A Very Important Thing That Only Grandmothers Know: ‘Who giveth this woman?’
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Note from the Editor:
This article was kindly written for the SDC by member Josephine G.
One of the banes of life for many women I know, which they/we conceal under a cloak of other-centred kindness, is the inability to know what we want. It is so much easier to go along with someone else’s design than to be clear about our own needs or desires. One reason for this, for those of us who have been mothers, is that for the years our children were dependent, especially when they were small, our needs had always to be secondary to those of our offspring. That’s a biological determinant, and it is hard to relinquish, partly because it gives life a certain kind of meaning, a knowledge that we are needed.
Another option was ‘religious life’. In that scenario, the necessity to put others first (second, third, fourth and on and on) was taught like a divine injunction. In the old style of religious formation, any tendency towards self-care was akin to a tendency to sin. So, at a conscious level, it is easy to see how the ability to know what we want can be atrophied by our life situation. The laying aside of any thoughts of purely self-satisfying activity is a well-embedded habit for many women and hard to break, especially where God is there to back up the selfish/sinful cluster of labels. (Here, of course, I mean the god of the church and our teaching, not the Definite Article.)
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque in diam id erat facilisis consectetur vitae vel urna.
Ut lacus libero, suscipit auctor ipsum sit amet, viverra pretium nisl. Nullam facilisis nec odio nec dapibus. Integer maximus risus et velit porttitor ullamcorper
This article was kindly written for the SDC by member Josephine G.
One of the banes of life for many women I know, which they/we conceal under a cloak of other-centred kindness, is the inability to know what we want. It is so much easier to go along with someone else’s design than to be clear about our own needs or desires. One reason for this, for those of us who have been mothers, is that for the years our children were dependent, especially when they were small, our needs had always to be secondary to those of our offspring. That’s a biological determinant, and it is hard to relinquish, partly because it gives life a certain kind of meaning, a knowledge that we are needed.
Another option was ‘religious life’. In that scenario, the necessity to put others first (second, third, fourth and on and on) was taught like a divine injunction. In the old style of religious formation, any tendency towards self-care was akin to a tendency to sin. So, at a conscious level, it is easy to see how the ability to know what we want can be atrophied by our life situation. The laying aside of any thoughts of purely self-satisfying activity is a well-embedded habit for many women and hard to break, especially where God is there to back up the selfish/sinful cluster of labels. (Here, of course, I mean the god of the church and our teaching, not the Definite Article.)
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque in diam id erat facilisis consectetur vitae vel urna.
Ut lacus libero, suscipit auctor ipsum sit amet, viverra pretium nisl. Nullam facilisis nec odio nec dapibus. Integer maximus risus et velit porttitor ullamcorper
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