Wisdom from the Highway
A smart woman writer friend once described the literary world as a secret remote highway of our minds. You might meet a stranger and mention the names of books you have both read — Anna Karenina, or Omeros, and both are instantly transported to the highway, populated by kindred spirits who share worlds and ideas.
Last month when I met my daughter for lunch daily in London, absorbed in her first job, navigating the world as a young woman, there were things I left unsaid.
Yes, I worried what the walk along the canal so sunny now, would be like in winter, with the dodgy men under bridges. Or if someone was taking advantage of her. If her heart was okay.
I fretted about the mistakes I’d made as a mother, and if I had damaged her by returning to work days after she was born, leaving her to be brought up by strangers because then, if you didn’t pitch up to work, you could be fired, never mind you just gave birth. I worried if in juggling it all I had been too harsh, too rushed, too impatient with her.
I know our children require space to become their own people, so there are things I didn’t tell her. That there exists a highway solely inhabited by women, the one that allows women to connect across nations, class, and colour.
Men, even the ones who love us, won’t know—how could they, they are men—what it feels like to be born a girl. They won’t know what it feels like to be socialised, no matter how smart you are, to accept that men will objectify you whether or not you want it, to be socialised to be people-pleasing Cinderella to get by, to wait for your prince, to be saved by a man.
Newsflash: That doesn’t happen. We save ourselves. And others.
Global statistics apart, the human struggle that we share with men, apart—if you get ten women in a room, any age, any country, I can guarantee you that all ten will have endured trauma themselves.
The garden variety type of Me-Too victims, of rape, incest, sexual harassment, ghosting, economic exploitation at work, bullying in the home, the denial of fundamental freedoms to earn, travel, and study. In warring, impoverished and some Islamic countries, women, patently second-class citizens, face all the above and being killed for speaking out.
On this highway, you will meet quiet heroism, warrior women who amputate the trauma part of themselves, present beautifully, still marvel at life.
Watch for the land mines on this road. You will meet too, women who like all enslaved humans will defect, will judge, betray and abandon their tribe and give themselves up to the man’s version of who they should be. Many women are raging today because that’s what people on the margins do.
Convert rage into insight, keep your heart open to love, engage with excellence because it will keep you whole. Love isn’t constricted in a single person and family. It’s everywhere, in girlfriends, in kindred spirits, in men who believe uplifting a woman is to uplift all humans.
Be watchful for pride, as are all dust, remembering our lives are brief and to disengage is like kicking this precious life in the teeth. Remember, too, not to move too fast. You may make mistakes and not see the wild loveliness around you.
Your young generation has grown up seeing women reaching for and getting human rights. You’ve seen far more empowered women than we have. The highway is packed with warrior women who do the saving.
As the Amazon burns, poverty and inequality worldwide persist, Brexit looms, and Trump is a symbol of the great divide of the world between those who believe in liberty and justice and those who don’t—take your place amongst the warriors.
Use the knowledge of the highway and weave onto other broken people on other highways. Backed by the potent support of your tribe, take your place in the world, pick up broken pieces, heal hearts and minds.
Do your part to make us all whole again.