“No one ever told us we had to study our lives, make of our lives a study.”
This Adrienne Rich quote was the opening line in my 8-page Learning Analysis for WMST 300, the final assignment for the semester written December 20, 2000. I just reread it after finding it in a stack of papers in a long-neglected To File box. It is a wonderful backstory to who, what, where, and why I am the woman I am now and how it has all fallen into place. It may hold some ideas and inspiration for you. I think it is worth sharing. If you decide to read it, I think you might agree. Here goes…
I came to Women’s Studies with the expectation of gaining more knowledge about women’s lives. What I did not realize was that I would be one of the women I would study. “Women’s Studies has developed a set of teaching practices designed to invite women to place themselves at the center of their learning and to use their own experiences of the world as valid material for theory building.” Evelyn Beck, PhD, To Make of Our Lives a Study [She was also my professor.] Lucky me! Such a self-indulgent pleasure. Why does it matter what I think, what I feel? Is it really OK to tell my own story? Is this what she really wants to hear? It didn’t take me long to learn why what I think matters and why it matters how I feel.
I returned to finish my college education because I had something to say and I thought people would be more inclined to listen to me if I had a degree. “Most young women need to have their work legitimized against the claims of family” (Adrienne Rich). I was operating under the patriarchal mindset that my own experiences, my own ways of knowing, were of no value. The writing assignments for the class not only gave me permission to tell my story, but in having to explain myself, I discovered a new awareness and a new realization about what I was doing back in college at the age of 48. I gain clarification by this act of explanation. And with clarification comes validation, and with validation, self-empowerment.
Concurrent with what was happening to me this semester was the discovery that women were listening to what I had to say via my website. Telling my story was empowering and inspiring other women. In Women’s Realities, Women’s Choices, the authors say that “[w]omen need one another’s knowledge to find how the pieces fit.” It was certainly all beginning to fit together for me.
Learning and practicing the concepts of Feminist Pedagogy was, for me, the most valuable part of the course. At first, I thought the changes I observed in the classroom were due to my long absence from a college classroom. The students really had a voice, our opinions mattered, and there were no boring lectures. We were actually creating the class and formulating our own system of learning and knowledge. As my awareness grew, I came to understand that this was not a typical college class - this was Women’s Studies. I had unknowingly placed myself in the perfect learning situation. In her essay “Returning Women in the Classroom,” Jerilyn Fisher discusses the returning woman’s need to be validated for what they have learned from experience.
I collect quotes, and one of my favorites, which I use in my art, comes from Audre Lorde, “A woman’s place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep.” Until this class, that quote was all I knew of Audre Lorde. Discovering the woman behind the words was serendipitous, not just by reading about her and reading her work, but by seeing her come to life in the movie A Litany for Survival. The movie was so well done I feel that I really came to know her, and I found similarities where I thought none would exist. In “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, [essay in Sister Outsider], Lorde writes powerfully of the need to break our silences and say what we need to say. It was almost like reading my own story when she said, “…I planned someday to speak, or waited for someone else’s words.”
Transforming silence into language is an act of self-revelation, says Lorde. I have discovered that honest self-revelation is the surest way to connect with others. When you can share your doubts, fears, pain, and joy, you reveal that essence of humanity that we all have in common, and in doing so, we fulfill the universal need to know we’re not alone with our own feelings. Women have thanked me for being so open and honest on my website. Some have remarked on my courage to expose myself through such honest words. “Tell them about how you’re never really a whole person if you remain silent…” said Elizabeth Lorde to her mother, Audre.
Reading the words of Audre Lorde and the other women writers I have discovered on my own or in class, I am becoming strengthened and more confident of my goals. “And where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives.” (Lorde) Before I came back to school I was already seeking out those words and reading them. As a Women’s Studies major, now I can share and examine those words with others. By this examination, the words take on a deeper and different meaning as I hear and understand their effect on the other women in the class. It is fine to embark on a journey of your own making, but if it is traveled alone, you can miss what lies beyond your range of vision.
We often take action or start new things without fully understanding why. The writing assignments in this class forced me to take a step back and really think about what I was doing being back here in school. I’ve started a lot of things on a whim over the last 30 years because I love to learn and challenge myself intellectually. Then something changes. A job, another child, finances, or boredom sets in, and I’ll drop one thing for something new. My interests are really very broad. I do not think I am a dilettante; just extremely curious and interested in many things. I did notice that the type of reading I had been doing on my own for the last few years was consistent - women’s lives, women’s words. I was reading a book one night, and there was a question the reader was supposed to answer with the first thing that entered your mind that would reveal your true desire. The question was, “What is the one thing you’ve always wanted to do?” Surprisingly, my first answer was
…to be continued later this week
What is the one thing….looking forward to finding out! Happy New Year
Don't know if you remember or not, but my entry to your quotes book was the Audre Lord quote on a lavendery digital background!