A word on Courageous Women

Last week I went to my Monday morning yoga class. The instructor has recently become the only woman on the planet from whom I want to learn yoga and more and more is a source for an incredible amount of insight into my life experience as a female. This woman has courageously transformed her rigorous, emotionally/spiritually challenging yoga practice into a ninety-minute family experience. I came across this class by accident and have definite plans to include it as a permanent aspect of my yoga ritual. The room echoed with the sound and smell of babies. A woman next to me struggled to hold her down-dog while her six year old daughter attached herself to her mother's torso. The only man in the class left early (no, I wasnt surprised) and the women that remained sweat through all the distractions and obligations of motherhood and emerged triumphant, simply, in yoga (it means unity).

My experience on this particular day launched a week long meditation on the under-valued courage of women that is in so many ways invisible and silent in our social culture. Even for me, righteous aspiring feminist scholar that I am, I find myself hung up on all of the things that are disabling and debilitating that exist as barriers for women in all aspects of our lives. And yet all around me, everyday, are incredible examples of female courage that shine much more brightly than the glimmer of patriarchal oppression that creeps through the cracks of our self-determined strength.

My yoga instructor is courageous. Every Tuesday and Thursday evening she faces 100 fit-conscious west los angeles fanatics with a four month old baby in her arms. She breaks down barriers, builds energy and fosters the most enriching hour and a half we have all week. She does this for people who seek yoga as their only source of self-reflection and spirituality. She is powerful, graceful and now she has completely re-framed Santa Monica Power Yoga as a space for people to simultaneously connect with, and escape the most demanding people in their lives. Women confront and engage motherhood, while they explore deeply, themselves. There are far too many fine lines women must walk as mothers- Don't bring your work home, don't bring your home-life to work. Ally Hamilton has created a space where women can be both humans and mothers within the same body and mind, and as far as I can tell, that is a rare and extraordinary gift.

My mom is courageous. When I left for college my mom was 52. After being married for 25 years, she was recently divorced, and had devoted the last 21 years to raising children, and I must say, did so heroically and with exceptional grace. My older brother was still using at the time and was effectively out of the emotional reach of maternal influence. So there she was, middle-aged and essentially abandoned and she did what can only be done (at any age and under any circumstance) with tremendous courage; she started her life over. Having endured more as a mother than I would expect all of the women I know to survive collectively, she dug to the depth of herself and made her own life. She learned: to live for herself, on her own terms, and I'll tell you, the woman I owe everything to learned (at a time when most adults are ready to resign themselves to whatever form of insurance agent they've become), that she deserves it, and that she's not going to take shit from anyone.

My roommates are courageous. Every day my apartment is empty, not particularly grown-up and sometimes downright messy. But when the sun goes down and it comes alive with its inhabitants, it might as well be a Tibetan Buddhist Temple. My roommates are challenging and engaging the world in thought and action. They are determined to preserve their undergradaute optimism and destined to change the world. They (we) are women of different backgrounds, experiences and lifestyles and yet they have developed a unity that transcends all boundaries of love and relationships. They have the courage to know the world for its injustice but to pursue the goodness it has the potential to unveil. My roommates take risks, love unconditionally and believe in eachother in such a way that if their energy could be harnessed and redistributed, it would change the world. Each one of them is strong and resilient and have overcome themselves to bring humanity to the lives of others. They are not afraid to lead, to make decisions, to be opinionated, to take on the unknown, to do the right thing, to do the wrong thing and above all, they know what it means to love; and for me, there is no courage without love existing first.

My friend Amy is courageous. Last weekend my brother used the term "self-made man" about one of his close friends. It occured to me, that as far as the American vocabulary is concerned, there is no such thing as a self-made woman. I certainly believe that there are many females who fit into this category, and Amy is the living embodiment. She has confronted the world head-on, head-strong, and although she is an important part of many communities of people, in many ways she has done it all on her own. She is capable and aware of her strengths and she was one of the first people who taught me what it meant to be a woman walking in a man's world. Not only is Amy a courageous young professional and a dynamic leader, she is a mentor to women of all ages, and a source of wisdom for everyone she encounters in every aspect of her life. She is a heroine of ordinary existence and as one of her young proteges once said, "proof that women can be 'as good' as men."

I invite the world to acknowledge and experience women of courage. They are in every aspect of ourselves and woven into the emotional and experential fabric with which we are all created. Courage has not been culturally constructed as a feminine characteristic. The term conjures vivid imagery of trojan warriors and Mel Gibson's blue-painted face. But for me, courage is more than a vision of masculinity, it is a trait of the rare people in the world who use the best part of themselves to make other people better. Courage is the source from which change emerges and the place in which adversity is overcome; and there is no question, that in my life, the greatest examples of all of this, are women.