The Ponderings of A Woman...about being a woman!

Womanhood! A theme that has ruled every aspect of my life well beyond the realms of physicality and genetics for the whole of this life. Almost every action and decision, no matter how large or small, has been influence by my womanhood. I had no idea of this until today. As I sit in my bed on a Sunday Morning having just watched  'For Colored Girls', a movie based on the play by Ntozake Shange's play 'For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow is Enuf', I am left wondering how my 'womanhood' has shaped my life and the life decisions I have made. This is a particularly interesting time to have found this movie- I'm recording an album, writing a book, working on a possible TV show and also following other passions.  All I'm going to say about this movie is see it. It's an adaptation of a play and it looks like a movie that is an adaptation of a play (if you know what I mean) but the balls of this movie is all in the second half of it...and well worth seeing.

Photo courtesy of Karem Nunez Photography

I am struck by my realisations this morning as I think about the influence my own womanhood has had in my own life. Particularly when I consider that my womanhood is something that has confused me my whole life. Not the idea of being a woman- that is apparent. What I mean is that the idea of what it really means to be a woman has never crossed my mind. I'm rather perplexed as to why such an important detail was never analysed! Particularly as being born a woman was what was supposed to limit my progress in life and success! Let me give you some background.

I was raised the daughter of a man who appeared to be very clear on the role of women in life. A strong catholic man, raised by a stronger catholic man, who both thought that they knew more than any woman. They were not alone in their ideals. These were the ideals of all the men in their village, and remained the ideals of those men when they migrated to Australia and brought chose future wives from their native village who would later follow them to Australia and marry them their and raise families.

I was raised by a woman who was engaged to my father at 14, left her family in Syria at the age of 15 to marry him, and then had her first children, twin girls, at the age of 16 and her other 2 children by the age of 21. She was a very quiet, very traditional girl who knew her place and her role and she played it very well. Both my parents came from a culture, and a time, where tradition, culture, and religion were the elements of life that gave them the rules to live by, and the security of knowing that they were good people, if they lived within those rules.

Then they had me!

I was very difficult as a child. Not because I did the things that you expect difficult children to do (drugs, sex, smoke, not study, blah blah blah). I didn't do any of that. I was the constant source of anguish because when something didn't make sense, I questioned it. The rules, the traditions, the idea that, because of who you are, you have more or less value in a conversation, in community, in life. I grew up in a constant state of conflict and unable to identify with any real group of people. Hence why the current material I'm working on for the album is heavily focused on 'Finding your identity'.

I could see that my parents, and those around them, found so much security in following the rules as their culture dictated, and i really wanted so badly to share that sense of stability.  There were times when I played the roles so well, but it was always jaded once I started thinking about what I was doing. Eventually came my demise from that world and I spent a number of years with targeted focus of rebuilding my own belief structures based on what I truly embrace as my own values. It was like the worst kind of hellish reconstructive surgery at times. But you have to re-break broken bones that weren't set right in the first place.

It's now been a few years and I am only just now confident that my stability is based on my own ideals and values. Not the values of another persons, a religion, a tradition, a culture. But what does all this have to do with womanhood? I was shocked to find that many of the ideals that my father had are also ideals that alot of the men around me had, no matter where I went in the world and no matter what culture. Don't get me wrong, I love men. I really really do. But I now find myself living in Hollywood, with almost no arab men around, and I'm confronted with many of the same ideals about the roles of women and men in this community. Is that because they are mostly Jewish men around here who have similar values to arab men? It could be, but to be honest with you I'm not sure that it has anything to do with the men at all. It's me.

My fathers attitude to woman, and my mothers acceptance of that attitude defined my perspective that, if I am to be successful in this world, I would have to overcome my womanhood. This realisation has really floored me. I have been subconsciously living my life with the idea that my womanhood was an obstacle to my chance at success and in order to be successful I would have to overcome my womanhood. WTF!!! No wonder I keep getting in my own way! It seems I have subconscious beliefs that do not match up with my conscious beliefs. What's also crazy is that it seems I've spent most of my life, if not all of it, discounting the importance my womanhood has to my success.

Time to make some serious changes...and let go just a little more! Can't wait to see what this brings to the new album!

Peace, love and Peanut Butter
Lee xxx

Photo Courtesy of Karem Nunez Photography