Inspiration Article

The Aging of the Goddess: The Feminists are also aging!

         I remember how many of us wrote in the 80’s and 90’s about growing mature with many choices and finding the divine power –the Goddess- within us. I even wrote a book where personal growth, independence, self-sufficiency and carving your place in history, humanity, or at least in your entourage were not only possible but a must. Everything was possible by tapping into your inner Goddess!

       Well, guess what? The Goddess along with other millions of baby boomers reached her fifties and beyond and the battles –although different ...if so...are still there. Are they different really? What are we fighting for? What are the issues we face now? Have we reached all what we promised to ourselves or the ones others promised to us we were able to reach?

       Looking at history and seeing facts and events that narrate women’s battles we see a century of wrestling with the still patriarchal power establishment, the male arrogance, the second-class citizen-status in many places –even in USA- and not to mention the third-class status in many other countries... Seeing all this I can not have but a feeling of deja-vu of a non-stop making a statement and fighting for our identity. It is like it has never ended!

          After fighting for equal rights, self-esteem, and living against stereotypes  baby-boomer women find themselves in a society that worships youth and relegates its seniors to second-class citizen status, many elderly women end up ignored, mourning their lost youth, freedom, and without all the rights, privileges for what they fought. It makes me remember Simone de Beauvoir’s statement in her 1950’s book The Second Sex “...one is not born but rather becomes a woman...it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature...”

       Although many of our sisters and great women –like Ms. Steinem- have paved the road for us in the XXI century. Where are we in this second half of life? Or as Shinoda Bolen called our “third phase of life”?

       What has changed and what has not? How women are dealing today with come into age when discovering you are not 40’s or even 50’s anymore. As Gloria Steinem said last year “... One morning I found a sixty-year-old woman in my bed...”

       Although feminism and all the battles through history have paved the road for us to accomplish many things we are still in many levels on survival mode. Traditional values and old longings are still important and perhaps will always be important... partnership, marriage, equal rights, equal income, equal opportunities, self-realization are elements that for some remain contradictory to independence and for others are still a chimera. After the two feminisms, the one in the sixties -the feminism of equality- where women were equal to men- and the feminism of difference that underlying -in the postmodernist era- the uniqueness and differences of women -a great setback to the prior feminist movement- women are still recreating their identities and it changes every decade

          Many of us were the first in our families ever to go to school. We have had more employment opportunities –despite some discrimination- as many people say boomers have never had it so good. Women today have wealth on their own, travel, hold public office, and still are mothers and grandmothers. Although most of us benefited from the industrial expansion that marked the baby boomer era, we have some responsibilities to take for what that has cost our mother Earth.  A great number of women coming into age changed the face of politics when they were young –and as Pam Lunn from England  points out in her article s book What next for the post-war baby-boom generation?- we could do so again

          Since humans and the "higher" apes are the only animals who live life after fertility is over.  What is the evolutionary meaning/value of living after menopause?  What next for the getting-older generation of women who have been defining themselves each decade?

• To become mentors, sage women, crones to help our younger women with their needs. Just as an expression of generativity. As Bonnie Burstein told me “It's not about me as an individual, anymore...I've done whatever I can to express my individuality, develop my personal self, now I want to contribute to the well-being of my daughters...and the Earth".

• To reinvent ourselves by using the energy of the mature years and to learn how to use it with compassion and being visible with a spark of wisdom. Because after all, there is a difference between growing old and growing to be an elder. To become an elder takes work, takes a continued struggle to become more aware. This struggle for awareness means a relentless engagement with life and its constantly emerging challenges.
• Recreate a real image of older women in the media and in every circle in society. No more to the equation: Older women: grey hair, relaxed body equal physical decay, sexy less, and stigma*.  Sheila Malkind, a Pacific Institute associate, said when referring to the little exposure of older women in the media: “We need to become watchful at the ways we women are represented in the media and in literature, and make our protestations known. Even better, would be to create, cultivate, and publicize our own personal images as active and aging women, happy, self-confident, wise, still eager to learn and to experience life as a great adventure….
• Help our fellow men to learn how to feed the children after times of grief and despair.
• Using our crone status to help recreate the role of eldership in our society and learn to care for the elders with love and respect.

Now it is our time. It’s time to nourish the soul, to nourish the planet, mentor our daughters and sisters, and at last to regard ourselves and our aging in a celebratory light.

Doris Bersing, PhD is president and co-founder of Living Well Assisted Living at Home, and former CEO for the Pacific Institute, a leading provider of psychological programming, senior services, education and research on topics pertinent to eldercare.

* Sociologists Sara Arber and Jay Ginn claim that by asserting themselves as competent, strong, and resourceful, women can begin to reclaim their right to age without stigma.