-only education, try to limit young women’s access to contraceptives, and make it a crime to transport a woman under 18 across state lines to get an abortion. Given that there are few states left where one can get an abortion, we’ve de facto made it illegal to help young women get abortions unless it’s their parents who are directly involved. (And how come these same people who believe that these young women are too young to make the decision to have an abortion are therefore old enough to make the decision to bear a child?)

The same problems faced by young women are also faced by those women who do not have the financial means to travel interstate, or who do not have the money to pay for this medical procedure. And, if they do have the money to pay for the medical procedure, how much shit will they have to endure to get into see an ob-gyn who still performs abortions?

My point is that, once again, our culture will send mixed messages to women. Now, those whose libidos are going through a temporary cool phase will be told to get with the program and take a drug. Those who want to heighten their desire and take advantage of the drug will be seen as “loose” women for wanting to enjoy sex. And, while insurance companies may pay for women to have sex, they won’t pay for the consequences of sex.

What a mad world we live in.

I was on my way back home from Sandton yesterday.  We were coming from a Christmas party that the hospital organised for kids with cardiac failure.  We were in a taxi and everybody was tired from job interviews, so the taxi was very quiet except for the soothing music that the drive was playing.

When we reached the robots, a woman was standing there with her kids, one on her back the other on her hand.  She was askign for food or money.  I looked at her and the kids and you could see they haven’t had a decent meal, a bath, or washed and ironed clothes.  I took my left overs from the party and gave it to them.  I also gave them a ten rand note and the taxi took off.

Suddenly everyone was awake and talking.  They were saying all sorts of bad things about this woman:  How lazy she is and the fact that she was using the poor kids.  I didn’t believe it.  Deep down in my heart, I knew that something went terribly wrong and I know she tried to make it and stay strong for her kids.

But, hey life is tough.  It’s the jungle out there.  It’s a survival of the fittest.

I haven’t stopped thinking about her and praying for them to be safe.  I have also realised that I am so blessed to have a roof over my head and running water and clothes.  I can still afford to cook me and the kids a decent healthy meal.  I am also thankful that I can still afford to send my  kids to school and pack a lunch box for them.  Mostly that I have friends who care about me.  I pray that life works out for that lady.  Those kids don’t deserve this life.  They truly have to enjoy being kids, to be protected, loved cared for and to feel safe at all times.

And as for everyone in that taxi who thought all sort of rubbish about that woman, I have on thing to say to you.  Life is a game.  You win if you know how to play and if you are not a quitter.

I’ve gone back and forth between entertaining the idea of having children and shunning it completely ever since it first occurred to me that I might someday be a mother. Being the youngest of three whose ages span three separate decades, I’ve got next to zero experience handling kids. If I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t dive in. So raising children has never been too serious a consideration.

There are two sides to the coin, as I see it. On one, you’ve got an adorable, inquisitive, toddling creature who absorbs knowledge like a sponge and has all the potential in the world inside of them. A delicate treasure toting stuffed hippos. Cuddly. On the other side, you’ve got a screaming, stubborn, volatile creature who has a megaphone built into its throat and a propensity to make its mother and father gray-haired, exhausted, and sexless. Red-faced, fists clenched. Not cuddly.

But when I spend enough time admiring well-behaved and glowy-cheeked children in the supermarket as I shop for whichever variations on pasta I will make for that week, I start to say things like, “aw.” Or, “what a cute baby. Look at the baby!” Or, if it’s serious, “I want a son first.”

Now, this last one is a sentiment I’ve held for years. If, in fact, I can get over the idea of labor, epidurals, my maternal family’s multiple brushes with death during childbirth, and the very scarring things I will probably say to my future husband in that window of time between water breaking and infant wailing, not to mention the whole experience of having an alien life in your belly (okay, I know, not belly) for almost a whole year and all the special experiences I’ll have as a super-duper hormonal pregnant lady, and if my future husband can get over those things too…well, if all of those things align, the idea of carrying new life is miraculous. A journey I’ll be blessed to take in the distant future. And I do, in fact, want a son first. Why is that?

I realized it Sunday night while driving home from a friend’s house. We’d had a long discussion about our experiences as artists, our hopes and purposes. Earlier that day, I’d eaten grilled hamburgers with other friends from my church and went swimming. Earlier than that, I’d played djembe for a couple of hours at church, pounding into the congregational music. From the beginning, it was a good day.

But in between each event, I felt like a soda can shaken to the point of explosion. My boyfriend was busy with his own activities, and less communication than usual led to me filling in the blanks with all kinds of misconceptions that were not in my favor. The storm was brewing in my chest. Apparently you don’t need to be pregnant to be super hormonal.

Maybe it was because of this, or maybe my mind just wandered and the dots really aren’t connected. But I realized for the first time, indirectly, why I want a son.

I don’t know how to be a good woman.

I had the idea that I could shape a son into a good man. That I could explain life from a woman’s perspective, and that he would grow to be a defender of the more often marginalized and objectified gender. Or maybe, if I’m honest, that I want to fix everything about men that hurts and agitates me. Zing.

But what on earth would I teach a daughter? I thought through the many ways I feel inadequate, the negative ways that I perceive my body and my soul. The ways I react out of those skewed perceptions. I thought about the way women are told that their power lies in sexuality while advertising mocks us for unending insufficiencies; how those who no longer allure per our culture’s very narrow definitions are discarded. Do I really want to bring another woman into such a raw deal? I wondered about my daughter’s ability to believe in herself when I don’t believe in myself. Could she learn to reflexively fight for her dreams when I decided mine were unrealistic? Could I teach her to be whole and independent when I feel like shards of glass searching for someone or something to glue me back together? And now, on the familiar verge of reacting to imaginary threats and spreading misery, do I really think I can teach someone what love is?

I used to think the fear of a daughter came from my relationship with my own mother, the ways I resented her unfairly, and knowing that my daughter will resent me, too, whether fairly or not. It’s a defeating thought, but even more defeating is the idea that I don’t even know how to be my own person, or one in which I take pride. I’m twenty-four years old. I know there’s no time limit on these things, and life comes in stages, but it’s frustrating to look back and realize I had a better sense of self four years ago than I do now. Life’s parameters were different, sure, and I was in that hopeful and free-spirited period of assembling my future. I chose detours and deconstruction, gradually relinquishing my joy in exchange for empty promises. I still fixate on the idea of retrieving my old self, but besides the fact that my naïveté is overly romanticized, it is an impossibility. I have to rebuild the structure. With energy I don’t fully possess.

A couple of things propel me. First, the memory of how happy I felt one sunny afternoon in college after a dance class. Walking over to my bike, I felt strong and very present. I knew myself and I liked myself. Though I was already in the process of traveling a path I now recognize as a long detour, for one moment, away from addiction, I felt good in my skin.

The second motivation is my relationships. I cannot love people when I do not love myself. I’ve tried, only to watch myself burn bridges in frantic self-protection.

Perhaps someday I’ll be a good mother. Before that, the life I mold is my own. And when the time comes, I hope that my first months of expectancy are filled with the calm of solidly knowing I am a good, steady, and whole woman, even in my imperfection.

Poor Sonia Sotomayor. David Brooks writes a sympathetic piece about her this morning, focusing on the fact that she has worked hard her entire life, sacrificed relationships and family, all in chasing the comfort of work.

In Brooks’ picture of Sotomayor, her loss of her father at nine took something away from her, and she’s been on a quest to fill that hole ever since. She works. All the time. And has “failed” relationships and no children to show for it.

But let’s think about this for a moment, shall we? If I were reading this as a work of fiction, I would recognize all the tropes of a moral story. Ebenezer Scrooge perhaps, who loses his humanity, works too many hours chasing the almighty dollar, and then finally, at the end of his life, finds empathy and the company of his fellow humans…?

So, now, I’m really confused. Because aren’t we told that Sotomayor has “too much empathy for her fellow humans,”  that that quality will make her a terrible judge because she won’t rule by some “philosophical-historical construct of objectivity?”

Capitalism thrives on the emotionally “crippled,” on those who are unable to form relationships with their fellow people, who retreat to their work and work and work and contribute to capitalist growth. That’s one story. The other story is that capitalism thrives on those who are so dedicated to their work out of love and passion that they spend hours and hours doing it until they find what it is they’re chasing — and then bring home the bacon, long after their families have fallen asleep, to fund their subsistence.

But it seems those characteristics only apply to men. It’s easy to imagine a man being too busy to get married, or loving his work so much that he can never come home for dinner or be there before the kids go to bed. He has a wife who makes up the slack. But a woman who loves her work that much? “Sssssh. There’s something wrong with her.”

As Brooks quotes:

“As an adult, the profiles describe her as upbeat and social, leading walks to Brooklyn, hosting poker parties, serving as godmother to many children. Yet over the years, she has been remarkably honest about the costs of her workaholism.”

“Her marriage broke up after two years. She was quoted as saying, ‘I cannot attribute that divorce to work, but certainly the fact that I was leaving my home at 7 and getting back at 10 o’clock was not of assistance in recognizing the problems developing in my marriage.’ ”

“Later, during a swearing-in ceremony in 1998, she referred to her then-fiancé, ‘The professional success I had achieved before Peter did nothing to bring me genuine personal happiness.’ She addressed him, saying that he had filled ‘voids of emptiness that existed before you. … You have altered my life so profoundly that many of my closest friends forget just how emotionally withdrawn I was before I met you.’ ”

“That relationship ended after eight years, and her biographers paint a picture of a life now that is frantically busy, fulfilling and often aloof. ‘You make play dates with her months and months in advance because of her schedule,’ a friend of hers told The Times.”

“This isn’t the old story of a career woman trying to balance work and family. This is the story of pressures that affect men as well as women (men are just more likely to make fools of themselves in response, as the news of the last few years indicates). It’s the story of people in a meritocracy that gets more purified and competitive by the year, with the time demands growing more and more insistent.”

Okay. So Brooks backs off for a moment, and says there are plenty of men and women like Sotomayor–the elites, driven by their work (who, by the way, are not having babies)–whose relationships at work become a pale shadow of a real emotional relationship.

He continues:

“These profiles give an authentic glimpse of a style of life that hasn’t yet been captured by a novel or a movie — the subtle blend of high-achiever successes, trade-offs and deep commitments to others. In the profiles, you see the intoxicating lure of work, which provides an organizing purpose and identity. You see the web of mentor-mentee relationships — the courtship between the young and the middle-aged, and then the tensions as the mentees break off on their own. You see the strains of a multicultural establishment, in which people try to preserve their ethnic heritage as they ascend into the ranks of the elite. You see the way people not only choose a profession, it chooses them. It changes them in a way they probably didn’t anticipate at first.”

“My impression is that judges feel the strain between their social roles and their social lives more acutely than anybody. They are often outgoing people who, because of their jobs, cannot freely socialize with lawyers and others who share their deepest interests. But Sotomayor’s life also overlaps with a broader class of high achievers. You don’t succeed at that level without developing a single-minded focus, and struggling against its consequences. ”

Brooks is undercutting the whole notion that judges should be in positions to make decisions about “real” American life. After all, so many of them fail to live that life (unless they’re traditionalists like those male judges whose faithful wives stand next to them on the podium as they’re introduced.) Judges are disconnected from what real Americans feel, so how can they possibly judge us?

But it’s not just judges. I have two male friends who have both opted not to marry or have children because of their work. I know men in marriages who are workaholics and ignore their families. No one seems to pay much attention to them, until the day their wives walk out on them after the kids have been raised and gone and there’s no one there. My point is, many, many families are like this. This is more the real America than what Brooks somehow thinks. Many people are cut off from the most basic of human emotions.

No wonder the word “empathy” scares the crap out of so many of Sotomayor’s critics.

But life is not just about relationships. May Sarton has written poignantly about the life of “solititude,” not loneliness. Rainier Maria Rilke insists:

“What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours - that is what you must be able to attain. To be solitary as you were when you were a child, when the grown-ups walked around involved with matters that seemed large and important because they looked so busy and because you didn’t understand a thing about what they were doing. ”

We cannot grow without being able to embrace our solitude. While most of us grow within “traditional” relationships, not all of us do. The construction of the family is meant to discipline us for civic life, as well as to comfort us. Yet, to the confusion of some, there are those of us who do not want to live within that discipline.

Finally. Brooks speaks of the “elite woman” once again, who has given up love for work. Never, never does he talk about the low-income women who are working three jobs and have no time for love. Or the middle class man or the homeless person. Forgoing love is not just for the elites. Sometimes, forgoing love is forced upon us.

I just wish sometimes that Brooks could walk among the real people, see that there is not this world of happy workers who love God, their spouses, and their (even unwanted) babies and their jobs versus a world of high-achieving over-educated miserable elites who complain about everything.

The world is just not that Manichean, David. These issues are not “black and white.” Or did you not learn that when you read Augustine–the original who struggled with the life of solitude (which he thought would bring him closer to God and to agape) versus the life of the family (which gave him sensual pleasure and human love)?

Please don’t ask me to write a history of violence against doctors and clinics who provide reproductive medical care to women.

If you are at all aware, if you have read a newspaper in the past 25 years, you know. You just know.

The Wichita Eagle has a full page of reaction to Dr. George Tiller’s murder on its front page. Last night, mourners turned out to hold a vigil for Dr. Tiller. As usual, those who like to dance on others’ graves also turned out, with their hateful signs. These signs were similar to the hateful twitter messages that ChangeAgent has so masterfully documented over at her blog.

When President Obama said that he wanted to meet in the middle on the abortion issue a few weeks ago, I wrote then that I felt as if he had just thrown women under the bus. There is no middle with anti-abortion extremists. They are not interested in meeting in the middle. They are only interested in one thing: eradicating all abortion, all access to abortion. In many cases, they want to eliminate access to certain forms of birth control, (some–all forms of birth control), and, if they can’t get what they want by legal means, they practice terrorism.

Thus, yesterday was inevitable.

The anti-abortion violence of the 1980’s and 1990’s, when clinics and OB-GYNs were slaughtered–some in their own homes, as Dr. Slepian was, were horrible times. They have left us now, with the experience of going to Planned Parenthood and having to pass through metal detectors and bullet proof glass. If you are going into a clinic where abortions are performed, you have to pass by people who feel it is their job to judge you, no matter why you might be going to the clinic.

These people have no compassion. You may be having to go in for a D&C because your fetus has died inside you–you’re still a babykiller in their eyes. You may be the victim of rape. Babykiller. You may simply be too young, or too poor, or not able to care for a child–you’re a babykiller.

Funny, but I don’t see those same people outside urologists’ offices screaming at men that getting a vasectomy constitutes being a sperm-killer or a potential baby killer.

I wish I could write something eloquent, something full of compassion for those who oppose abortion so violently and ask, “can’t we all get along?”

But I don’t have that in me today.

I am mourning Dr. Tiller. I am mourning the women who decided today that they are too frightened to take care of their medical needs. I am mourning the areas of the country that will lose access to adequate medical care for women. I am mourning the messages that are being sent out–once again–to women that their bodies don’t matter. The only thing that counts about a woman’s body is that she can produce babies. And if she wants to not produce babies, well, if we can’t stop you legally, we’ll close the clinics, kill the doctors, tighten the noose so that you will have to travel thousands of miles to find help.

I grieve. Please don’t ask me to be rational or make sense.

I grieve. And I’m angry.

I grieve, but I will not hurt someone in return.

I grieve, but you will not silence me.

I will grieve, and then I will do whatever I can to fight for reproductive rights.

I repeat the pledge I made a few weeks ago: I will purchase Plan B contraception for any woman who needs it.

To the hate-mongers on television who equate abortion with murder: you condoned this, you encourage those who are unhinged to carry out your dirty work. You should be held accountable. I will not hurt you with violence. But I will write to your advertisers, and I will encourage those who advertise with you, to withdraw their advertising or ask them why they support terrorist sympathizers.

For this is what this is. Terrorism. Plain and Simple. Not done by “foreigners.” But by “Americans.”

There is no excuse for it. None.

And we will fight you. Peacefully. But relentlessly. We will not go back to the days of coat hangers and illegal abortions. We will not sneak around to maintain sovereignty OVER OUR OWN BODIES.

We are here. We are not going away. And you will not frighten us.

I got that feeling again last night. It swelled again this morning, when I read Nicholas Kristof’s piece (about how rape is not treated as a priority crime) in the New York Times. It’s that “it’s not your turn,” feeling. That “don’t be so pushy,” feeling. That “you’re being selfish; don’t you realize that there are much more important things going on in the world than you?”

As a woman, I’ve heard that argument more times than there are members of Congress. I heard it first as a little girl, when it was made clear to me that I need to wait my turn, to not ask for too much, to stop thinking that everything is about me.

The question last night was to President Obama, who was asked about his campaign promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act in his first 100 days. FOCA has not been signed, and last night, listening closely made me uneasy. Yes. The Obama administration has lifted the international gag rule. And yes, the courts have ruled that the Bush administration used politics over science to decide who could have access to the Morning After pill.

But President Obama, when questioned about FOCA last night, sounded suddenly like a man who was brushing off a question he no longer found all that important. Here is the full transcript of the exchange between him and the reporter:

REPORTER: As a candidate, you vowed that one of the very things you wanted to do was sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which, as you know, would eliminate federal, state and local restrictions on abortion. And at one point in the campaign when asked about abortion and life, you said that it was above — quote, ‘above my pay grade.’

Now that you’ve been president for 100 days, obviously, your pay grade is a little higher than when you were a senator.

Do you still hope that Congress quickly sends you the Freedom of Choice Act so you can sign it?

OBAMA: You know, the — my view on — on abortion, I think, has been very consistent. I think abortion is a moral issue and an ethical issue.

I think that those who are pro-choice make a mistake when they — if they suggest — and I don’t want to create straw men here, but I think there are some who suggest that this is simply an issue about women’s freedom and that there’s no other considerations. I think, look, this is an issue that people have to wrestle with and families and individual women have to wrestle with.

OBAMA: The reason I’m pro-choice is because I don’t think women take that — that position casually. I think that they struggle with these decisions each and every day. And I think they are in a better position to make these decisions ultimately than members of Congress or a president of the United States, in consultation with their families, with their doctors, with their clergy.

So — so that has been my consistent position. The other thing that I said consistently during the campaign is I would like to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies that result in women feeling compelled to get an abortion, or at least considering getting an abortion, particularly if we can reduce the number of teen pregnancies, which has started to spike up again.

And so I’ve got a task force within the Domestic Policy Council in the West Wing of the White House that is working with groups both in the pro-choice camp and in the pro-life camp, to see if we can arrive at some consensus on that.

Now, the Freedom of Choice Act is not highest legislative priority. I believe that women should have the right to choose. But I think that the most important thing we can do to tamp down some of the anger surrounding this issue is to focus on those areas that we can agree on. And that’s — that’s where I’m going to focus.

I’m sorry, Mr. President. I don’t care about the Right’s ANGER on this issue. I care about the fact that there are millions of women in this country who cannot get access to abortion because of the myriad restrictions that have been placed upon the medical procedure by legislators who have no business telling women what they can or cannot do with their reproductive capabilities.

I used to be a lot more moderate in my views. I used to be a lot more willing to listen to the other side’s arguments about what’s involved in abortion. But not anymore. Women die every day in childbirth. Women die every day from botched abortions. Women die every day in Africa from injuries, caused by rape, that are exacerbated by pregnancy. THIS IS NOT A MORAL ISSUE. THIS IS A PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUE.

Mr. President, this is also an economic issue. If you do indeed care for the working class and middle class who are suddenly struggling to put food on the table, don’t you think you should be worried about the women out there who can’t put food in one more child’s mouth? And don’t tell me she should be using birth control. EVEN WITH INSURANCE, insurance companies manage to get away with charging outrageous co-pays for birth control pills and other devices. (One pack of pills is $25 a month co-pay. That’s a lot of money when you’re struggling.)

If we were talking about any other health issue out there, would we be having this argument? Why, when it comes to women’s bodies and their rights to control their fertility, do these issues suddenly become about morals? Why are you, President Obama, backing away from a promise that you made so that you might spend some time trying to appease those people who do not want women to have abortions at any time for any reason? They are not to be reasoned with.

You cannot make them happy. You cannot make them like you on this issue.

Please stop. Please just do what you said you were going to do. Lift the restrictions on a woman’s health options.

PLEASE.

 In 2005, incensed that the FDA, which, at the time, was so under the thumb of the woman-hating, sex-hating, body-hating, science-hating Bush administration that it made a decision that Plan B contraception would not be available at pharmacies to those under the age of 18, AND, really pissed off that there were pharmacists who were claiming that their morals didn’t allow them to dispense the drugs,  I wrote the following, in which I offered to serve as a drug mule for underage girls:

The FDA got it half-right this morning. Plan B contraception has been cleared for over the counter dispensation, but only if you are over the age of 18. Younger than 18? You’re shit outta luck, unless you’re willing to go to the doctor’s office and get a prescription yourself. How you’re supposed to do that without your parent’s knowledge, since I’m assuming they’ll get the insurance bills, is beyond me. If you’re lucky, there will be a Planned Parenthood office in your town. But again, that will require luck.

So, here’s the deal. I am making a pledge, which I fully intend to keep. If you need Plan B contraception, and you contact me, I will go to my local pharmacy and get it for you. Your parents don’t have to know.  The CWFA will likely lobby Congress for a bill that will make my activities illegal, but I do not give a rat’s ass for what the CWFA thinks of me.

This is an act of civil disobedience.

I am a whore. Or at least, that’s what I think I’m supposed to accept these days. You see, I’ve used Plan B contraception–twice–because, for various reasons, I didn’t use birth control while I was having sex, and because, at 41, I do not want to get pregnant again, I resorted to Plan B. Pharmacists who want to dispense shame would think of me as a whore.

The pharmacists who refuse to dispense the medication, even with a doctor’s prescription, claim to be doing so because it’s against their morals to do so. They claim they’re saving fetuses. But really? I think they’re punishing women who have sex. Again.

Rather than fight them on this, allow them to cast shame on me for being sexually active and single, I’m just going to come out and say it. I am a whore. I don’t want to get pregnant. I have the wherewithall to fight you, but many, many women–those who feel shame about having sex in this culture don’t have the resources to fight you. And so I’m fighting this on their behalf.

Acquiring Plan B contraception is not as easy as it is made out to be. Several months ago, I started dating a man, things progressed quickly one hot, lazy summer afternoon, and we had sex. The next morning, I woke up, counted days, felt the familiar twinge in my side, and realized I was ovulating. Plan B seemed like a damned good idea. I called my doctor’s office. I asked the receptionist to have one of the docs phone in a prescription for Plan B. “We don’t do that,” she said, in an extremely tight voice. I could hear the disapproval dripping from her voice. I called Planned Parenthood, got an appointment for that morning. I had to pay a full appointment fee and then pay for medication. Not cheap. But I did it. And, I’m delighted to say, did not get pregnant that month.

A few weeks later, I was in to see my doctor for my regular check-up. I asked her why they wouldn’t phone in Plan B contraception prescriptions. “But we do,” she said. I told her what happened. It seems the receptionist had taken it upon herself to deny me Plan B. I have a feeling that said receptionist was going to be in big trouble after I left.

A few months after that, I had cause to use Plan B again. This time, my doctor’s office called the prescription in to my local pharmacy and I picked it up later that day. The pharmacist, who dispenses all of my pills, handed me the drugs with no hassles or lectures, simply asked me if I had any questions. What a relief.

Why am I telling you all of this? For several reasons.

First. Even for me, acquiring Plan B contraception the first time turned out to be a hassle and fairly expensive. If I had been in different circumstances, I may have given up before I got the medication, and then, voila, a few weeks later, may have found myself facing an unwanted pregnancy.

Second. It doesn’t really matter how many pharmacists are, in fact, refusing to dispense the medication. The fact that the ones who are refusing are garnering so much attention means that any woman who gets Plan B is going to have to worry that she’s going to get the pharmacist who’s going to refuse.

In the late 19th century, the Comstock laws made it a federal offense for certain information to cross state lines. In other words, magazines and mail that contained information about birth control was not allowed to circulate. Even though many of the methods of birth control we have now–condoms, diaphragms, and others–were available, the information that they existed could not circulate freely in the culture. Women often didn’t know that they had options.

Increasingly, it’s not that birth control is not available, it’s that the knowledge that it’s available is being repressed. If you live in a small town and need Plan B, are you going to know where you can go if your local pharmacist decides not to dispense your prescription? How can we help these women?

Finally, the pharmacist’s job is not to dispense shame. I don’t know what the figures are for men who’ve attempted to have their Viagra prescriptions filled and been denied. I can’t imagine that there’s been a lot of these cases. Because, when it all comes down to it, it’s still okay for men to have sex. But, because I have sex, and I want access to birth control after the fact, I’m a whore.

I think I’m going to have that embroidered on a pillow.

Needless to say, even among my liberal posters, my plan to start a Plan B underground was seen as usurping a parent’s right to be involved in their child’s sexual health decisions. But you know what? After your child becomes sexually active, you don’t get to be a part of that unless your child asks you to. I’m sorry to say, but that’s the way it works. Either your kid trusts you enough to talk to you about sex, or they don’t. And if they don’t, well tough shit for you.

Today, a judge finally declared that, at least in terms of 17-year olds, the decision to limit Plan B contraception to those over 18 was a “political decision.”

“These political considerations, delays, and implausible justifications for decision-making are not the only evidence of a lack of good faith and reasoned decision-making,” Korman said. “Indeed, the record is clear that the FDA’s course of conduct regarding Plan B departed in significant ways from the agency’s normal procedures regarding similar applications to switch a drug product from prescription to non-prescription use.”

See? This is why some of us are so damned pissed off about the way women are treated. You can buy cold medicine that may screw up your heartbeat, you can buy Tylenol and Ibuprofen, which in overdoses can be fatal, but be a 17-year old who just had sex and thinks, “I don’t want to get pregnant,” and the Bush administration decided you should remain screwed.

So, the question is, will the drug now be available over the counter to younger women?

You know the social conservatives “decried” the decision. Do you want to know why? The social conservatives argue that girls under the age of 18 could be forced to take Plan B contraception by those who are sexually abusing them.

I want you to think about that for a moment. They want to deny 14-year old incest victims from obtaining Plan B because it might be coerced, but, should a 14-year old find herself pregnant because she’s been raped, well, that’s just dandy. Go ahead and have the baby. That’s what God would want.

So, I’m repeating my promise of 2005. If you are under the age of 17, and you need Plan B contraception, send me a PM, and I will make sure that you get it.

I had noticed a difference between them. If I were to name it, it was a precious melancholy. As if, they were saying good-bye before the other was gone. A conscious reverence like one might have when they know the other is terminally ill—making sure to honor every moment in the sacredness of it.

I saw it when they held each other’s eyes a beat longer, or dropped the other’s gaze in the avoidance of a sure truth.

But those revealing moments passed, and they would reengage in the play that was so much a part of their interaction. This was what I chose to focus on, forgetting what I saw before as my lovely daughter Kait ruffled Byron’s already wild hair or gave him quick pats on the belly. Gleefully calling him “Dorian,” an endearing humorous name they both called each other over the past four years.

But then one evening as Kait was speaking to Byron on the phone, her voice collapsed. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, I waited to hear her voice rise again. But it never did.

A tragic stillness, I left the bathroom and peeked into her bedroom door. Lying on the bed she turned her tear filled eyes away from the wall and towards me. I pushed the door open, “Are you okay?”

“No.” Tears swelled out her eyes and spilled down her cheeks, “Byron and I won’t be seeing each other anymore.”

Instantly my heart grieved for her and his loss. I crossed the room and sat on the side of her bed next to her. Fingering her long dark Raphaelean curls I said, “I’m so sorry,” as my eyes and throat began to burn with sorrow.

Sensing my need for a reason she offered, “Everything is fine between us. Everything is going well. It’s me. I don’t know why now…but I just need to.”

Nodding my head, I stroked the back of her hand in understanding.

When I was her age, influenced by my Mormon upbringing and the larger Judaic/ Christian culture that wrote the fairytales of Cinderella, I subscribed to the belief that there was the one and only true love. Like the classic songs of Sinatra, Streisand, Porter…filling my head, I knew there was someone out there, waiting. He was the other half of my whole. And when united, he would complete me.

I nearly proved this to be true. Meeting my husband at eighteen, we were like two balls of mercury being pulled toward a gravitational pull that joined the other seamlessly. Married eighteen months later, for twenty years we shared this destined fairy tale love. Star struck from across the room, when our eyes met they glistened and danced as soft smiles formed our lips. When not together, the other was beautifully present inside warming the heart.

Never did I think he would not be in my life. In fact, the thought of him not in my life made me gasp for air as if I was dying. But, then, suddenly he was gone. After twenty-some-odd years together, he left my life. And I did die.

And, yet—the death was sweet as I was born into someone I never could have been had we stayed together. I was born into a woman that was whole. Two lips touching, my lips—I had always had the potential to be w/holy of self. But as long as someone was between those two lips I would be split apart, never knowing the magnificent completeness of my own being—the love of self.

Now, I understand as my Shoshone ancestors did. The individual has to be known through quests of understanding. Relationship is part of that quest towards being more fully human. Perhaps the relationship is for a lifetime. Perhaps for only a time.

But to put the focus on the relationship’s endurance is not natural. It is a construction created for the profit of a system—whether the system is inspired by religion, philosophy, or economics.

Rather, the relationship is part of life—is part of living. There could be one partner that is good for a new love, another for the fathering of children and family-life, another as a lover, another from mother into the grandmother, another… And maybe, in the case of the women in my tribe, two partners or more are needed at the same time.

As a matriarchal society where the woman owned the teepee, this change in life was symbolic of “to split the blanket”. In this change the belongings of the male partner were set outside the teepee door. Man given the same rights as woman, there was (and is) no taboo in it. It was life. Life constantly created. Life changed. And change was what kept the people well.

Kait, having the privilege of being raised without the dogma of religion or social mores, has not been burdened with believing relationship as a lifetime commitment. In her beliefs, to institutionalize relationship by putting rules and laws of right, wrong, good, bad is the opposite of the love relationship espoused. Where, in reality, the control and appropriation inherent of these rules and laws limits or kills off the life-force that is the love.

The idea is to honor the life-force that both partners are a reflection of and in union create life-forms with. Essentially, to honor the love.

Tears streaming down both our faces she said, “He is so good.”

Kissing her small Victorian hands I said, “Yes he is…and so are you. Both of you—so easy to love.”  With the presence of them both in my heart and chest, “You are love.”

I had been to South Africa many times for work and I often told people that, “I had fallen in love with the country”. But what I never explained is that I had also fallen in love with a South African man and perhaps that affected the way I saw the country. As the saying goes, “love is blind” - a phrase I hated when I was younger. But, as the years pass and experience accrues, I see it more and more as true. So when I fell out of love with my South African man, and all the beauty I had seen in him seemed to shrivel up and evaporate in the parched continent’s sun, it happened that on my seventh trip to that country I felt like I was suddenly arriving in a strange land.

Forgive me South Africa, because it is not your fault that my love for you died. In fact, you didn’t change at all. All along those three years I visited you, your terrain was rampant with adult rape, car jackings, robbery, murder and even something I had only learned about because of you - baby rape. Your skin was crawling with black against black violence, white against black violence, and black and against white violence. You had always been a dangerous place hidden behind a severe and blinding natural beauty. It’s just that one day the sun went down in my eyes and in the shadows I fell over the other South Africa, the “picked over skeleton with the skull locked in that horrible scream of death” South Africa.

Before this trip, I remember having a conversation with a woman who worked for an NGO – a non-governmental organization – in Johannesburg where I usually stayed for work. She was an extremely bright Indian woman dedicated to helping end poverty in South Africa. She was running a program that was creating alternative job training for the masses of jobless youth in the African population and she wanted to discuss with me the possibility of helping her create a film training program for teenagers. As we sat and had coffee in a quaint little bistro in an even quainter little town called Melville, where I was staying in a beautiful guesthouse with a pool and palm trees and a four-poster bed, she told me that there was 50% unemployment in South Africa that year. I remember my eyes popping out, yet a warm glow in my gut, thinking that this kind woman would be helping to eradicate that horror.

When I asked how long it would take to reduce unemployment, she looked at me blankly and said, “Oh no, there is no hope of reducing the unemployment rate in South Africa; there will never be enough jobs for the population. Everyone knows that.”

I stared at her with a kind of shock: “But then why do you want me to help create a film training program? Don’t you hope these kids will be able to get work afterwards?”

“No,” she said blithely. “There will never be more jobs in the film business here. We already have way too many applicants for the slots. We can only hope to keep these young people busy for a few weeks…”

I tried to fathom what she was saying as she asked for the check, but I promptly put her words beyond me. You see I was still in love — with the guy, with the dazzling sunshine, with the idea of democracy and a rainbow nation, with people’s ability to argue about politics (something Americans had lost until recently with our new elections.)

But on my last trip to the country, the guy was gone. And it was not a good break up. I suppose you can say I am still picking the shards of glass out of my weak flesh even now, years later. Back then I still didn’t know how much love would cost me, but that is another discussion. Now, I had returned to film a friend of mine Khosi, who lived in Soweto, for the FLYING series I was still in production on at the time. This would be me my last trip to the country for the project. I had filmed Khosi before and what I would record this time never made it into the film, but perhaps was more important than much of what did.

I am trying to explain how the terror rose in me that trip like a snake silently coiling its belly around your spine until it is facing you and looking in your eye. Why you never felt the snake in the first place and why you were standing in a place that had poisonous snakes slithering through the grass is another question that could be asked and should be. For the moment, suffice it to say, up until then I had been too stupid to be afraid.

When I arrived to my little guesthouse in my lovely little town of Melville that I always stayed at, I was still feeling fine; I still thought it was the same country I loved even though the guy was missing. I could do this, I thought to myself, nothing had really changed. But in the middle of the night I got a call from Khosi crying. I tried to ask her what was wrong but she wouldn’t say. She only said that she couldn’t see me the next day as we had planned for filming. I told her – no, begged her – to please let me see her any way, we didn’t have to film, but then the phone cut off. When I tried to call her back I understood she had run out of minutes on her cell phone, something that I had gotten used to happening in South Africa where many people couldn’t afford a permanent plan and bought their time sparingly.

I had no way to get to Soweto alone, so I had to wait until morning, when the driver I had used on many shoots could pick me up and we could head over to Khosi’s new home.  Before leaving, I texted her that I was on my way; she must have bought more minutes, because she texted back, “all right”.  I gave the driver the new address in a poor part of Soweto, which I am telling you because, unbeknownst to foreigners, there are wealthier, middle-class parts of Soweto too. All she had told me on the phone when I had spoken to her from America to set up the meeting was that her life had taken a different turn since I had seen her the last about two years previous. She had moved out of her grandmother’s house and was living with her new boyfriend.

We found the address on a dirt road lined with square one-room government-issued box houses that had been created during the apartheid system. She stood in front of this new house I had never seen before, much like I had left her before in front of her granny’s house. She was wearing a white halter top and jeans, as beautiful as always – and looking about 13 years old even though by now was 22 or so. It was only when I got out of the car that I saw what was wrong, one side of her face was black and blue. She was smiling as always and saying things like “don’t worry Jen” and “I am so sorry I called you last night” and “everything is fine really”. Then she took me by the hand and led me to her home, a one-room shack behind the house I had arrived at, which belonged to her boyfriend’s sister. As we passed, many neighbors came out of other shacks and homes to get a good look at Khosi’s white guest.

Once inside, we sat together on the bed that filled the room, which was neat and covered with a paisley comforter. There was also a wooden dresser and a plastic cooler for milk and food, filled with ice. Between us played Khosi’s new baby girl, now about nine months. She made me tea on a little portable stove in the corner of the room and sat down again.  Khosi explained that when she had become pregnant with her daughter, she had to leave her first child, the three-year-old boy that I knew, with her mother and grandmother because her new boyfriend felt jealous of having another man in the house. Her little girl had been born with a hole in her heart, and a cleft lip, but miraculously they had been able to give the girl open-heart surgery at three months and save her. However, she still wasn’t healthy and Khosi spent her life going back and forth to Baragwaneth Hospital, the only hospital in Soweto, which was a huge ordeal. Khosi didn’t know how long the child would live.

She told me how her Gram had kicked her out of the house when she got pregnant with her second child, calling her “slut” and “whore”, even though this boyfriend was only her second in her life. Her first boyfriend and father of her little boy was the first man she had slept with – and by him she immediately became pregnant. The first guy had beaten her terribly and often, but she had managed to escape. Now, this was her second boyfriend, who at least had a job in the South African army and therefore some money. He was ten years older than her – and she immediately got pregnant again. She swore to me that he rarely hit her and that he was a good man, but that they had gotten into a fight the night before at a party, where he accused her of flirting with another man. She had told him to “go fuck off’ and continued to talk to the same guy, but her boyfriend couldn’t stand it and he had immediately started to beat her. She wouldn’t back down, she said, and so she hit him back, but of course he was stronger than her.

Now she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to stay here, but she couldn’t go back to her grandmother’s after she was treated so badly. Her grandmother hated her and preferred her sister. Today, her boyfriend was back at the base, but would be home again in a few days. Anyway, how could she support her child if she left him? She wasn’t able to find a job no matter how hard she tried. Then she began to cry. And I started to cry too. We were hugging each other and crying. You see, we had known each other a long time, since my first trip to South Africa. We had made a film together about her best girlfriend who was HIV positive; we had been through a lot.

“How can I help, Khosi?” I asked softly.

“There’s nothing to do Jen….” She was wiping her tears now.

“Look, what if I can pay for some training…?” I said, wanting to be practical, “I mean if you could get a job, you wouldn’t have to live here…  Is there something you want to do…?”

She looked at me with sadness and shook her head. “I don’t know Jen….”

“Alright…” I said weakly. I was surprised; she had always wanted to go to school before. “Let’s just think together. I am here for you…”

There is nothing like being a stupid foreigner. I knew all too well that what Khosi was facing was so complex and beyond my understanding, that I could only bear witness and pray for intervention. It is a horrible feeling for a person like me, raised on the concept of agency and the ability to change one’s fate if only one works hard enough, to learn that the truth, for many people, in many parts of the world, is that little can help. I knew also that my “being there” for Khosi was relative; I would go home and be safe, and she would not be. So much for being the big, white American savior.

“Jen, I’m scared,” she said.

“I am too, Khosi…” And I was, even thought I didn’t even know exactly why yet.

“I am scared some days what I might do to my child… Sometimes I get so angry, especially with my little boy, that I can’t stop hitting him….” Khosi looked me in the eye to see if I understood what she was saying.

I thought I understood. “You know Khosi, when I was a kid, I saw my mom get so angry at me that I thought, ‘I can’t have children, because I will look at them like she looked at me.’ I was so afraid that I would pass that anger down and hate my own kids that I never wanted to have a baby myself….”

“Yes,” she said, “my Gram was like that to me. She beat me so much; I hated her…. “ She took a deep breath. “But now I am afraid. Jen, some days I am afraid I might kill my children… I love them so much… But I don’t know what to do.”

There was silence in the little shack as we both listened to her baby’s breathing, now asleep on the blanket between us.

“Jen, can you help me get therapy?”

I hadn’t expected her to ask that. I was happy and surprised by the request. But seven trips to South Africa had made wiser to the obstacles I would have to deal with:  “I can try Khosi, when I go back to the guesthouse, I will make some calls…”

”You know I’ve tried going to the social workers that they give you at the hospital, you know like when my father was murdered, or after my sister died of AIDS, and now since the baby was born, I went again…but they all say the same stupid things, like I am not being ‘positive enough about my life’. That ‘I have a bad attitude…’”

Hearing that someone had the audacity to tell Khosi that she wasn’t ‘thinking positively’ enraged me so that I myself wanted to kill someone right then and there. I hated this psychobabble - used again and again by people who really needed some help. And it was rampant in South Africa for some reason, like they’d watched too many episodes of Oprah.

I told Khosi what I thought. But I also asked her if she thought that she needed to be away from her children for a little while. I was worried deeply for them. She said she had strategies of what to do when she felt that way, neighbors she could leave her daughter with; thankfully her son was at her mom’s, but the problem was that when she saw him, he behaved so badly because he was angry at being left there, that she got angry back at him. We talked until the darkness fell and the air turned cool again

When I left Khosi, we hugged for a long time. I would see her several more times on that trip, and I would find her a good therapist, whom she went to see once, but after that session she stopped going (although it would take a few months before this became obvious). The problem was that it took her all day to go back and forth to the good therapist in the fancy section of Johannesburg, actually only 20 minutes away if she could have driven there straight. You see, there is no public transportation system in South Africa – another legacy from Apartheid – so you have to take a series of “Combis”, which are mini-vans driven by private drivers. Each driver packs his van fill of people on a specific route. So it might take her five or six Combis to get to the closest stop to her therapist and then she’d have to walk a half an hour. Who could she leave her baby with? How could she take a whole day just for therapy? Suppose she had a doctor’s appointment for the baby on that day? How could she pay for the transportation? But there were other obstacles too, like when the second appointment came time, it rained, and she didn’t have an umbrella or a raincoat and she was afraid to catch a cold, so she didn’t go.

I tried to solve some of the complications: I had to give Khosi money for the combi rides, but I couldn’t wire it to her directly because she didn’t have a bank account. Meanwhile she couldn’t keep a lot of money on her at any one time, because she could get killed if someone thought she was getting extra cash from a foreigner. So I had to find someone in Johannesburg who would agree to receive the money, but then they had to arrange to get it to her. Then, another fear started to haunt me: What if me trying to help meant her leaving her baby home alone or with a stranger– and then something happening to the baby – like was happening all over south Africa, where mothers had to leave their babies to go to work and gangs of men were coming and raping these tiny beings.

I drove away from Khosi that night, the air ripe with the smoke of kerosene from the gas stoves being lit across the valley of Soweto.  As we passed kids playing kickball in the flickering shadows of bonfires on the dirt lanes, I sat in silence. When I arrived at my guesthouse, the driver let me out and drove off. One of the young car parkers that roamed the street making small change by helping people get parking spots – a job that was created by the government to help unemployment – approached me and asked for some money.

I looked at him surprised, and shook my head, “I don’t have any change…”

“You owe me” he said his eyes menacing. “You haven’t bought me a soda or tipped me and I know you are staying at this guest house. I have seen you come and go….”

“I don’t owe you anything,” I said angrily; somehow Khosi’s story had enraged me against all men. “I don’t have a car and I don’t need parking.”

I marched up to my guesthouse door and pulled out my key. He was standing feet away staring at my back.

“Next time you better bring me something!” he yelled at me and spit on the pavement.

I turned around and gave him the finger. Then I slipped inside and shut the door, which locked behind me.

Once in my room, I sat on my elegant wooden four-poster bed, with the curtains that had little bows holding them back in the middle, looking into the golden-tiled bathroom that was the size of Khosi’s shack. I was breathing hard, trying to catch my breath, furious at the young parking punk from the street, at Khosi’s boyfriend, at the current government that left no hope and no jobs, at social workers who pretend to heal, at the god damn apartheid system who had destroyed a nation and created this mess so complicated it would take a hundred years and so much luck that I couldn’t imagine it to undo the harm that had been wreaked upon this most beautiful country.

I wanted my blessed South Africa back, the one I fell in love with. I started to cry. I was seeing South Africa for the first time and I was gripped with fear - for Khosi, for my black friends, for my white friends, for the strangers I had met, for everyone - and yes, I am ashamed to say, for myself too, because I didn’t want to become one of the twenty-five to fifty percent of the women (depending on the region) who were raped in South Africa that year when I left my gated guest house in the morning. It was easy for me, I just had to make it a few days more to get on the plane out to beat the odds of violent crime, but Khosi couldn’t escape like me. I sat there, engulfed in something I had never felt before, something that was so big, I couldn’t even name it.

Khosi and I remain friends today. She still lives in Soweto but has moved back with her daughter to live with her grandmother, mother, son and other extended family. You can read about her life on her blog here. To date, I have not returned to South Africa.

I have a friend in college who works full time and who supports two small boys by herself. She is their sole provider of emotional support and, even were their father to be involved in their lives, I imagine she would still play the role of mother and father to them. He was an absentee parent even when he was present. It amazes me that biological fathers (or sperm donors) are still granted visitation rights and rights to participate in decision making when it comes to “their” children even when they provide no financial support. Granted, I understand that visitation is looked at as the child’s right and not the parent’s, but there has to be some sort of effort put forth in order for such an arrangement to be beneficial to both parties. In order to collect unemployment, one must look for work and apply for jobs. Why are men who put forth little to no effort at all the privilege to  often “play” daddy to their offspring? Why will a man who puts forth minimal effort to be involved in his child’s life when he has every opportunity to do so throw a fit and incite a power struggle if he feels his rights to be involved after a marriage or relationship ends if he feels the right to be involved in “his” child’s life is being threatened?

In my opinion, often times, it has more to do with the man’s desire to “control” his ex than it has to do with his desire to be a daddy. As someone who grew up with a terrible male role model (my sperm donor) for the first decade of her life, and then was raised by a father-figure who was largely absent (not necessarily physically, but definitely emotionally) for the remainder of her childhood who then re-produced with a sociopath that resembled a younger version of her own biological father, I do feel that I am qualified to make judgments about this very topic. I would rather have had no father at all than a bad one. I would rather my daughter have no male role model in her life than a bad one. Regardless of the situation though, I would still make an effort to include a male role model in my daughter’s life - whether by enrolling her in a mentoring or “big brother” program, or by introducing her to men in my life that have proven themselves trustworthy and whom I feel could provide a positive influence -a friend or relative of mine.

Please do not get me wrong. I am not necessarily classifying a father or a dad as a bad one because he is unable to provide financially for a child. I believe that most people fall on hard times and face financial difficulty during the course of their lives. I also do not mean that everything comes down to finances, not when it comes to children and parenting. I think that men who truly want to be involved in the lives of their children should make every effort to prove this. They should try to be present and there for their children; they should provide emotional support; they make an effort to become involved whenever they have the opportunity. They should attempt to create such opportunities for themselves. They should place an emphasis on the quality of the time that they spend with their children, not the quantity. If a man cannot afford to pay for his child’s care or to provide for his child physically or financially, he should make an effort to do something else to care for the child. Unfortunately, I have known many men who have preferred to “work under the table” rather than contribute money towards their children’s lives or futures.

A sad state of affairs, it is.

On an entirely different note, the friend that I mentioned at the beginning of this blog asked for my help on an assignment for her communications class earlier today. She asked if I stereotyped men, at all and if so, what stereotypes I believed to be true. She also asked if I thought other women stereotyped men. I replied by telling her that I think most women stereotype men. I then went on to explain the following:

I think men basically have a sense of entitlement and that they want what’s on other people’s plates, that they tend to grow up a lot more slowly than women, and that they tend to hold a woman’s faults against them when they don’t consider these faults “feminine” and may possess said faults themselves (i.e. sleeping around, is just one example), I think most men hold women to higher standards then they hold themselves too because they feel women have an “obligation” to meet said higher standards since they bear children (the Madonna and the Whore)… I think most men want to feel in control and like they dominate some aspect of their lives (whether it be a relationship or some aspect of their careers, which is why I feel more men than women enter sales type industries – they like feeling like they’ve influenced the decisions of others) I think they tend to communicate less and share emotions lees and allow themselves to feel far fewer emotions than women. That is what I think of most men.

I was intrigued by the assignment and asked my male friend if he thought that women were guilty of assigning stereotypes to men. He responded with an emphatic “yes” and when I shared with him the explanation that I provided to her, he laughed and stated that he didn’t think he could argue with me.

It has yet to be determined whether I am proud of this or disappointed by it.

I got home from work to find out that my boyfriend mood hasn’t changed. I then started cooking, bathed my baby, and tried to make conversation but no one else seemed in the mood for talking. So, I kept trying to create new conversation and admittedly started an argument. By this point my boyfriend was arguing and although I have told myself that I am done begging him, asking for forgiveness I continued to do so… even though I felt as though my opinions were justified. While we were arguing he said something to me that caught me so off guard it took me an hour to adjust. For a minute I thought that I was imagining things, I took a deep breath then a paused and asked him to say to me what he has just said, to my surprise I had been right and there was nothing wrong with my hearing aid.

He said, “You are a bloody murderer.” I had nothing to say… no words could come out, only tears… tears of sorrow, regret, and painful memories that I have tried my best to bury. My god, I wished I could drop dead and die that instant. When he told me this he took me back to that night, that terrible night. I was quiet for a long time and so was he, he was looking at me and you could see that he wished he could take his words back, he could see that he had hurt me, deeply.

If I remember, it was last June when I realized that I was pregnant with his child. I called him to tell him the news and he asked me to wait for him to come home and said that we would discuss the matter then. I did as he said, although I was confused by the wait. In the meantime I was thinking that I knew in my heart that I could not have another baby.
I have two children with different fathers, and my 3-year-old daughter Azania was born with many health complications. She is suffering from heart failure and asthma… to make matters worse I was not working when I found out about her illnesses.

It is so hard to realize that I’ve got two children that already I can’t support, what was I going to to with the third one? And I thought about the possibilities of him leaving me for someone else, alone to raise our children. I had already made up my mind; I knew what I had to do. So when we talked about the matter in a civilized manner he seemed understanding and supportive, we agreed that we couldn’t have another baby while Azania is still young and sick. He said while he was working I need to go back to school and continue my studies in order to find a job. He was so understanding, I nearly changed my mind and I thought to myself that he was too good to be true.

The plan of action was to terminate the baby. Then I went to the hospital to get myself on the waiting list because I couldn’t afford to pay a doctor. I was in the top 10 of the women who were seeking an abortion. The procedure here in South Africa is that they give you pills you take them home and insert them yourself. All of this you have to do alone and the nurses tell you that no matter how much pain you feel don’t come back and don’t call the ambulance.

You can only come the following day to have your womb cleaned. I arrived home from the hospital around 6 pm and I then inserted the tablets in my Vagina and a maxi-pad in my underwear and fell asleep.

In the middle of the night I felt something unusual so I woke up and went to the toilet to check what was wrong. As I took my panties off I saw something but it was covered in my blood so I couldn’t see it very clearly. I wiped the blood with toilet paper and as I was wiping it I realized it was a baby, my baby, my own flesh and blood. I looked closer and I could see the little formed body parts. I cried, I felt so dirty and thought I have just killed a defenseless child, my own baby.

I wanted to take what I had done back, I lost my mind, I bathed myself and scrubbed myself so much I ended up with a very painful infection. Then, the real problem began and I fell sick with very bad headaches and lost my appetite. I had other emotional problems and started to resent the two kids I had, I felt as if I couldn’t give him my love why should they have it?

I used to have dreams and hopes of a beautiful life, but I now I don’t think I will ever experience those dreams as a reality. Everyday, morning and night, I think about what I did and the picture is still in my mind. It doesn’t matter how happy and pure I pretend to be; what I did is eating me alive. I am so ashamed of the thing I’ve turned out to be.

People often say there is a lesson to learn in everything but I have gone through so many experiences, and I am still waiting for understanding to come. I just hope that as time passes things will improve. Maybe one day I will begin to feel at peace with the decisions I have made, and the life I have in front of me… for myself and my family.

Khosi is 24 and was born in Suwet, South Africa where she grew up with five siblings. Due to the harsh economic effects of the Apartheid her parents could not find work, and so Khosi relocated to live with her grandmother. When she was 13 she moved back in with her father in attempt to reconnect with him, but after two years she moved yet again. Her father supported himself through acts of fraud and in 2001 was brutally killed by his associates for 1,000 Rand they had all stolen together.

Khosi dropped out of high school because she could not afford to purchase a uniform, and later took a course in HIV/AIDs counseling but was unable to find work. Khosi and her boyfriend recently had a baby girl together who was born in need of open heart surgery, and doctors told her not to get attached. The baby survived, and is being raised by Khosi, her mother, grandmother and boyfriend.

1. When I was a little girl somebody asked me “whom do you love most, mommy or daddy ?” I understood later the stupidity of this question but at that moment I felt bad that I couldn’t answer…I couldn’t choose between my parents and I was ashamed to tell that person that “I don’t know”…2. Recently, a friend of mine has been writing in an e-mail that “it seems that I’m more in love with my son rather than his daddy”. I laughed, but I remained concerned…not to evaluate my “balance of love”, because I truly believe that love isn’t a bread which I can divide in slices (equal or not) to feed my husband and children. But what in my attitude made my friend affirm that ? I realized that I’m a mother and I’m speaking all the time about my new baby… The child is center of the Universe, conscious or not, and all the relating around him is always superlative. I’m not shy to talk about my child’s evolution, progresses, little wonders… but about my husband it seems exaggerating to boast, even with my friends. When we have a little chat about our men it is always easy to talk about their bad habits ( it seems like all the men have the same bad habits !). Why cant we easily talk about their good ones?! My husband really is more good than bad, why I don’t feel comfortable to praise him like I do with my son?3. In every new family, like ours, when partners are very much in love and used to doing everything for each other, the first baby, even wanted, is very complicated. Consciousness or not, admitted or not, big, small, short or long, newfound and unexpected crises are there and are real. In all the books about pregnancy and baby care, in all the sweet pictures with young beautiful parents and babies, not a word about this situation, everybody is very happy. There could be a line or two about post-partum depression, but the authors are also offer quick remedies. After I gave birth I was feeling like most of the women: dizzy, stunned, tired, overwhelmed, uncomfortable and lonely. I couldn’t find my old actions, or ours, as a couple enjoyable any longer. On the other hand, my husband was also overwhelmed, he didn’t know how to help, he too felt lonely and that I had somehow become the family manager (which was not true!).Fortunately, love isn’t lost. But now we have to face a new reality, that has other coordinates. Is not only about 3 instead of 2, our lives are truly unfolding into a new chapter4. There are many faces of love, one doesn’t necessarily need to overpower any of the other forms it may take. Sometimes the center of attention is changing, and slowly I am beginning to understand that shift. I think that it is a supernatural effort to distribute equal attention to all beloved and dearest people around you. But this effort should be done somehow. And I am confident that with time, I just might learn.

If somebody would ask me at this moment “who are you” I would say “I’m mother and wife.” This is my major activity at this time, I’m involved in it completely. I’m 29 and I’m working as a TV producer for public television in Bucharest. I’m not feeling that I left my profession for my personal life, I don’t have any dilemma that so many women have of choosing “career or family?” because I use all the same skills in both of these realities. My artistic background (poetry, fine arts, cinematography) helps me improve my quality of being a mother because I use all my knowledge to enrich and color my son’s life . Since I gave birth I’ve been saying that pregnancy was like a war, a war which has split my life into two parts: Before and After. Even “before” is visits me time to time and I become nostalgic, while living in “after” a new unexpected Universe is revealing itself to me everyday. Nothing is perfect or easy, but every big project has at least one minus. One of the bad parts of “after” is that I discover Life is so short. All that I do and all that I have is this, it represents and motivates all of my actions.

Some twenty years ago when I was pregnant and preparing for birth was when the woman ante drastically went up for me. Raised by a mother who was a contradiction, she had planted seeds long before this moment. A woman who was career minded in the fifties and sixties, I was a “latch key kid” before there was the term. And yet, she was fiercer in her “womanly ways” of mothering than any other mother I knew. A characteristic I always attributed to her being American Indian.

I was told when she gave birth to us, she refused anesthetic. This refusal especially challenged in the birth of my brother when they tied down her arms to prevent her from swatting the doctors away as they tried to administer ether. Even then, she managed to dissuade them as she flung her head from side to side, her mouth and nose violently missing the masked funnel until they gave up pronouncing her “too stubborn to treat.” In the formula saturated market (that convinced mothers they were better mothers if they formula fed their babies), she not only nursed us—she did so until we were nearly one-year-old. And then, she put us in her bed and slept with us during that same year; which even then, to sleep with one’s baby was (and still is) considered child abuse.
So when it was my turn to give birth—these stories of my mother surfaced and much to my surprise the issues were the same—only, many times multiplied as technology had multiplied. Birth a natural condition of woman had progressed to a dangerous disease needing to be micro managed by high tech medical procedures.

Being told by “professionals” and “experts” what was “the right thing to do” if I was to be “responsible” and have a “safe birth” in juxtaposition to gut feelings that resembled my mother’s ways, I did what I always do—I began to research the topic. And what I discovered was the social designing of woman’s sexuality through the manipulation of child birth and mothering. It was a plan far more devious than I ever would have suspected or realized on my own.

This was when I came to recognize my mother’s fierceness about how her children were to be born and raised was really her saying, “No. No you may not own my body or my sexuality.” Because really, what is more sexual than the body and birthing and the mothering of children? And just who made up the idea or had the right to impose that idea on what was private and belonged to us women? And what has happened to women as a result of the usurping of this precious and extremely powerful sphere that is naturally ours? And who is in possession of this sphere if we are not and how are they benefiting by the ownership of it?

In these questions, it became clear to me why every time my sexuality as a woman was ever addressed (no matter the topic), I felt like Dorothy in the field of poppies. That was how I was supposed to feel.

Because in staying asleep, I would remain dumb about my sexuality. And without my sexuality exactly—who was I? I could imagine I knew, and I could believe I knew. But really, I would be imagining and believing someone else’s story scripted of and for me. Not my story, that’s for sure.

And if I woke up, snapped out of it—I would see, see exactly how I was giving my sexual rights over to someone else. In knowing this, I would take my sexuality back and those profiting by what is mine would lose out on many, many levels. From the economic and politics of my production (such as a baby to the erotic), instead of someone else gaining by what is mine, imagine—I would.

It was in these realizations that I consciously rejected woman’s socially scripted story and started writing my own. Making clear and informed choices about the way I wanted to birth and mother my children was the beginning. Their births were attended by a midwife and they were birthed by me. They were breast fed until three and slept in our bed (mine and their father’s) during those same years.

These choices were amongst many I would make in and outside of mothering over the years. And with each womanly choice, the effect has been like fingers of clarity being snapped across my brow. Because now, I can tell when I’ve been put in someone else’s script that tells me who I am as a woman and how I am supposed to feel and behave. And simply—I’m not interested in playing the part. So I don’t.

L’Dawn Olsen has lead workshops entitled: Being Your Own Healer, Authentic Power, Inhabiting the Erotic Power of the Feminine and The Erotic of Healing.

Being of Shoshone heritage, fifth great-granddaughter to Sacajawea and fifth great grand neice to Chief Washakie, energy and shamanic understanding that are the basis for Ooh la la…Living have been active concepts in L’Dawn’s life. She formalized these life philosophies by studying for two years at a healing Institute in Woodstock, NY. It is through this study that she gained and developed her ideas of feminine and masculine power as they relate to quantum and mechanistic physics.

A Brown University fellow in Creative Writing, she received a MFA from Brown University, teaching there as well. Currently she teaches writing at the Wind River Tribal College on the Wind River Indian Reservation where she resides with her two daughters. She is currently in working on her Ph.D. in Social Constructionism from Tilburg University, Nederlands

Her first book, Sex Lessons: A Woman’s Study , is a memoir on erotic healing, release date to be announced. Her second book Ooh La La…Living, Secrets to Feminine Erotic Power will be available through this site as an e-book in Fall 2008. She currently offers private consultations, speaking events, and workshops that are relevant to her books and the Ooh La La…Living concept and practice.

I, like many women out there (but, quite surprisingly, unlike many that I know) made the decision to have a child at a relatively young age. My daughter and I are 21 years apart. I have one failed marriage (or an attempt at a marriage or, even more accurately, a farce of a marriage) behind me and I am currently married. As horrible as this may sound and as much as I’ve always known that I’ve wanted to be a mother, I have always sought to define myself as more than just a mother and, for that matter, as more than just a wife. Perhaps, especially given my decision to bring a child in this world at the time that I did something I sometimes consider a selfish decision. I love my daughter. I am very proud of her. I am certain that most parents speak of their children the same way. She is the accomplishment of which I am most proud. However, I fear that part of that may be because of the fact that I have accomplished remarkably little in my nearly thirty years.

I am, at this point in my life, encountering something of a crisis. I have heard of women who, in their thirties and forties, question their decisions not to have had children up until that point – who question whether or not they have missed out on an important life experience. I have gotten to experience this already and, in many ways, am very lucky for just that reason. However, I have also read and heard of and met with women who speak of how satisfying it is to have waited until later in life to have children.

I often think that my decision to bring a child into this world when I was twenty-one years old was a premature decision or that it was selfish. I have, throughout my daughter’s life, questioned whether or not it has been fair to her to have played the role of savior in my life. How fair has it been, to either of us, for me have had to get my proverbial shit together and to have had to step up my game and improve upon situations in both of our lives for her sake, whether prior to her birth or consistently during her life?

It may in fact, have been unfair to me and to my daughter to have had to get my act together and to have had to grow up for her sake – for the sake of being able to assist in her growth and development. While I want to be able to provide for her every possible opportunity, she has definitely not led the most privileged life. She does not go hungry, she goes to school, I do my best to nurture her (while trying not to over-mother her) and I devote time and attention to her education, to her development, and to her health and emotional well-being. She has many family members and extended family members who contribute to her being somewhat spoiled, sometimes to my delight and, sometimes, to my chagrin.

In many ways, my daughter has saved my life – being a parent, being accountable to someone that was, for a time, entirely dependant upon me for her survival, having to be responsible for a cause greater than just my own… having to work to provide for needs other than just my own – having to, in a sense, answer to someone else – these factors have all shaped me over the past 7 ½ years into an adult. Becoming a parent, for me, has been the experience that has most contributed to me growing into a semi-responsible, semi-adult and it is the experience that has most shaped me into the person that I am today. This fact will likely remain true for all of my life. This would probably be true no matter when in my life I’d chosen to have a child.

Now, on top of all o the questions I have about my qualifications to be responsible for another life, I feel as though I have missed out on experiences. While I long to give my daughter at least one sibling because, among other reasons, I think it is lonely in this world for only children – I also have desires for my own life now. I have a yearning to do things that I, now, must put on hold – things that must wait on the back burner because of my decision to have had a child. I want to go back to school now and know that I must wait to do so. I have an emptiness inside that I feel may only be filled by composing a dissertation or a thesis – to see my thoughts and ideas organized and in print - in much the same way that I imagine some other women long to hold to whom they’ve given birth.

I long for an Opus of my own - and I do not pretend that I could, nor would I want to - sculpt my child who possesses free will and passions and choices and a life all her own, into my masterpiece. I am now, finally, coming to my senses and no longer trying to get pregnant with a second child – I would have to put off career opportunities and any attempt at furthering my formal education for even longer than I currently have to wait. I want to accomplish something that I can call my own because I am responsible for another life only to a certain extent. I am lucky that my daughter is such an awesome and creative person, but she possesses those characteristics in her own right. As she grows, I will be even less needed by her, which is the way things are supposed to work. And I would also hate to be one of those pathetic and pushy stage-type parents who allow their own hopes and dreams to live on only through their child because they have resigned themselves to only being parents and don’t seem to pursue their own hopes and dreams any longer.

I am a young woman currently residing in Denver, Colo. I am a part-time freelance writer who makes a living in the industry of Educational Travel. I am an avid reader - especially about psychology, human behavior, and women’s issues - and spend much of my free time writing - even if just for myself.

I am a wife and mother. I enjoy cooking, camping, hiking and spending time with my friends and family and, the most recent addition to our household, the family dog. I am trying to define myself independently of the roles that I play in others’ lives. I hope to decide what it is that I want to do when I grow up and to go back to school in the relatively near future.