STRONG WOMEN HELP LIFT EVERYTHING

Strong women get that way on purpose.

They’ve seen problems that needed solving, and did the work.

It’s the sort of work not suited for weaklings.

Or men. Any men.

Before we got married my wife and I talked about starting a family.

Nothing exceptional there. We’d get married and start a family.

After she was pregnant we talked about hospital plans.

Wife: I do home births for women. That’s what we’ll do, too.

She probably told me this and I didn’t remember. I mean, who breaks that out so late in the game?

So home birth it was.

My Mom called during the labor to ask if I shouldn’t be in the hospital.

Me: I think so, but my wife might be upset if I left in the middle of things.

Afterwards I tried to figure out if home birth was harder on her or me.

I didn’t share my comparisons, but did share the relief of not wondering if my kid was ‘Switched At Birth.’

We had the only baby in the house.

Strong Women Stepping Up

Our second baby was born at home, too.

The first person to hold him after Momma was Great Grandma Marshall who happened to be passing through town.

Grandma Marshall might be the strongest women who ever lived.

She had a promising future as the brightest student in all of Dallas, Texas when she graduated high school in 1929. Her GPA came with an academic full ride scholarship to Southern Methodist University.

After she dropped out and got a job, she met her future husband. There she was, six feet tall, whip smart and gorgeous in the early 30’s.

She got married, had a baby, found her husband to be less than ideal, got pregnant again, terminated the pregnancy, and got divorced. What was it like for a single mother in the 30’s?

She remarried in 1942.

George Marshall, not the general, married my grandma a week before he shipped out to the Pacific for the duration of WWII.

Grandma and my mom as a kid left urban Dallas to live with her new husband’s mom in Orofino, Idaho on the old Nez Perce reservation up in the panhandle.

She never looked back and raised two more kids after Grandpa Marshall returned from the war.

Stepping Up For Women

Strong women don’t need our help from the male side, but we’ve got to so something.

If that’s you, and you feel the need to aid and abet the women in your life, or women in general, tread carefully.

Don’t accidentally lay another roadblock in their path.

I don’t for a second believe that people celebrating the vote on Roe v Wade want to harm women.

They don’t want to harm their daughters, their wives, their mothers, their grandmothers and more than you want to harm yours.

But Here We Are

Men married to women who need to be told what to do have a ‘special’ relationship.

Their wives may have been raised by a big daddy telling them what to do, and it sunk in.

If their daddy was indeed a big daddy, then wife-to-be saw him tell others what to do, too.

General Daddy casts a big shadow.

No one in this life is more important to the ladies than General Daddy, but Major Husband still has to try.

In their male dominated life, these women appear to be the perfect obedient partners.

And yet these are the same women who will lead the march for reproductive rights, for legal and safe abortion care.

Reaching them will make the biggest difference in the long run. They are educated, up to date, and looking for a chance to tell Mr. Right that he’s wrong.

This is their chance, but they need help. 

Republican wives of movers and shakers will have no problem finding an abortion if their daughter has a high risk pregnancy after dating a boy from Kavanaugh Prep School.

These same wives will know how to deal with boys who sign yearbooks as ‘Lisa Alumnius’ or ‘Margaret Alumnius,’ or whatever their daughters’ names are.

Who would know better about ‘boys being boys?’

And who better to cut through the bullshit of denial their men live in.

Let’s go, strong women. Straighten your men out. You can do it.

Thoughts?