All Women Deserve to Have Their Reality Honored

I want to share with you what I write in the Afterword in my newly published book The Mother-Daughter Puzzle.  

The need for women to dig deep into what they have learned to believe is true, and to understand how the women in their family have been emotionally silenced and emotionally neglected is vital. This understanding is essential for the #MeToo campaign. We cannot learn from and challenge the pervasive, misogynistic, systemic belief in male power that has allowed every 3^rd or 4^th woman to experience some form of unwanted sexual attention without an understanding of how patriarchy and sexism has emotionally affected us, our mother and grandmother, and what we need in order to feel fully heard. We need to map our Mother-Daughter History (see instructions in The Mother-Daughter Puzzle) and uncover the sexism our generational family has normalized, and the sexism we have internalized because no one has taught us to think that anything different is possible.

“The time has never been more right for women to learn how emotional silence limits their voice and power. Equal rights laws have brought women a long way, but they have not and cannot change women’s generational experience of emotional silence and emotional neglect. It is time women uncovered these themes in their lives, and their mother’s and grandmother’s lives. It is time for women to recognize the dire emotional consequences women face when they surrender their needs in their relationships, families, and workplaces.

I want to emphasize how vital it is that women learn how to listen to themselves and each other. This simple, yet difficult task of listening to what we think, feel, and need is central to healing today’s epidemic in mother-daughter conflict, the aggression that is all too common in female relationships, and the rifts in the women’s movement. When women fight over who gets to be heard, and whose experience is more valid, women are not standing in their power. They are acting out patriarchy’s drama that deflects women’s attention away from the sexism that silences them and sets women up for invisibility and conflict.

The truth is all women deserve to have their reality honored, and there is plenty of space for all women to be heard. I guarantee you that when we listen to all women’s truths, women will discover that underneath the obvious differences in our age, race, economic and cultural background, and religious beliefs, we all come from a generational family where women have not been heard enough and not received enough emotional support. We share this common legacy of emotional silence and emotional neglect that is screaming to be understood, healed, and changed. And when we connect with this understanding, divisions and differences melt away. Women gain the emotional entitlement to speak and be heard, and together, women become a powerful force that can no longer be ignored or dismissed.”

© 2017 Rosjke Hasseldine

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