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Sometimes I feel like this. A shape of a woman out in a world of surface, normality, concrete. When I found this female silly bandz on the sidewalk last week, she was staring up at me, asking to be seen. I was coming back from a meeting and happened, just happened, to look down at the exact moment that she was right in front of my feet. If I'd kept going, I would have missed her.
And it was appropriate to find her. With issues on my mind like the war on women, the attack on Planned Parenthood, particularly in the state where I live (Ohio) and conversations with my own Mother about women's rights, it was a timely encounter.
It was funny, too. I smiled.
But, ultimately, it was symbolic to me. One lone pink figure of a female stuck out in a parking lot under the bright sun. I wondered whose wrist she had adorned. Who coveted her as an accessory before she got lost, swept up in the swirl of running from building to car. Who so easily abandoned her?
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Because she is a silly bandz, it was probably a girl. A girl who has no idea, yet, of the world she is inheriting. A girl who dances, likes to run and fall in the grass, play with other girls, skip, spin, cheer, dive, swim and do all kinds of things. A girl who is learning about her world and her way through it via her body and movement.
When I started blogging I took a vow to not bring politics into the space. My blog is a sacred place in that way. But if you have read about me and my work, if you know where I come from and what I value, you can probably guess that I value a woman's choice and the body as a house of knowledge.
So when I found this silly bandz, I started to reflect on the issue of women's rights. And I realized that if I hadn't stopped to look down and pause and see the female form, I would have rushed on to my next meeting, mulling over seemingly important things about work.
I would not have stopped to consider the present moment. And how this present moment holds a fierce attack on women and their bodies.
I am one of those women. And if you are reading this, and a woman, you are one of those women, too.
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I am not a shape. I am a body. I have man in me, too, you know. {You can read my thoughts on that from a post I wrote last year on being woman-ly.} And sometimes the man in me ascends, and sometimes the women in me ascends. Yin. Yang.
But I am most definitely something of a woman. And when I found Miss. Silly Bandz I was reminded of how I am not alone. I'm not a singular shape. I'm part of a much larger wisdom - a knowing I have a responsibility to uphold, champion and celebrate.
I have a lot of questions about how I and we do that in this present moment. And there are many more good women writing about these issues and women's rights. I just had to throw my silly bandz in the ring. I can no longer keep walking ahead without stopping to look down. I can no longer be silent about it here, as a writer and a woman.
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"Valuing our experience is not narcissism. It is not endless self-involvement. It is, rather, the act of paying active witness to ourselves and to our world. Such witness is an act of dignity, an act that recognizes that life is essentially a sacred transaction of which we know only the shadow, not the shape. As we attune ourselves more and more closely to the value of passing moments, we learn that we are something of moment ourselves."
Julia Cameron from The Right to Write
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