Women

From Solid to Fluid

| Flower Roberts

My isolation odyssey starts on April Fools Day. This is appropriate since the argument with my dad that changed everything involved my supposedly being made a fool of. This pivotal point in my past was based in love and misunderstanding. My dad was the best person I have ever known. He loved me unconditionally despite the fact that I was another daughter, not a son.

So my past has shifted from rock solid to fluid in the past year. The present swirls with political upheaval and I have let go of my expectations for my future. There is no solid ground to plant my feet on.
I am strangly at peace in my floating, sinking and flinking. It has been a bit freeing not being the pole that others dance around. I am no longer holding down a fort or holding up the sky.

My talisman

I credit this peace to my friend Sandra. We used to use the term adapt like it was our code word. I have felt her with me many times since her death. I brought her framed photo here to keep her in my mind as I swim through the next month or more in isolation to write and change my mind from solid to fluid.

Papyrus card I send to friends hit by waves.

My new talisman is a wave pendant on a necklace and a shirt with the Kanagawa wave on it to remind me that energy moves and change is constant.

Kanagawa wave T-shirt

I may blog through April or I may be silent. Just know I am doing my best to tell three stories of three women from three generations in my family who were prevented from following their heart’s desire for their “own good” and how that turned out for them.

Paternalism is a double-edged sword. Men may be able to make women do what they want them to do, but they cannot make them WANT to do what they want them to do.

FLOW is flowing.

Pass the Baton

| Flower Roberts

I have been looking at my life and goals differently lately.

Instead of seeing  myself in a race with a my own personal finish-line,

I now consider myself part of a relay team…of women.

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I have been reading history books, you see.

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I wanted to know how women in the past have attained success while surrounded by sexism.

I have being traveling back a century or two.

This seems to be about where the political tide would like to take us.

So I am consulting with the likes of Beatrix Potter, Marie Curie, Clara Barton , Annie Oakley and Rosalind Franklin.

What have I learned from our fore-mothers?

They stayed their course.  They kept on their special path.  They went with their flow. They followed their dreams.

They kept at it.   They kept learning and earning, reading and writing, sowing and growing, nursing and nourishing, hoping and helping, praying and praising, painting and sculpting, marching and singing, farming and planting.

They were not defined by nor confined by the men in their lives.

This political tide is nothing new young women.

Females have been knocked down and pushed back for centuries.

You must keep heading toward your chosen shore; despite the tide cycle, current or undertow.

Stay afloat and swim forward when you can.   Don’t let this get you down or make you drown.

So ladies, don’t drop your causes.    Cling to them with zeal.

Use your passion (not poison) to make this world a better (not bitter) place.

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My friend the paramedic/nurse riding her Harley through the Badlands.

Grandmothers, mothers, aunts, queens, witches, neighbor-ladies, and girlfriends;

Stretch out your arm to pass that baton by encouraging, teaching, and supporting and sharing.

Just keep carrying and passing the baton.

Granddaughters, sisters, nieces, princesses, bitches and baby girls

reach out and grab the baton with courage, faith, strength and grit.

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My same friend as a sparkling twirler in our high school band.

Carry it on and then pass it off to your female teammates.

Twirl it if you like.  Paint it, radiate it, bandage it up, write on it, shoot it,  x-ray it,

even burn in at both ends, if you must.

But keep on passing it.

You can’t each reach your full potential, unless we all get to reach for ours.

This is not a race against time, it is a relay through time.

There were many women before you, there will be many more that follow.

Pass the baton.

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FLOW