"Herstory Wisdom" Blog

Now that the election has ended, wouldn’t it be nice if we could put our differences aside and remember that no matter if our candidate won or lost, we are all in this together?
I find it disheartening to see the posts on the internet and in the media that are so filled with hate and derision. Is this really who we want to be? Who we’ve allowed ourselves to become?
If we peel away all of the layers, at the bottom we will find that our goals are the same. We all want a happier more abundant life. We want our children to have opportunities and a future that looks promising. We want a peaceful loving world to live in.
Surely we must be wise enough to realize that our way of thinking is not the only way to think about something. We must know that we believe what we believe because of our own life experiences. We are not ‘right’ and they are not ‘wrong.’ We are simply seeing different ways to get to the solution we are all hoping for.
Can you guarantee that if your candidate won, everything would have worked out exactly as you thought it would? Can you guarantee that if your candidate won, all promises would be kept and our lives and the world would be much better? Of course you can’t. Nobody can. So why waste all this energy on regret and blame?
Many people I know talk of the fear that we are becoming a Godless country, and the people I know that say this are Christians. I grew up in a Christian religion, and I remember a song we used to sing. I don’t remember all of it, but I know the chorus was; ‘And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.’
Love. Not condemnation, judgment or exclusion. If you want to see the result of believing that your path to God is the only path, and it is your job to convert, condemn and punish those who don’t believe as you do, go to youtube.com and look up the footage of people jumping from the World Trade Center as it burns behind them.
The election is over. To continue the negativity and shameful behavior that was displayed by both sides during this process demeans us as a people.
Do you want to know who we are at our core? Take a look at what’s happening on the east coast as a result of Hurricane Sandy. While there are some exceptions, the great majority of people are uniting together and helping each other. This is what we do as people, this is who we are in our core. We are good people, who want the best for each other and those we love.
Can we focus on this now and be our best selves, and put the pettiness behind us?
Remember, our children are watching us….

There has been such emotionally charged coverage regarding women and their right to choose, I began to wonder how many of the people with these strong opinions have actually ever been in the situation where they had to make ‘the choice.’ I have, and I’d like to tell you the choice I made and why.

The month after my high school graduation (six weeks after senior prom) I went to the doctor because I wasn’t feeling well. She did a very thorough exam and took several tests. After what seemed like forever (this was 1979…no quick tests) she came back in the exam room and told me I was pregnant. I was shocked. I hadn’t felt very well and had missed a period, but they were always irregular. Pregnancy had never entered my mind.

My mother was in the waiting room, so I had to put on a brave face for the ride home. I wasn’t ready to tell her yet. So many thoughts were swirling in my head. I had been waiting for this time in my life for so long. In my house high school graduation meant one thing; FREEDOM. Whether you went to college or got a job, you were no longer under curfew in our house. Mom and Dad lightened up on the rules once you were of age. I’d turned 18 in my senior year, so I was done with high school and 18. This was the time I’d been looking forward to for years!

But as I rode home that night, I realized all those things I thought I’d be doing with my life during this time would now take a drastic turn. I always tell people that on the ride home that night I came to know two things; I knew I was going to have this baby, and I knew I would be doing it alone. The father and I had a stormy relationship at best, and I knew he was in no way ready to take on the responsibility of fatherhood.

Telling my parents was hard. Watching all my friends go off to college, living the life I’d been dreaming of was hard. Staying home on weekends was hard. Working full time to pay rent and bills and support a baby at nineteen was hard.

But here’s the key to the whole thing. The decision to have this baby was my choice. I loved him beyond reason, and the sacrifices I made were done in a spirit of a mother’s love for her child.

You really can’t explain to anyone what it’s like to go through something like that. You have to live it to know.

I often wonder what life for me or my son would have been like had I been forced to have him. If instead of leaving me alone to make my own choices, someone had decided I should be shamed and guilted into making the choice they felt was right for me. (How on earth can anyone propose to know what is right for someone else?)

If I was forced by other people’s judgment to make these sacrifices and endure those struggles, what would that have done to me? And consequently, my son?

If instead of a mother who made a choice because it was what she ultimately decided to do, my son had a mother who felt burdened with him and struggled to hide her shame because of that, would he be the kind, loving man he is today?

For those of you who propose that a woman carrying an unplanned pregnancy is cavalier or insensitive to the gravity of the choice she makes, let me tell you this; you are as wrong as you can be.

I made the choice I did, and I’m glad. I don’t deserve any accolades or medals because I chose to keep my baby. I didn’t do it to win anyone’s approval or acceptance. It was simply the choice I made.

I can also tell you that I have several girlfriends who have had abortions, some of who I went to the clinic with and nursed through their recovery.  In every case, it was a difficult decision made after many tears and sleepless nights. Anyone who believes a woman makes this choice like she’s choosing what to eat for dinner that night is as wrong as wrong can be.

The point is, it’s not your business to decide if what’s she’s doing is right or wrong, or how much suffering and guilt should be placed upon her should she choose to terminate the pregnancy. It’s her business. If you trot out your religious beliefs to back up the shame and judgment you want to put upon her, I would like to remind you of what I was told over and over in my many years of religious education. “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”

For some reason it seems a popular belief that shame, degradation and fear are good replacements for contraceptives. Given the state of our society, if that were true our population would be down by millions.

The simple truth is, unplanned pregnancies happen. They always have, and probably always will. But to think you are somehow creating a more enlightened, happier, productive society by limiting a woman’s access to birth control or termination rights is ludicrous. To believe you should shame a woman into doing what you believe is the ‘right’ thing is a form of egomaniacal righteousness beyond comprehension.

I think it’s pretty simple…if you don’t have a vagina, you don’t get to say what can and can’t be done with them. And if you do….you only get a voice regarding your own.

Mary Long

Founder, Herstorynetwork.com

Last week 60 Minutes aired an episode about Mt. Athos, a sacred mountain in Greece that is home to 22 monasteries.
Praying goes on 24 hours a day there, and all the monks are committed to a life of prayer that focuses on becoming closer to Jesus. The monasteries are thousands of years old, and because of this Mt. Athos is considered one of the most sacred sites on earth.

There are 35,000 visitors to this holy mountain every year, and they are all male. Women are not allowed on the mountain. One of the monks explained the reasoning behind this rule. “When these communities were first formed, women were allowed in as visitors. We found it distracting for the monks, and they didn’t stay as focused on their prayer life. That was when we instituted our policy that no women were allowed on the mountain.”
How do you feel about the fact that the answer to the monk’s inability to ‘focus on prayer’ with women present was to ban the women from this sacred site?

Though it has been more than twenty-five years since my brother’s death, I still remember that morning as if it were yesterday. I see in slow motion those first moments when we found out my twenty-two-year-old brother, Gary, had been murdered: Answering the phone. Handing it to my mother. Her collapsing. My father’s stricken face. The scene is etched in my memory like a permanent scar.

My brother was a musician who made his living as a drummer in a rock band. A true child of the sixties, Gary wore his hair long, lived each day with the belief that all men were his brothers, and preferred to “make love, not war.”

The details we received about the night he died were sketchy. He was killed in a small town in West Virginia, by someone he had once called a friend. The young man and my brother, who were housemate, had argued about something. When the discussion got heated, Gary, who never was one for fighting, said he didn’t want to argue and went upstairs to bed.

We’ve never gotten a true picture of what happened after that. What we do know is this: the young man, high on some substance that was a frequent companion of that lifestyle, either fought with Gary and stabbed him in the neck or crept up on him as he slept and cut his throat. In either case, the results were the same.

The call that changed our lives forever came early in the morning on March 7, 1975. It was the state police calling to tell us my brother had died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.

Over the next few days funeral arrangements were made and relatives arrived. I was fourteen at the time, the youngest in a family of eight, which in one horrific instant was reduced to seven.

What I remember most is watching my mother. After the call came, she walked all over our three-story house wringing her hands and crying, repeating the serenity prayer over and over. She seemed to be searching for something, and many years later when I asked her what it was, she thought for a moment and then said, “I think I was looking for your brother.”

I also watched my mother the night of the wake. I followed her everywhere, needing to be near her. Not many words were spoken between us. What possibly could be said?

I was standing in the vestibule of the funeral home when the funeral director told my mother that she had a telephone call in the office. She looked a bit puzzled but followed him to the phone. I followed her.

After listening to her speak for a few minutes, I had a pretty good idea who the person on the other end was. After she hung up, she confirmed my suspicions and relayed the entire conversation. What she told me changed the way I have viewed life ever since.

The woman calling was the mother of the young man who killed my brother. They lived in another state. She didn’t know us and had never met anyone in our family. But she found it within her to track down my mother and tell her how sorry she was for what happened. She said her heart went out to my mom and that she would pray for our family.

What my mother said to her amazes me to this day. She didn’t curse this woman for brining someone into the world who had taken the life of her child. She didn’t vent all the rage and pain she must have been feeling on the mother of the man who had murdered her son. She did not thank her politely for calling but reject her apology, telling her she would need time before she would be able to even think about forgiveness.

Instead, my mother said, “My heart goes out to you. I now know where my son is every night. I know he is at piece and will come to no more harm. I will never again have to worry whether he’s cold or sick or needs me. Your pain with your son is just beginning. I will keep you both in my prayers.”

They exchanged a few more words, and then my mother hung up the phone and went back to the foot of the casket to accept condolences from those who had come to pay their respects to her son. As young as I was, I knew I had just witnessed something rare and beautiful.

The woman had the courage to reach out a hand to my mother, and my mother had the graciousness to accept it. These two women, both engulfed in sorrow, showed compassion such as I have rarely seen since. To this day, I am awed by the woman’s courage in apologizing to my mother and humbled by my mother’s unhesitating mercy in forgiving the unforgivable.

When the young man’s trial was taking place and people were encouraging my mother to fly to West Virginia to make sure the killer got what was coming to him, my mother’s heart remained the same. She said she would crawl to West Virginia if it would bring Gary back, but since it wouldn’t, she saw no reason to spend her energy making sure someone else suffered.

I don’t remember my mother ever lecturing me on the need to forgive others, even when we believe that what they’ve done is unforgivable. Instead, in a way no words could have, she showed me the need for – and the power of – forgiveness by demonstrating this truth.

I am now a grown woman with grown children of my own. With each passing year, I am more aware of the incredible lesson of forgiveness I witnessed that night. Whenever I hear someone recite a talk of why something that someone has done to them is unforgivable, I remember.

My mother is seventy-five years old. She has fourteen grandchildren and eighteen great-grandchildren. I’m sure, if asked, she would say she has never accomplished anything great in her life, never done anything particularly special. But I would disagree. Although my mother received no awards and no newspaper headlines for what she did, she is a hero nonetheless. And I wonder if it is not these extraordinary acts of forgiveness and kindness by ordinary people that change the world for the better for the rest of us. I know it did for me.

by Mary Long