Yesterday was Mother’s Day and I hope all the mothers out there had a great day.
For me it was a little difficult, being the first Mother’s Day without my Mom.
My lovely children made me breakfast; bagels, lox, cream cheese, and capers, served up with coffee and orange juice. It was superb. Then I got the greatest gift. It is a pretend news article from Annabella’s school, complete with a portrait of me, pictured below.
In it my girl describes me as: brave, beautiful, gifted, loving, kind, sweet, nice, and honest.
Wow. That’s a lot to live up to.
Then she goes on to write the following:
I love my mom because she encourages me to be the bet I can be. She helps my troubles. She never deceives us into not appropriate things. She gives me a life supply of love and hope. She is as pretty as a rainbow. She gave me my voice and my eyes. She heals my wounds and weariness. She is the twinkle in my eye, she is the star in the sky. She gives me great books and food. She inspires me.
Needless to say, I cried. My cup runneth over. How lucky am I?
May
03
Three Flavors of Girl Power!
by dawn
If you are looking for a good read to give to or share with your daughter, please go here.
If your daughter is ready to talk about feminism, and really it is a conversation best started early, please go here.
When you need a moment to reflect and commiserate on the challenges of raising a daughter or of being a girl, please go here.
Among the positive things I learned at home: Girls can do anything, it doesn’t matter what other people think, do your own thing, march to the beat of your own drum, don’t follow the lemmings off the cliff…
Hopefully I can pass these messages along to both my daughter and my son.
I was maybe a little sheltered or oblivious to feminist issues in general. I remember getting to college and being shocked that there were only philosophical works by women included in the feminism class. That for the most part, to learn about women’s contributions to any field of study, you had to take courses in the Women’s Studies department. Later, getting into the work world and being paid less for the same job, being treated a lesser, suspect, fragile, or unreliable — shocked the living hell out of me.
What decade is this? What century?
And now? With the conservatives trying to take away rights to birth control? In what not-overpopulated world does that even make sense? On what planet-that-is-not-being-decimated is that OK?
So, tell your girls they are smart, capable, invincible, and unique. Inspire them and embrace them. They’ve got battles ahead of them that I thought were won ages ago. Prepare them to be more than decorations on a handbasket quickly going to hell.
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