Paradise

On holidays - would add more words but just to damn busy to. Write som later kay!

The War on Women

"At work, you think of the children you have left at home.

At home, you think of the work you've left unfinished.

Such a struggle is unleashed within yourself.

Your heart is rent." 

~ Golda Meir

The “war on women” is really old and the side you chose to be on is simply not that easy to ascertain and unquestionably becomes a lose/lose scenario. I love Sunday morning TV. I love current events and I mostly love being informed. Sometimes its American agenda’s that get me riled up and today, it’s the controversy over the Ann Romney “doesn’t know struggles” comment that an Obama spin doctor made and the uber reaction to it.


My first thought was; “oh no she didn’t”, and “does she know the dragon she unleashed?” You can’t say any woman doesn’t know struggle. Mormons have a monopoly on the concept struggle and in reality, on the grand scale of kahuna’s struggles Ann Romney has struggled. But then, I went and watched the entire segment that brought about the controversy and once again, placing the comment into context, the “struggle” the Obama supporter speaks about is deeper and more profound than just the “struggles” as defined by some.


“Working women”, “stay at home Mom’s”, it’s all mute when you take the job description out of motherhood and make it just what it is, motherhood. There is no and should never be a descriptive noun to that title. Motherhood is motherhood and until you have to make the decisions necessary to add those descriptors its best left unsaid.


So what am I on about?


What describes struggle?


I think in a very real way Ann Romney knows the intimate and heart wrenching kind of struggle that changes a person. Cancer and MS are huge and to argue the simple fact is pointless; in that context, Ann KNOWS struggles and hardship intimately. Case closed.


Now, to argue she might not understand the day to day struggle some mothers know, of paying the rent, leaving your children so you can make ends meet, how do you provide adequate health care when you have none, feed your children and starve yourself, yeah, pretty sure she may not be to experienced in that. Does that make her ill equipped to speak for women as a whole? NO, absolutely not.


Here’s my point.


Why do we have to contend at all? Why is it about those that stay and home and those that work? Why is there even a war on women? I have been both. I stayed at home for 18 years and then was forced back into the work force for economic reasons. Hundreds of thousands of women find themselves in the very same predicament as I am in. At church, it was so hard to hear and feel so vilified for going out to work but tell me what else could have been done?


Child support was non-existent pretty quickly after the divorce was settled and the church wasn’t stepping forward to help out. I was expected to be self-reliant and I wasn’t prepared to go back to court to pay an enormous amount of money to get what little would be offered. I knew when I divorced I put myself in a position to no longer be a “stay at home” Mom and that I would then be responsible to my children.


I quickly felt the difference of “doing what’s right” and doing what was necessary. But what if it was a choice? What if the woman had more ability to provide then the man? Is that acceptable? Are men any less capable of parenting? All these questions unthinkable 25 years ago and now, answered yes more often than you think and even in the church. Hard economic times have forced choices on families, even in the church. I am not at church anymore to see the consequences but my guess would be that the man that stays home would come under a fair amount of judgment.


Let’s put this aside and ask; what is it about women that they can’t understand the choice and work load to each choice when it comes to parenting?


Each time a blow out in the press with regards to women and working and struggling happens, instead of imploding on each other and taking the focus away from the real issues in America, the working poor, find a common ground and focus on change.


Maybe some understanding all around could help. Ann Romney has faced struggles in her life that could and has broken amazing women and maybe she doesn’t understand poverty like some who have or even the concept of “working” in the tradition of outside the home but she can and most likely will be a voice. If she surrounds herself with people (women) who represent all aspects of women in America now it can and will work. Turning on each other profits no one. Stop the rhetoric and get to the issues.


Now, do I have a right to an opinion?


No, not really. Not my election, not my country. It is however an issue and life I am very familiar with. Having both life journeys, a work at home scenario and working outside I can address one thing. Both are work, both are difficult and yet have results that can and sometime are very different. If I had a choice, I would be home and be a homemaker, I see the value in it. The reality is, we all don’t get that choice and that is where understanding needs to come into play.

Stop It!

I'm most disturbed by individuals who are so narrow-minded as to think that their experience is the experience that everyone must have. Let's be broad enough in our understanding to recognize that the atonement of Jesus Christ is an individual atonement for each one of God's children. ~ Aged Observer

So, there are times when I lurk about on the internet seeking out answers to the questions I am far too timid to ask. It’s always so astounding to me that there are so many exmo’s like me struggling to find their footings in a new and ever accepting world. You are so used to a culture that deems struggles as a measurement to sainthood and when you come to terms with choice equaling consequence you find yourself seeing the picture so much more clearer and the world so much more understanding.


So, the inevitable question, what am I on about?


I very rarely miss being at church, I hardley ever think twice about my Sunday mornings and relish in the freedom to simply let the day be what God intended, “A day of rest.” But recently I completely zoned out about Conference weekend and all that those two days imply.


I went onto my favorite FB groups to see them all abuzz about the talks and the doctrines and the moments that either a.) Make the exmo’s cringe. Or b.) Make the momo’s ecstatic; sometimes one talk can accomplish both. It happens more than you can even imagine.


I read a little and felt even less and turned onto my “Book of Awakening” to establish a moment of Zen. Then I went back with a new hope that somewhere there would be a “meet in the middle” compromise.


“In a world of accusations and unfriendliness, it is easy to gather and cast stones. But before we do so, let us remember the words of the One who is our Master and model: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.” ~ D. Uchtdorf.


As a general rule I don’t have an absolute favorite anything most of the time. I have lots of favorites. President U is one of those general authorities that remind me that there is a middle ground. He often comes to terms of endearment that engender both sides and his admonitions’ always resolve around hope and forgiveness. He reminds me that there are reasons to hope that someone in authority can speak to what is REALLY needed for resolution. That someone understands the gospel of Jesus.


I wish I didn’t have to defend anything to anyone with regard to the choices I make and that the consequences were quietly mine to own. I wish that members understood just how cruel they are and that when they realize it that they would then see a need to change. I was just tired of waiting for a different world then what I so intimately understood and lived in. I get, in a very real way, that I can choose to ignore the judgment and then rise above the criticism. I am learning to do just that. But; it is always nice when someone in authority over those who see themselves as righteous and use their religion to excuse poor behavior, speaks, and says “stop it”.


Now, the question is, did they hear it?

Two Cents and a Little Bit More!

I refuse
 to accept the view that mankind
 is so tragically bound to the starless midnight
of racism and war that the bright daybreak
 of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality

... I believe
that unarmed truth and unconditional love

will have the final word.

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

When I was a young woman, I lived with an unconventional Mormon Mom. She defied all the rules in almost every way and she was loved, not only by her own children but all the youth that rested their weary souls on her door step. Our home was a haven and it was fun. She didn’t turn anyone away. She was, quite literally, the perfect MOM.


Now, if you were sitting on a pew in a Mormon chapel that isn’t how she would have been described. She was the thorn in many a Mormon parent side. Her rules were simple;


1.) Don’t hurt yourself
2.) Don’t hurt others
3.) Don’t hurt things


How could you go wrong with that thought stream? Well, it was wrong and she heard about it on a regular basis. She taught tolerance and love and the old;”stones in a glass house” mindset. She gave me some of the greatest tools for survival any parent could give; once again – Thank-you Mom. Thank-you.


So now; to get to the point.


I have thought about addressing an issue near and dear to my heart that so far I have been fairly Mum on.


Here it goes;


– Momo’s – that old “may be offensive” disclaimer applies here so exit out if you don’t want to be offended.


Mom owned a flower shop. She was extremely successful and there were times when she would get so busy that she needed to hire extra help. She had some pretty cool friends and one of them was Joe. I met him the first time when I was a senior in high school. I came running down the stairs to talk to Mom about my day and there he was; all 6’4” of strapping flaming gayness. His boyfriend was there too but I can’t remember his name, I met of few of those over the years I knew Joe. Mom saw immediately that my head was spinning and she proudly announced Joe’s sexual orientation immediately and told me if I had a problem with it I was “no daughter of hers” and to “get over it!”.


I was so molly, it was scary and I learned a valuable lesson that day, one of many my mother taught me over the years. This one was about judging and finding worth in all people.


Joe became a fixture in the flower shop as did most of his friends and over the years I worked along side almost all of them. I stayed Molly and I learned from this advent guard Mom that taught me that acceptance trumped beliefs. It was the best lesson any mother could ever give a child.


I had married my RM prince (whole other blog post) – served in every conceivable calling a woman in the church could hold, birthed 4 children and lived and flourished in all my Mormonism, as did my Mom and her friends in their own journeys. Then it happened, slowly but surely, AIDS hit our hometown.


Joe was not the first to fall but he did indeed tumble. Most of the men Mom worked with in the flower industry contracted the disease. Joe, Frank and all of the men that had worked along side my Mom and I would eventually feel the effects of the AIDS epidemic and Mom struggled through each funeral. It was a sad time in her life, she mourned so deeply.


Through that time, my mother taught me such a vital and important life lesson. She trumped friendships over a belief system she just couldn’t see eye to eye with and by belief system I mean Mormonism, not homosexuality (for those that might advocate gayness as a choice). She paid a dear price for being unapologetic about it. She eventually had no LDS friends and she would leave the church. It just wasn’t true for her. She couldn’t reconcile the church having such a strong and ardent belief in the wrongness of same sex attraction and still feel comfortable there among other doctrines that just didn’t settle well with her.


Years later as she gave me the lessons I required through her dying of cancer we broached the subject of Joe and same sex attraction and Mormonism. Mom shared some of her thoughts and she challenged me to vocalize mine.


When I said it out loud I knew it wouldn’t make some of my Mormon friends happy. It just didn’t matter, I knew in my heart how I felt and it felt right. I knew I would never apologize for feeling and believing the way I did.


God would not send anyone to this earth with an attraction to the same sex and then call it a weakness. He is just not that cruel. Attraction is attraction and to EXPECT anyone to live a celibate life, being forbidden to feel deep and loving intimacy because he/she sent them here attracted to the same sex is far too cruel for the GOD I know and love. He is a loving God and same sex attraction is as real as heterosexuality. I just don’t believe that same sex attraction is a choice. I just don’t.


Mom laughed when I voiced it out loud. She said she had done her job then. She asked that I advocate my opinion so that those young people stuck and suffering within the church could know someone cared. Little did she know how unwelcome that opinion would be and how much the church would do to get involved with making it wrong for same sex couples to marry?


She'd be turning over in her grave ready to give her two cents worth if she could I am sure pointing her finger at whoever needed to hear it the whole time.


I made my stand perfectly clear when Prop 8 surfaced. I came under some fire but I was unrelenting. I still make no apologies. The separation of church and state precedes the church having any involvement here.


My home is as open as my Mom’s was and my daughter being a professional dancer has brought some of the most amazing human souls I have met home. I hope they felt as welcome in my home as Joe did in Mom’s. I believe in a world that will sometime not look at the differences we all see in each other but rather embrace the same. The sameness of hope, of dreams and of the bonds and make us human, make us whole. When that happens what will be left to argue about?


To all the young questioning youth out there; It does indeed get better. More and more people like me are here and opening our voices. I see a whole new generation of acceptance stepping forward. Mom was a vanguard; she left her hopes to be nurtured by me and shared deeply with my children. I have raised 4 children who feel very much as I do, they have kids and they will, in turn, teach their children and if it’s done well, soon, hate will be nurtured out and acceptance will be there, maybe even in the church. Here’s for hoping.