Warrior Training: Explaining Womanhood To My Daughters
A friend was telling me about a Confirmation retreat he ran recently for the young men at his church. (Confirmation is a Catholic sacrament akin to a spiritual coming-of-age.) Although he knew these boys had grown up on Facebook and Nintendo, he was still a bit shocked to find that few of their parents had ever discussed manhood with them beyond the basic, biological facts. So he asked them, What does it mean to be a man? And I thought, Did anyone ever discuss with me what it means to be a woman? It’s one of those things you just absorb, growing up. Some days it feels like I need a superhero cape to get through everything I do. But perhaps discussing that cape's significance is more important than I had realized. But how do I explain it to my girls?
Given that this friend of mine is a martial arts expert, it came as no surprise he emphasized the warrior aspect of manhood. (In my parents’ day, confirmation rites actually included a slap on each cheek to remind initiates of their new role as “soldiers for Christ”, so he wasn’t far off.) But did he mean these young men had to be prepared to defend their faith with whatever weapons necessary? Being a warrior, he said, means assessing a situation, understanding the right path to take, and following that path. Okay. In that sense, being a woman means being a warrior, too. And I know some pretty kick-ass babes.
My mother lived with the knowledge that the Molotov cocktail thrown at our house when I was an infant was likely a reprisal for an arrest made by my police officer father—and could happen again at any time. She kept a scanner in the kitchen and a gun tucked under the bed (and she had the trophy to prove she knew how to use it). She could wrap a Disney President around her Executive Assistant’s badge all day, then come home to treat a house full of dinner guests to one of her to-die-for gourmet meals. She saved us from biting dogs, nursed us through chicken pox (remember those?!?), and resuscitated my brother from a near fatal drowning.
My paternal grandmother raised five children almost single-handedly as she followed her WWII fighter pilot husband to England and back. She was a double-mastectomy breast cancer survivor when cancer was a sure death sentence. As a newspaper columnist, she took on editors, politicians, and local school boards. Even as the town grew, it seemed she knew people wherever we went.
My best friend had saved $14,000 by the time she was twenty-four (I was still mooching groceries off my parents, at that age). She paid her own way and fought the glass ceiling to become a high-powered corporate media executive. She barely survived a tragic pregnancy and now lives with the daily, painful challenges of fibromyalgia. She is about to launch a very promising start-up and I wouldn’t be surprised to see her become a millionaire by the time she turns forty.
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