For
Strong Women by Marge Piercy
A strong woman is a
woman who is straining
A strong woman is a woman standing
on tiptoe and lifting a barbell
while trying to sing "Boris Godunov."
A strong woman is a woman at work
cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,
and while she shovels, she talks about
how she doesn't mind crying, it opens
the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up
develops the stomach muscles, and
she goes on shoveling with tears in her nose.
A strong woman is a woman in whose head
a voice is repeating, I told you so,
ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,
why aren't you feminine, why aren't
you soft, why aren't you quiet, why aren't you dead?
A strong woman is a woman determined
to do something others are determined
not be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
a manhole cover with her head, she is trying
to butt her way through a steel wall.
Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
to be made say, hurry, you're so strong.
A strong woman is a woman bleeding
inside. A strong woman is a woman making
herself strong every morning while her teeth
loosen and her back throbs. Every baby,
a tooth, midwives used to say, and now
every battle a scar. A strong woman
is a mass of scar tissue that aches
when it rains and wounds that bleed
when you bump them and memories that get up
in the night and pace in boots to and fro.
A strong woman is a woman who craves love
like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong
in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail.
What comforts her is others loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.
Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.
Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us. Strong is what we make
each other. Until we are all strong together,
a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.
~ By: Marge Piercy
Thank-you Nicole <3
http://youtu.be/RvMeOllo_Vo
dull pencil
Monday, April 15, 2013
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Washington DC Rally
We decided to take the trip to D.C. Julian was the only one that was originally going to go along, but then Leah made her valiant effort to convince me of her potential contributions to the day and won the argument.
We printed out approximately 700 Action for Family
Unity and 200 pages of front and back (Spanish and English versions) platform
planks for immigration reform written by Ellin and friends. She has
recently finished her documentary The Second Cooler. We also laminated her documentary’s poster to help advertise. A clip-board held a petition to
end the bar of American Citizens’ spouses to be allowed back into the States
with their families that Action for Family Unity has online through Change.Org that we printed it in
hopes of getting written signatures from the DC Rally crowd.
We set out with the car loaded up. All of our Action for Family Unity flyers
and such went into a backpack that we took turns carrying in the field. We had
a camera with several batteries and memory storage - ready for anything. Our GPS
was plugged in and programmed for the first DC Metro stop on the red-line
called Shady Grove.
Our first stop was for gas at Sheetz, the GPS was
repeating “route recalculation” and turned us around, then back in through
town, around the wrong streets, etc… we drove in our home town for at least 20
minutes and I still don’t know what was wrong with that GPS, but I almost threw
it out the window… Of course, if only I knew that I could punch a button to see what
direction, what highway that it was aiming for, then I could have been directly
on the road, however… it was borrowed and I did not know how to work it.
Finally we were on the right road, headed for the TurnPike…
At the TurnPike, I did not see anyone and I do not
ever take the pay toll road, so I just drove right through the booth tolls without
stopping… when we arrived at the exit she asked for my ticket. I did not have a
ticket! So I had to pay the full amount of maximum toll which was $25. But,
whatever.
Leah was in the back seat and Julian sat up front
with me. We were having the best time. I love the road. I love to drive. When I
was a child my father traveled for his job (chimney and tower aviation obstruction lighting/pollution systems monitoring... in other words, changing the blinky-lights up-high on towers all over the country) and he took my mom and my sisters and I with him so we were always traveling into every contiguous state, so I feel very comfortable on the highway traveling –
almost at home. We turned up the radio and put the windows down. We drove well
over the speed-limit and it was totally awesome!!! (We joked at the expectations of several tickets in the mail this week following...)
There was a truck-stop that we came to in attempt to
buy a hat for Julian’s long hair to be put out of his eyes in the wind, but
found a Harley handkerchief instead, which was even cooler. He has always had
long hair since he was little, and when we lived on the beach in Florida he used
babushkas so it worked. He looks like a bad-boy, but he is as harmless as a
kitten and has the maturity of most adults, (some, more so). He looked so cute!
The closer we got to DC the hotter it got. We left
chilly Western PA for the 90-degree heat of the Capital. I asked Julian “is
Leah sleeping?” He turned around and said, “yea, but it looks like she just got
out of the shower – she is all wet” because she was sweating so much. She must
not have been feeling too good from the start because she ended up getting a
bit of a heat stroke at the Rally and had to take an hour rest under a tree.
At an intersection outside of DC, there was a woman
dressed in the Statue of Liberty costume holding an income tax sign. Julian told
her out the window that she needed to come join our rally because it was better
than what she was doing!
We finally arrived at the Metro Station outside of
DC. The parking lot however was completely filled without a single spot left
for us. I did not know how to program the GPS even if I would have known of
another Metro Station’s address, which I didn’t, so we had to just keep driving
around in circles. We spotted a woman hiking through the aisles of cars and we
asked her if she was leaving, then we stalked her all of the way to her car. Other
cars were starting to gather as we waited for her to go, so Julian hopped out
to fend the spot on foot. We parked and assembled our things together. We had
to finish our poster on the hood with our sharpie markers and it was so darn
hot out!
The Metro was so confusing. The world has changed so
much and everything is run by machines now and to get a person to stand in a
ticket booth that you can hand money to in exchange for a ticket is a thing of
the past. Now they have these machines that ask you what the heck you want when
you don’t know yourself. There seems to be terminology for Metro travelers that
I was not accustomed to because the words that were asked of me were foreign
like if I wanted great ticket or an even greater ticket or a different ticket
because the greatness of the tickets in total were then directed to asking how
much I was willing to pay for that ticket… just a total menagerie with a line
behind me of experienced Metro riders who were maybe going to work or
something. Oh so confusing! However, the change back is given from the machines in golden colored dollars that you just cant find anywhere else - so we now have a collection of about 20 from different years... including Sacajawea. We got into the Metro and relaxed.
That is when I texted Giselle and told her we were
on the metro, then we'd be off to look for food. I wrote my phone number on the kids’
arms along with Giselle’s number in case anything would happen to any of us.
The ride took 45 minutes.
I went into deep thought in sort of a flash-back
state of mind of Mexico and our life there. Riding the Metro made me remember
the bus system while we lived in Mexico. I have the fondest memories of that
time. I felt the memories of all of our travels back and forth from country to
country as well due to the mixture of rushed pace with slight confusion and
everything being foreign from our daily life.
Our stop came and we were now in DC.
We walked through the Metro station to a restroom
and then a McDonald's where we got 6 cheeseburgers but only each ate one and
saved the rest for a “just in case” later.
Since we had no idea where we were going in DC we
just strolled along. We began to notice signs of the rally as people were sporadically
holding signs or flags up here and there. So we just went in the same direction
until the obvious pedestrian traffic turned into more of a march towards a
central location. Then we could hear cheering! Our feet picked up speed as
we started to get excited and we rounded the sidewalk to peer down to a crowd
in front of the Capital building.
Our strategy was decided at this time. First we
would get out all of the flyers and then we would relax a little and go for the
petition signatures. It was just so absolutely hot out and sunny and there was
little shade to hide in. The three of us took up our flyers and went deep into
the crowd that was tight up against the speaker in front on the Capital
balcony, passing them to everyone while we squeezed through.
Leah started to look bad, like she was going to pass
out. We distributed most of the flyers by this time in roughly an hour or more.
We lost Julian several times and once it took too long to find him and I
almost went into a panic. When we found him he was just as casual as can be
talking to people like he had no clue that Leah and I were freaking out. So we
made a plan that if we do get lost for a substantial amount of time to meet in
front of this big bush that was in the back of the area.
Our faces
were red and sweat was pouring down our foreheads. We were the only ones
passing out any type of literature to read in the crowd. There was a stand
selling flags and banners, but nothing like what we were doing. We figured that
we were providing souvenirs for people to keep. We hope that we created the
awareness for our cause as well as helped other groups with ideas for their
cause. Maybe the other organizations will make flyers too now. Nothing ended up
on the ground that we passed out. It all stayed in the hands of the people that
took them willingly. Every time we would turn around to see where we had been,
the folks that had our flyers were reading them. It was a success!
Leah finally was rejuvenated. We walked around a bit
more with the few remaining flyers to pass out, took some pictures of the
different organizations and groups, and just let ourselves feel the presence of
this amazing spirit in the air.
The wall along the back was where Julian then walked
along talking to the people sitting down to gather the signatures for the
petition. Most of them were Spanish speaking. Julian speaks Spanish with native
fluency, because he went through most of his elementary school years in school
in Mexico. He went from person to person, explaining the petition and general
chit-chat (he is a bit of a talker). He got into the third page of about 30
each on each page.
The last photo above, Julian said that the woman in
the photo is from Cuba.
While Julian was working the petition, Leah was
still not feeling that great so we stood and listened to the speaker in the
front, and I recorded a video. I had my shades on, but underneath I started to
cry at the scene that was in front of me. It was one of the most amazing
experiences of patriotic enthusiasm and brotherhood in humanity that I think
that I have ever seen. It was as beautiful as the birth of a baby. The flags
were waving and there was a strong spirit of hope.
Then we I saw Giselle walking with a group of
ladies. I said to Leah “Oh my God – I’ll be back!” I recognized her right away
in the crowd in front of me, and I dodged right for her with all my thrilled
excitement, hugged on and kissed her cheek like she was a long lost sister! Afterward Leah kept making fun of me, saying that I probably scared her as a woman just out of the crowd grabbing her like that with no warning, but I was so overwhelmed with happiness I did not think but to just hug her! All
the years of making friends on Facebook, sharing the happiest moments and the
most gut-wrenching moments – I tell you in all honesty these friendships go
well beyond simple “how do you do’s” and photo sharing. Giselle is the first of
my friends that I have been blessed to meet in person. It was a truly amazing
meeting, confirming that she is real and is who I always pictured, very strong
and very lovely.
It was time to go. The kids were tired and we still
had to travel the whole way back to PA before it got too late. We headed back
to the Metro while looking back at the hope and love of a group of people who
need their prayers answered today.
The Metro home was difficult because we were tired.
Both of the kids fell asleep. It was crowded and there were many people
standing in the aisle holding onto the bars. It reminded me of the Route 20 in Mexico
that rides from my old house in Tezoyuca, into Acatlipa, through Temixco, and
into Cuernavaca… how many times I had to stand in the aisle on that bus… I cannot
even count. How similar our countries are, but yet so entirely different.
The ride home was strange as there was a piece of
the bottom of my car that was dragging – so it was loud. I am still not sure what it
is, some of it got worn away… Julian wired it up yesterday for me. The last 95
miles we had to drive in the dark in a thunderstorm, so it was slow moving.
Jules sat awake with me though, and we joked and laughed about random things,
talking about life stuff…
We did it for our friends and for the good of humanity, but we made
yet another awesome memory for ourselves - another adventure.
Por que?
My kids: Julian and Leah
Why do I care enough to drive from Pittsburgh to Washington DC to attend an immigration rally?
Why do I care enough to drive from Pittsburgh to Washington DC to attend an immigration rally?
I am no longer in a situation where I personally
need immigration reform.
Is there a foreign spouse abroad waiting to join me
in the States?
Am I straddling a family over the border juggling
stability issues?
Am I attempting to assimilate into a third world
custom complete with language, food, and school system differences?
NO – I have a normal life today, as do most
Americans…
Basically I am just an American single-mom keeping a
low profile in the community by attending classes and spending time at home, or
occasionally venturing over to the grocery store…
my normal life!
But.
I was there once, in the above mentioned. That was
my life.
It is unhealthy to live in the past; therefore I
choose to keep moving quite successfully, despite my mind’s memory storage of
the emotions.
Today – I have my friends.
I have my friends who are my fellow American women –
and I love them dearly.
They are living a life of oppression of our very own
government, an abusive situation where the abuser takes pride in the pain that
they endure.
They cry as the abuse continues… as the abuser walks
away with a puffed chest – sporting a look of complete dominance and ego…
…withholding apology or sensitivity.
I am sensitive to her – as we all should be when we can understand how it feels to categorized into a label of less when we are more...
Those certain law makers who side with no one but the side of apathetic snake whispering and ignore the reality of some of its citizens with purpose or ignorance.
Law makers that went to the same high-schools that
my friends did…
When a person suffers a huge loss such as a member
of their family – there is a process of grief,
beginning
with denial and ending in acceptance,
it
takes time – but it is a natural human ability!
I know the process personally is a difficult
process, as do most people. We can understand as we have all suffered loss in our lives.
There
is no time frame offered when you live daily in limbo waiting for immigration
reform – every day is sadness!
Every
day is frustration.
Every
day is hard to get through.
There
is no grieving process to adhere to!
the daily atrocity of abuse – inflicted by the one that we love –
the daily atrocity of abuse – inflicted by the one that we love –
The
United States of America Legislature of fellow Americans…
My dear friends deserve respect, love, and justice for
their lives are worth more than that!!!
Today - Awareness is needed in America to support an end to the
abuse of these awesome women.
So I live in the present, with ever so little
yesterday and always hope for tomorrow…
That is what I was doing in DC – living in the
present at 100% full throttle...
caring about my friends.
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