when women refuse to be silenced
by Elouise
#MeToo backlash
a tsunami of contempt
contorted faces
taunting voice of POTUS
how dare they call us out?
crocodile tears for victims
rage at their own undoing
fear writ large
caught in headlights
frozen with disbelief
resorting to the game of boys
bullying their way to the top
All this and more
when women refuse to be silenced
The most powerful force that silences me is NOT what others say out loud or even to me about ‘these women.’ It’s my own deeply ingrained people-pleasing habit.
Though it isn’t as strong as it was several years ago, it’s still a powerful force. A forked tongue that keeps whispering I’m a hair’s breadth from being ruled out of order, or losing all my friends.
Some women and men in my life don’t struggle with this. I admire them. Watching them makes me keenly aware I wasn’t born or raised to this level of direct personal honesty. In particular, I didn’t learn to stand up for myself, and I’m still paying for it.
So here I am today dealing with demons of the past, though in a new key.
Thanks to recent events and our national history, I still have opportunities to speak up and act differently than in the past. Not as a child, and not as an outsider. I’ve more than paid my dues. I’m in the last chapter of my life, faced with opportunities to make a difference. Not just for others, but for myself. First, however, I have to negotiate just one piece of business:
“The dying woman has to decide how tactful she wants to be.”
With thanks to Anatole Broyard, Intoxicated by My Illness, p. 62
It isn’t over until it’s over. I’m staying tuned.
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 12 October 2018
Image found at luckyottershaven.com
Telling the Truth 
Elouise, I hope you can conquer demons of the past. Keep at it.
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Thanks, Waldo. I think it’s my lifetime work, one brick on another, as long as I have breath. Actually, it’s rather invigorating–though disconcerting from time to time. Sort of of like weeds you can’t quite get rid of. 🙂
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Or as my mother recently said – she’s eighty, and was expressing a view I used to, when I was about nineteen. I think I finally junked it about fifteen years ago – “If you knew what I’m really like, you wouldn’t like me.” I found that very sad.
Sorry for radio silence. Have been trudging the halls in Germany at the bookfair. Mammoth task with a bag of books on back, but home safe, much fitter, and appreciating being spoken to again. Four days of radio silence in the midst of an uproar, is a weird sensation.
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Oh my…I used to feel like that, too. Very debilitating and beyond sad.
I’m impressed! Germany plus book fair plus lugging around all those books. I visited your blog site this morning and read more installments. Hot stuff! 😊
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I was brought up with two very contradictory mantras from my father; ‘don’t upset people’ and ‘stand up for your convictions’. I was always fairly gentle natured when I was young and so the first one worked for me. Now I wish I had been stronger and given more value to the second one.
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Thanks for this comment, John. I’d say (not knowing you as the fairly gentle natured young man) you’ve found a way to stand up for your convictions without driving everyone away. I didn’t have the courage of my convictions back then, and even now I find myself slipping into nice mode more often than I like to admit.
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But I think it is more challenging when we are young, to say what we want. We are still learning about that, and in any case, as youths, we are used to thinking that the way people see us says more about us than the way we see ourselves. I think, as we get older, we have the same sorts of regrets, too. “I wish I’d been more assertive, done more of what I wanted to….” etc.
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