What does it mean to be a woman?

April 9

I do not believe women can only find ultimate worth in getting married and having children.  There are many women in the world, and each of us have our own paths to walk.  Marriage is one path.  Marriage and children is another.  Singleness, widowhood, convent life are yet other ways of being.  My path right now is a path of singleness, a fact which I don’t generally have a problem with.  I love being single.  I love the freedom to go places, do things, travel, move without having to consider a whole other life of dreams and desires independent from mine.  The single, childless life is every way as worthwhile as the life who has birthed a multitude of children.

Every life is valuable.  

And yet, I found myself, today, believing someone else’s life was better than mine based largely on the fact that she is married and has children (really great children).  It was so inherent that I didn’t even think about why I thought her life was better until I took a moment to consider it.  The reason surprised me.  And yet, maybe it didn’t.  My friends who have children of their own, whether the children are six months or thirty years, speak about pregnancy, childbearing, and the emotional and physical ups and downs of parenting in profound ways that leave me in awe and starkly aware of the self-centeredness of my life.  I feel, perhaps strangely, less like an adult, and, not so strangely (unfortunately), less like a woman.  

That I would feel less like a woman is not really a surprise.  The value of womanhood has been defined by numerous cultures, in many cases for thousands of years, by the ability to procreate.  In some cultures in history, a woman who could not or did not have children held no purpose in society.  Such an understanding has been long pervasive in the church, so much so that today it saturates the mind without even being overtly discussed.  It simply permeates the air.  

I don’t know what to do about this disconnect between what my head believes and what my heart feels.  I don’t believe my life is any less valuable than this other person’s life.  But I find, despite my own disapproval, that I do see my life as less worthy, and I’m at a loss with this, because it goes against everything I ever want to teach young women about where their worth comes from.  

I’m not sure how this needs to change, but I know that it does.  Perhaps first we need safe space where we can even begin to talk about it.  There are too few safe spaces for women.  It is worth the consideration.  This whole discussion is.