To the Grandmothers I Love
Practice in trusting my gut today since this is about women’s guts after all.
No, it’s not. It’s not about our guts. It’s not about children. It’s not about Christian values. It’s not about the Bible’s teachings on the human fetus.
Right now, people are gathering in front of Cleveland, Ohio’s city hall to be loud, whether heard or not. To be together, because it can feel very lonely. To be supported. To be angry. To be.
There is the political sphere and there is the American political sphere. The two are not the same. Right now, people are gathering in front of Cleveland, Ohio’s city hall to be loud, whether heard or not. To be together, because it can feel very lonely. To be supported. To be angry. To be.
To be what they believe in their personal political sphere but in the only constructs available in the American political sphere. Desperate for change and direction and trying what is known because we’re human. What is known is sometimes all you can see when torture is threatened. Torture and subservience.
And for me, white woman, white woman who wants a man inside me. Close to the evolutionary purpose. Me, a white woman, desperately afraid of that mortal space for America’s othered.
Their children that you required. That you so loved so you sacrificed their mothers, three times more likely to die than white mothers. Those Black children that you so loved that you killed them in that very city of protest now and so many others.
Tamir Rice.
And ALL we want is the choice. ALL. All we want that has been within my grasp; I, white woman.
But no, that’s not all we want. That’s not all I want. I want acknowledgement.
For these truths:
White supremacy benefits from abortion rights denied, constructs power maintenance, throws its female compatriots to their “chosen” demons of subservience, righteous suffering, godliness, and sacrifice, when it serves the larger power. The god that is Christian American political demagoguery.
This pitting poor suffering powerless white against poor suffering powerless other. This threat of identity when all you have is whiteness. Another manipulation of white supremacy and patriarchy. Disallowing men the complexity they desire. Serving the same old god of power.
Another manipulation of white supremacy and patriarchy. Disallowing men the complexity they desire.
I don’t know where to enter the American political sphere. I, in my personal sphere, healing. Learning to love a body that has so changed even without the creation of new life. Wondering how to respect those that my voice could systemically drown out. So I’m not speaking for them or to them.
I’m speaking to you, white woman. Me, my mother, my grandmother, my sister, my friend. I intended to place my physical form in the political sphere. I intended to feel less alone. Sane.
But I watched the lightning in the thunderclouds above the road I’ve driven countless times. I got closer to where I grew up. The fields always familiar. The empty space between land and clouds never old. A childhood with all the choice in the world. And I made a different choice.
I went home to the fields. To the lake.
I went to where your physical form rested. And I didn’t even realize, think about how it wasn’t your full name on your grave stone until I was sitting on the red plaid blanket, with thunder in the distance, holding the pink geranium I brought for you. For me. For this ritual.
The name without the one you truly despised. That name of biblical devotion, Ruth. You cast out in the only way you could.
And then the figure I don’t think of you as.
JOANNE SHICKLEY
BELOVED WIFE
All of the benefits, all of the ease, all of the joy, carelessness, leisure. I have because of this family.
You would not approve of my shirt today. It has breasts on it.
And those choices that were no choice at all as well as everything you wanted. Beloved Wife wanted all of her children. She loved all of her children. Even the ones that never took breath. Even the ones that did not grow old. Even the ones that she hurt and that hurt her. The God of her knew all of her babies before they were born. And one of those babies was my mother.
Who loves me.
So who am I to…
Yet.
Let’s not sink into dichotomies again. The American political sphere’s dichotomies of weak and strong, right and wrong, good and evil.
No.
I refuse to deny my livelihood and history. I refuse to deny my grandmother’s convictions and also her sorrows. I refuse to deny my birth-given racial power or discount the power hungrily fought for by others. Against all rigged odds.
I refuse to deny my choice.
This does not deny your love. My sister’s love. My mother’s love. My grandmother’s love. Her children’s hearts.
The personal political sphere where actual humanity resides is not constrained by dichotomies. Each individual intersects in experience, society, culture, and psychology. Here is where change can happen. Here in the boundless space of genuine connection.
God, as I understand God, can rid the self doubt in my bones and let me live between absolutes. Let ALL live between absolutes.
White women…Can we please see that our convictions may be held in the same resolute and tearful way the convictions are held by those we are told are not like us.
White women, can we please see not reason but feeling and connection. Can we please see that our convictions may be held in the same resolute and tearful way the convictions are held by those we are told are not like us. Can we please see that our humanity is not denied when others choose differently. Can we see that there will be many things we must mourn in this world to survive it. Our mourning will be the change in us that we cannot make in that American political sphere. That we should not force on others.
The change from our grief will be the most important and meaningful change in the personal political sphere. A change that allows us a connection and distance from what scares us and what drives us.
You can love and cherish all children in their wombs. Your God can know their names.
My God can know my name as I love and cherish my body.
We can all change to be more human.