Ending the Age of Sacrifice - Part 2

I had the chance to be in “my” beloved Wissahickon Woods in Philadelphia last week - more images to come - Live rooted, hydrated, and nourished Courageous Thrivers. That’s how we change the world. 

Let’s Do This Differently, Shall We?

Following up on my last post, as promised today I’m sharing a story about my ancestors and how I see the seeds of my own perpetual sacrifice in what I know of their stories.

I did a healing practice recently that led me to reflect on my lineage, particularly on my father’s side – his mother, Helen Cameron Shine, and his mother’s mother, Sarah Elise Eustis Cameron.

Both were women of incredible privilege.

Both also experienced incredible pain – and for the most part kept it locked down and hidden away, as far as I can tell.

My dad’s cousin told me recently that she didn’t feel she knew her grandmother (Sarah) very well, despite spending all summer with her every year for the first 15 years of her life.

How many women do you know who keep themselves hidden in plain sight?

Sarah Eustis Cameron went to Wellesley College and also attended Law School in the early 20th century. Not only did she hold a lot of privilege, she also had a lot of capacity.

After leaving school and marrying William Cameron, Sarah had three children, two girls and a boy. As I’ve been told the story, the boy, William, died at age 12 as the result of getting tetanus from a wound caused by bb gun. The gun belonged to his father, my great grandfather, and was, as I’ve been told, on a wall, loaded when William pulled it off and accidently shot himself in the foot.

Seems like that loss would be a bit tough to work through as a married couple and a mother. Best I can tell, Sarah did it with a Scottish “stiff upper lip” as was expected of her.

Some of Sarah’s peers had careers after graduating. They became doctors and lawyers.

But my great-grandmother never practiced law. She did some pro bono legal work for the Red Cross as a volunteer, but no paid work.

She undoubtedly did plenty of unpaid work, despite also having consistent household help. My dad’s cousin has memories of her grandmother dutifully keeping up with expected correspondence from a little desk in their summer home, while also keeping one eye on the grandchildren’s activities. And there were expected social activities and obligations.

Not at all the same as what people of lower classes faced at the time, but still it was work about which she likely felt she had no choice. It was her role and responsibility, whether she liked it or not.

When you’re ready to Live Nourished…

I work with accomplished, overworked leaders who have a commitment to justice.

I help them prioritize themselves so they can stop sacrificing their joy, mental and physical health, and relationships for the cause.

Sound impossible? It’s not.

Set up a clarity call and I’ll help you get clear on what you want, what’s in the way and whether I’m a good fit to help you create the life you really want

– which can absolutely include making an even bigger difference in the world than you’re already doing right now.

You can do your big work differently. You can live nourished.

My grandmother, Helen, was also a Wellesley graduate. She wasn’t taught to cook because her parents expected that she’d always employ a cook. But my grandfather’s income didn’t quite allow for that, especially in the early years when he was in the Army. So she learned — sort of.

Nanny, as I called her, used to tell me that prior to his death, her brother William (Billy) was her best friend. Incredible privilege. Incredible pain.

By some family members’ reports, Helen became her father’s “son” after Billy died, as she was a bit more adventurous, and less traditionally feminine, than her sister. But she also managed to toe the line as a woman in the upper middle class in 20th century America. She birthed four children, never worked outside the home, paid attention to clothes and beauty, volunteered, and almost never wore pants despite her love for the outdoors.

Helen Eustis Cameron and George W. Shine, my grandfather, had four children, four boys and one girl. All four went to Vietnam, two of the boys were in the Army, one in the Airforce. My Aunt Sallie served in the war as a Red Cross nurse initially, and then joined the Army as well.

Only two of Helen’s four children returned home alive— my dad (who was at war when I was born) and his sister.

Like her mother, my grandmother lost a child, in her case, two sons.

Incredible privilege. Incredible pain. Incredible sacrifices.

Unlike so many soldiers of less class and race privilege, my dad and his siblings weren’t drafted. They chose their military careers. They believed in the value of “serving your country” in the military. They believed in the cause of defending democracy. They believed their sacrifices mattered.

Of course, neither my grandmother or her mother truly chose to sacrifice their children—like Abraham was ready to do with his son Isaac in the Bible story I heard many times as a testament to Abrahams great love for God.

But my guess is that they did choose to sacrifice parts of themselves that wanted something different than what society, and their families, expected of them.

What I sense as I stumble-step into my role as a leader and CEO of an expanding business with an ever-expanding vision to create a world in which everyone has what they need to thrive (including you!) is that both of these women ancestors of mine had the capacity to be successful leaders outside of their homes, as well as within them.

But they chose to stay in the prescribed roles of wife and mother, and community volunteer. That is, they chose to stay within the gendered expectations of New York’s upper middle class in the early to mid-20th century.

A few of their peers did venture out and become leaders in business and government, medicine, and law. Many more did not.

As with any type of oppression, the patriarchy-misogyny-sexism combo works both from the inside and from the outside. Given their context and access to resources, my ancestors both chose, and did not choose the lives they lived.

It’s unlikely that my grandmother and great-grandmother felt that they had other choices. It’s unlikely that they could imagine them.

On the outside – there were still few jobs available to women, high quality childcare was even less common than it is today. And there were even stronger critiques of “working women” than there are now. Employers could fire you for getting pregnant or married. High quality preschool programs could refuse to enroll the children of women who worked outside of the home.

I doubt that their husbands or parents would have supported them going to work; it wasn’t socially acceptable. There would have been costs.

I can’t know for sure what it was like for my ancestors to make the choices they did, but what I do know is that I, too, have experienced incredible privileges and I have struggled for decades to make use of these privileges in service to the big vision I have for the world. And in service of my own thriving.

It feels as if I’m keeping an unconscious contract, even as I’ve let go of what was originally a conscious decision to be a stay-at-home mom because I believed it was what a good woman should do.

Women in my family don’t work for money. We stay home. We take care of everyone. There are very strong parts of me pulling in the opposite direction of my conscious goals to build a financially, emotionally and relationally thriving business and life.

I have so much privilege —from the stable loving family I grew up in, to the Ph.D. I can put next to my name!

Still, I struggle to live in the power that is inherently mine – and I am more the norm than the exception in the woman-dominant entrepreneurial healer/coach/spiritual leader circles I hang out in.

And when we do get past the internal barriers to fully stepping into our power, our society at large still doesn’t fully support women who lead.

We still don’t have great childcare options, and the good programs cost as much or more than college despite paying the (mostly women) who work in them poverty wages.

We still teach girls to focus on how they look more than on how they lead, or at least as much, so their energy is drained before they even cross the threshold of their office.

Our country, the U.S., and most if not all others, still runs on the free labor and immense sacrifices made by women.

Let’s do this differently, shall we?

Women are nourishers. We are life co-creators. Feminine power, whether in females, males, or gender non-conforming humans is generative. Women’s bodies birth new life, life literally fed through nourished blood that recirculates and nourishes our life at the same time. Not one or the other.

Women’s bodies bleed regularly to let go of what isn’t needed and to prepare for new life to emerge at the right time.

Humans are incredibly creative. We can create new systems and ways of being that don’t require perpetual sacrifice, or the spilling of life blood, from anyone.

Temporary sacrifices are sometimes necessary, sure. Letting go of things we might want to hold onto in service of nourishing bigger life, yes. (FYI there’s a full moon today - extra good time for letting go of what doesn’t serve you anymore!)

But not perpetual sacrifice. And not violence and spilling of the life-blood of others either.

Let’s get together and create a world in which YOU, dear reader, live nourished. Not stressed out. Not exhausted. No longer in perpetual sacrifice.

Let’s create a world in which the norm is that women and gender-non-conforming humans, live safe, connected, and resourced in mind, body, heart, soul, and bank accounts.

Let’s create a world in which people in brown and black bodies and disabled bodies, and bodies with neuro-spicey brains have equitable access to everything they need to flourish.

That’s what we’re about here at Thriving for Equity, Inc.

Are you in?

Here’s to thriving and equity, joy and justice.