My Sisters

What I have to say may be termed politically incorrect, but if you are a person with an open mind, I hope you will read it before you reject it. Too often people don’t bother to read things they believe they will object to and that is how people get stuck in rigid ways of thinking and unexamined beliefs.

A very long time ago when I was young, I had long curly brown hair and green eyes and no self-confidence. OK, maybe there was some self-confidence because I never really gave up on myself. I was not a popular kid. I didn’t really have any friends. There was the girl I walked to school with, but we never were really friends. There were the girls I went to camp with, but they mostly saw me as another piece of furniture. Maybe everyone felt that way- that they were unseen and dismissed, but I clearly did not know it. I was alone.

But inside of me was the real me- not the shy girl who had no friends, but a person with an active inner life who was constantly scanning the environment and trying to find the pieces I could put together to make it mine.

I don’t know this, but I am guessing I was not unique in that way. All over the world there were girls like me. Some had dark skin. Some had skin much lighter than mine. They had blue eyes and brown eyes, round eyes and slanted eyes, silky hair and frizzy hair that was brown or blond or red or black and they spent their days scanning the environment trying to figure out their place in it.

Some were lucky and had parents who nurtured them and encouraged them. Some had parents who pushed them to achieve- perhaps too hard. Some had parents whose lives were so difficult that they had little physical or psychic energy to deal with their children. Many girls ended up raising themselves.

Some had great ambitions and worked very hard to achieve them. Some took what was available and made the best of it. Some gave up. They simply could not overcome the obstacles that were laid in front of them.

All of them are my sisters. All of them deserve respect and kindness. None of them were born to oppress others and none of them were born to be oppressed.

Denying this is to deny their very humanity and the very attributes that link us together in a world that all of us must navigate.

 

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