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When I went to college in the 1970's, the Women's Liberation movement was all the buzz. Women's "consciousness raising groups" were growing up everywhere, as women shared with each other their secrets -- and anger -- that they, their mothers and their great, great grandmothers had held tight to their chests for centuries.Feminists of the time were right about some things, but wrong about others. On one hand, there's no underestimating the explosion of formerly unavailable choices that became ours at last as a consequence of the Women's Movement. Sisterhood truly meant something then; we realized that none of us would succeed in life unless all of us were allowed to. And it became unequivocally clear that women could think as well as men, work as well as men, and deserved the opportunity to do whatever it was that we wanted to do. It's almost hard to believe that that was still somewhat of a radical proposition only 40 years ago, but it was.

As with any movement, however -- whether a person's individual journey or the collective journey of a culture -- there were sometimes two steps forward and one step back. While women were powerfully liberated both externally as well as internally by the feminism of the 1970's, we made some serious mistakes as well.

Looking back on it now, it's clear that in some ways we denigrated the feminine in the name of feminism. Too often we took liberation to mean simply that we were free now to behave just like men. In the name of feminism, we denied some essential aspects of our authentic selves. While feminism should have been nothing if not a celebration of our own unique characteristics, we insisted that we had no unique characteristics... that gender differences were hogwash, and a feminine woman was nothing more than a plaything for men. Calling a woman "feminine" was practically an insult! Words like nurturing and maternal weren't viewed as feminine and therefore feminist; rather, they were viewed as weak. If men could be tough as nails in the corporate boardroom, then so could we. If men could have sex and not get emotionally involved, then so could we. If men could make business their bottom line and not factor in the welfare of children in formulating social and economic policy, then so could we. Yippee. We were liberated to become their clones.

The last thing the world needed, of course, was twice as many paternalistic thinkers as there were before. But you live and you learn. In the last two or three decades, a great correction has been underway, as women of my generation have recognized the psychic scars left by our self-inflicted wounding of the feminine self. Too often, having become men, we then had a harder time with men. And having denied the importance (even the reality) of our feminine yearnings, we too often lay havoc to what is for many women a natural yearning of the heart, born of millions of years of evolution, to make a home and raise a family. Choosing to be a "traditional housewife" was seen as relatively unimportant at that time: so much less important, say, than having a real job.

I looked at my own mother -- at her passionate devotion to husband, children, home and extended family -- and I thought I could improve on that! I would go out into the world, you see -- out where the important things were happening. It took me -- as I think of took millions of other women, as well -- a few decades to see how very wrong I was.

In time, I came to understand that spiritual, mythical and archetypal forces are just as powerful and influential as are political, cultural and social ones. Indeed, we overemphasize either category at the expense of something precious that the other has to offer. And in a metaphysical sense -- given that as Einstein said, "time and space are illusions of consciousness" -- you come to realize that as far as a difference between being "out in the world" and "being at home" is concerned, there actually is no difference. The concept of "out there" or "in here" becomes pretty meaningless once you realize that everything out there is simply a reflection of one's consciousness. If anything, if we tended to the within better, there wouldn't be so many problems without: if we raised our children better and tended to our own psyches more effectively, then we wouldn't have so many political and social problems to begin with.

I ultimately realized that my mother's very traditional role was far from meaningless. I now see that is a woman's God-given role to tend to the home and take care of the children: it's just that the entire planet is our home and every child on it is one of our children.

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© Marianne Williamson

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