Congratulations to Nancy Pelosi, Our New Speaker Of The House, and now third in line for succession to the Presidency of The United States. This is indeed a landmark day for women in America, the land that lags far behind other so many other countries in granting women an equal seat in places of power. This event is also a symbol of hope for all Americans.
Speaker Pelosi was born only a few months before I was in 1940. What a powerful woman she must be, to have gotten to where she is, after not entering politics till after her own prime career in parenting was finished. What a joyous day it is for me to see a woman: an Elder and a Grandmother, in such high office.
Unless men have fulfilled the role of primary parent themselves, from when a child is born until they are grown, I think it would be difficult for the, to even begin to fully imagine how all consuming a child raising career is, even for those fortunate women who do not also have to work outside the home.
Note: Since most primary parent careers are still filled by women, and because Speaker Pelosi is a woman, I will only refer to women in this writing, although I am aware that a small but growing number of men are also choosing a full time child rearing career.
Women who choose a full time child raising career first, before any other, chose one that carries no salary, no paid time off, no paid benefits or retirement funds, and one that does not allow her to contribute to her own social security savings. It requires her to be on duty 24/7/365 with no paid time off: in fact, it usually costs money to pay others to care for children to get any time off at all, outside of what relief her mate is able to offer.
This of course means a woman who chooses a full time parenting career is then dependent on her husband, and on the strength of their union, for her and her children’s economic survival. It’s a risk for all women, in a country with a 50% divorce rate.
I don’t know if Speaker Pelosi worked at a second career while also engaged in her full time child rearing career or not. But she did complete that portion of her career path as a full time mother, and has now moved onto into her second career as a national leader very successfully.
But still, she cannot ever be done with that mother role, because even when they are grow and gone, you are still their Mother, and they will always need to know they can turn to you when they need to. And because women by their very nature, are highly attuned to the relationship needs of those they love, she will be “on call” for backup in her first career role as Mother, for as long as she lives.
She is also a Grandmothers as well, with six new descendents to love, be with, and be there for, in case she is needed when life’s scary times come for any of them, as they always will.
So now she is “Speaker of The House”, her chosen primary career at this point in her life. .But unlike the men who have held that exalted position before her, she still carries with her the continuing active duties of her first chosen career path as a mother of now grown children. In her heart, she carries all of the ongoing obligations a mother and grandmother always does.
Men in high office (usually) have wives they can trust to handle the family needs and crises amongst their grown children and grandchildren. This leaves them free to not be distracted from their chosen careers most of the time, for we expect men to put career first. Speaker Pelosi will, I am confident, make whatever necessary sacrifice of time with her family she needs to make, in order to fulfill her duties as Speaker.
But I know how much it will cost her too, when trouble strikes her family, and she cannot be with them as she, and they, so badly might wish she could.
All of which makes me admire her even more for pursuing this path to her victory today. Because it takes something very powerful in a woman, to make her willing to wait until an entire unpaid (and hardly respected by many) first long career in child rearing is completed, before she can then proceed into one in which she IS respected and have even a chance at being as successful at it as the men are, who have so long dominated politics in America.
We are dying in this country for lack of an essential balance of masculine and feminine energies in leadership. We are literally destroying ourselves because of this.
Powerfully aggressive masculine energies badly need to balanced by strong, nurturing, creative, feminine energies and we do not have that balance in our government at all.
Both kinds of processing of information are needed: the intuitive, creative, processing of women’s minds, that include consideration of community and the importance of building relationships along with all else, and the sharply logical, rational, more black and white ways men tend to receive and process information. We need BOTH, blended together, so very, very badly. Yin. Yang. Balance.
Even our very First People on the land knew this and it was often the Elder Women who chose the Chiefs. Blended wisdom. None more important then the other.
So thank you, Speaker Pelosi, for being a true pioneer for all women: strong enough to get to where you are, even with the rules of the whole political chess board having been set by men, for men, with no input from women at all.
Men, all by themselves, seem to have made quite a mess of things, as far as I can tell, just as we woman might well have too, in our own ways, had we been in sole charge from the very beginning and never welcomed men into the ranks of “our” government. Again, I think imbalance would have reigned, sooner or later.
We need both halves of the American Population at the governing tables, men and women, in equal number, and from all the different cultural and ethnic and economic groups of Americans.
We cannot afford, indeed we cannot survive any more governance by rich white males only.
My thoughts and support will be silently with you, Speaker Pelosi, in all the days to come, along with my deepest gratitude and admiration.
