I know my last post was disturbing. It was difficult to write. But you have to disturb the earth in order to plant new seeds.
My life is blessed and beautiful. It’s also privileged. I’m a white, middle-class, 62-year-old female citizen of the United States in the early 21st century. Ugliness seldom appears in my everyday world.
Like you, I choose what I do every day. I read, hang out with friends and family, make soup, do some business, mow the lawn, knit, weed the garden, go to a Long Now lecture (if I’m in the SFBay area), scour the sink, watch TED movies, split wood, study marketing, do the laundry, laugh, walk, study spirituality, eat good food, etc, etc, etc . . . I’d rather do almost anything else on earth than contemplate date-rape . . . but I have to . . .
because I know and love so many bright and beautiful young women. And I want them to claim their power . . . to bring forth the gifts they came here to contribute and to protect themselves and their friends. Because they can. And we can help them. But only by planting our feet firmly on the ground and challenging this threat to their well-being.
I went to a conference last December and one of the people I met there was a beautiful woman who is a counselor and a safe-dating and date-rape expert. I talked to her, and listened to her . . . a lot. If you have direct contact with a teenage or college-aged girl, go to her site. Get her books. Empower your young women and keep them safe.
