I don't know what I expected when I decided to start this journey by reading, The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. Honestly, I picked it because it played such a huge role in sparking the second feminist movement. Little did I know I would relate so much to a book written 51 years earlier.
There is no way I could cover the entire book in one post. In fact, I might need to open a can of worms at some point down the road and speak to the role advertisers play in American women's lives. The only thing that has changed decades later is the mode to which the advertisers reach women today via mommy blogs and lifestyle blogs. But for now I'll close that can and keep things a little more personal.
And let
me start out by saying I completely believe that there are women out
there who are truly fulfilled in their role as a full-time stay at home
mom. And that is a beautiful thing. In fact, I wish I fell into that
camp. It sure would make life a lot easier. I, on the other hand, suffer from the problem that has no name.
"Just what was this problem that has no name? What were the words women used when they tried to express it? Sometimes a woman would say 'I feel empty somehow...incomplete.' Or she would say, 'I feel as if I don't exist.'"
I get embarrassed sometimes when people ask me, "How are you doing?" I get embarrassed because I don't have much to say. In reality I'm fine. My days look the same. I try to get out of the house everyday and do something fun with the kids. I do laundry and clean a little. I change a lot of diapers and make some food. I do this every day. Days and weeks run into each other because they are all the same. I don't have any real goals. I might try to make my days have more meaning by finding new recipes, doing a craft with my oldest, or going on a hike thru the redwoods with the boys. And those are all really good things, but at the end of the day there is still something deeply missing.
"If women do not put forth, finally, that effort to become all that they have it in them to become,
they will forfeit their own humanity."
I almost didn't use the above quote for my illustration for Betty. Let's be honest, it sounds a little harsh. But why shy away from such a harsh reality? I love my family. I love my husband. I love being a mother to my boys. But I will lose myself and them if I don't try to be something more. And although I didn't arrive in this place entirely in the same way women in the late 40's, 50's, and early 60's did, I am here nonetheless. And I must take these words by Betty Friedan to heart:
"The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself as a person, is by creative work of her own."
