Way back in the day when a woman was in labor, her room would be full of other women drinking wine, dancing, and supporting her. They were called the Godsips. The word evolved into the word gossip and took on a negative connotation. How tragic that we are told not to gossip, but it’s what women do. We are networking and building community. In a patriarchal society women are denigrated for building and strengthening the bonds we share. Instead we should honor the Godsips.
Oh my gosh thanks for this comment Anne! So true! Women’s community has been demonized through the centuries and turned against us. We’re dramatic or hormonal or crazy or witches or gossips. So sad 😞
It's interesting because in French, an old word with a negative connotation for women that gossip is "Commère" and I recently found out it comes from "Co-mères" which mean "Co-mothers", mothers who mother together and chat along...they also turned something beautiful into something negative....
Said this before- Favorite part of Barbie movie is scene when Barbie rushes into her corporate toy maker for help- only to realize that the room is only full of men in suits. NO females present. Like Q15 GA $1 TRILLION Mormon cult Con Men, these are the men who mold, control & regulate our values, dreams & lives!
There must be something in the water because I was having similar thoughts about individualism and community yesterday. I overheard a woman explaining to her friend how just a little bit of filler in her chin could really improve her profile and it would make her a lot happier when she saw pictures of herself. She asked if that was a dumb use of a lot of money. And that got me thinking how mirrors and “selfies” have served to keep us even more focused on the self. And how temporary that happiness over filler is. And how much more full our lives would be if we were less focused on using our energy and resources to perfect ourselves and more focused on improving the lives of our community. Not here to shame what anyone chooses to do with their money and body (as I’m guilty of vanity as well) and I don’t know who that woman is but it was a really great example of how out of whack our cultures priorities are.
Wouldn’t the world be better off if our cultural evolution had traveled the matrilineal/matriarchal path instead of the patrilineal/patriarchal path? So many of the indigenous tribes in the US were matrilineal/matriarchal (maybe all, I’m not well enough informed to know that). When I read native history, not revisionist native history but true native history, the societies are so much healthier than patriarchal societies are. Sure there were conflicts within the tribes and against other tribes but from what I’ve read and been told by native historians, the end destruction from these conflicts was much less and I don’t have the feeling that the different tribes had total annihilation of the opposing tribe as their ultimate goal. When I think of Ukraine or Gaza or any other localized war on the globe…it seems to be the patriarchal cultures who are leaning towards total annihilation of the other side. Oh, if women only ruled the world…sigh…
Such a great essay. Just figuring out at 52 that “the solution to all my problems” does not rely on my “self optimization.” It appears that is in fact quite the opposite. Thanks for posting.
Excellent post. Reminds me of a fantastic interview I watched this week.
"After decades of capitalist realism, it would be possible to imagine a world based on cooperation rather than competition, on mutual aid rather than exploitation, and on stewardship of our common resources rather than ruthless extraction." - Grace Blakely
I achieved my dreams and still wasn’t happy. I couldn’t figure it out. Eventually I realized I was being treated poorly for being female, which was illuminating and depressing in equal measure.
But… but it didn’t occur to me the dreams were wrong. My life today is happy. I threw a staff party for all my lovely people. I took my husband with me on a morning walk to meet all my dog walker friends. My Waterfront Association former chair just had an impromptu oyster party. I’m going to a local bookshop with macarons this morning to celebrate a new friend’s new beginnings. I’m happy… but I never dreamed of this to be happy. It just kinda… happened. I had to… throw out my dreams to get here.
So relatable! Thanks Celeste! I really resonated with the tendency you notice in yourself to “fix” your sadness and loneliness with self-optimisation. I notice that when I feel these feelings I immediately look around for something that I can fix, something I have done “wrong” to bring these feelings on myself.
How do you feel about the tension between nuclear family and community? Our culture is very clear that maximizing “what’s best for my kids” is prioritized over community building, even though community building might *actually* best for kids.
Self actualization does not mean self fulfillment. Actualizing means awareness, and being happy with your own company first, and then feeling secure enough to seek other relationships. If one is not happy or actualized themselves, and constantly looking for “someone” to make a person happy, they already are starting with a deficit. The deficit of not being self actualized, aware, and content within their own selves.
I started reading your article, then I noticed that some of the clearance-rack roses that I'd gotten at the grocery store were starting to wilt. Ever on the lookout to expose my 4-year-old girls to something new to them, I thought it would be fun to throw the petals over them as they played on the porch. As I started pulling the petals off, I immediately started chanting "he loves me, he loves me not" in my head, and I thought, WHAT?!?! I feel that I was spared many of the gendered expectations that my sisters deal/dealt with due to the influence of a somewhat counter-culture, convert, stay-at-home father, but his influence also lacked the motivation to build community.
Yes! Love the list of "what if" questions. Made me think of so many more. Perhaps if we focused more on community and less on self we would abolish things like patriarchy, racism, and war, we would be able to start to solve hard problems like climate change, and we would spend more time seeing the similarities between us instead of our differences. Maybe then we could truly respect the sanctity of all human life regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. I want to live in that community.
Way back in the day when a woman was in labor, her room would be full of other women drinking wine, dancing, and supporting her. They were called the Godsips. The word evolved into the word gossip and took on a negative connotation. How tragic that we are told not to gossip, but it’s what women do. We are networking and building community. In a patriarchal society women are denigrated for building and strengthening the bonds we share. Instead we should honor the Godsips.
Oh my gosh thanks for this comment Anne! So true! Women’s community has been demonized through the centuries and turned against us. We’re dramatic or hormonal or crazy or witches or gossips. So sad 😞
It's interesting because in French, an old word with a negative connotation for women that gossip is "Commère" and I recently found out it comes from "Co-mères" which mean "Co-mothers", mothers who mother together and chat along...they also turned something beautiful into something negative....
Said this before- Favorite part of Barbie movie is scene when Barbie rushes into her corporate toy maker for help- only to realize that the room is only full of men in suits. NO females present. Like Q15 GA $1 TRILLION Mormon cult Con Men, these are the men who mold, control & regulate our values, dreams & lives!
There must be something in the water because I was having similar thoughts about individualism and community yesterday. I overheard a woman explaining to her friend how just a little bit of filler in her chin could really improve her profile and it would make her a lot happier when she saw pictures of herself. She asked if that was a dumb use of a lot of money. And that got me thinking how mirrors and “selfies” have served to keep us even more focused on the self. And how temporary that happiness over filler is. And how much more full our lives would be if we were less focused on using our energy and resources to perfect ourselves and more focused on improving the lives of our community. Not here to shame what anyone chooses to do with their money and body (as I’m guilty of vanity as well) and I don’t know who that woman is but it was a really great example of how out of whack our cultures priorities are.
Wouldn’t the world be better off if our cultural evolution had traveled the matrilineal/matriarchal path instead of the patrilineal/patriarchal path? So many of the indigenous tribes in the US were matrilineal/matriarchal (maybe all, I’m not well enough informed to know that). When I read native history, not revisionist native history but true native history, the societies are so much healthier than patriarchal societies are. Sure there were conflicts within the tribes and against other tribes but from what I’ve read and been told by native historians, the end destruction from these conflicts was much less and I don’t have the feeling that the different tribes had total annihilation of the opposing tribe as their ultimate goal. When I think of Ukraine or Gaza or any other localized war on the globe…it seems to be the patriarchal cultures who are leaning towards total annihilation of the other side. Oh, if women only ruled the world…sigh…
What great insight and so true!
Such a great essay. Just figuring out at 52 that “the solution to all my problems” does not rely on my “self optimization.” It appears that is in fact quite the opposite. Thanks for posting.
Excellent post. Reminds me of a fantastic interview I watched this week.
"After decades of capitalist realism, it would be possible to imagine a world based on cooperation rather than competition, on mutual aid rather than exploitation, and on stewardship of our common resources rather than ruthless extraction." - Grace Blakely
https://youtu.be/CLPGrdRid7Y?si=HtWV4Iy1eBq44Hif
Oh s***. F***. #%$&@skulldaggerlighteningetc.
I achieved my dreams and still wasn’t happy. I couldn’t figure it out. Eventually I realized I was being treated poorly for being female, which was illuminating and depressing in equal measure.
But… but it didn’t occur to me the dreams were wrong. My life today is happy. I threw a staff party for all my lovely people. I took my husband with me on a morning walk to meet all my dog walker friends. My Waterfront Association former chair just had an impromptu oyster party. I’m going to a local bookshop with macarons this morning to celebrate a new friend’s new beginnings. I’m happy… but I never dreamed of this to be happy. It just kinda… happened. I had to… throw out my dreams to get here.
As Gru would say: “lightbulb.”
So relatable! Thanks Celeste! I really resonated with the tendency you notice in yourself to “fix” your sadness and loneliness with self-optimisation. I notice that when I feel these feelings I immediately look around for something that I can fix, something I have done “wrong” to bring these feelings on myself.
How do you feel about the tension between nuclear family and community? Our culture is very clear that maximizing “what’s best for my kids” is prioritized over community building, even though community building might *actually* best for kids.
“What if we dreamed in community” says everything. Yes yes yes.
You're missing something critical.
Western civilizations, once upon a time did thrive on community.
The Celts; Vikings; French; Germans; Slavs all thrived as communities bound together by ethnicity, traditions, histories and cultures.
Early on, even Americans enjoyed a sense of community.
But we have destroyed that sense of belonging, and in the current year, it is a crime to assert one if you're white.
We did this to ourselves.
Self actualization does not mean self fulfillment. Actualizing means awareness, and being happy with your own company first, and then feeling secure enough to seek other relationships. If one is not happy or actualized themselves, and constantly looking for “someone” to make a person happy, they already are starting with a deficit. The deficit of not being self actualized, aware, and content within their own selves.
This is just beautiful, and it perfectly mirrors what I've been thinking and feeling for a very long time now. I long for a connective community.
I started reading your article, then I noticed that some of the clearance-rack roses that I'd gotten at the grocery store were starting to wilt. Ever on the lookout to expose my 4-year-old girls to something new to them, I thought it would be fun to throw the petals over them as they played on the porch. As I started pulling the petals off, I immediately started chanting "he loves me, he loves me not" in my head, and I thought, WHAT?!?! I feel that I was spared many of the gendered expectations that my sisters deal/dealt with due to the influence of a somewhat counter-culture, convert, stay-at-home father, but his influence also lacked the motivation to build community.
Yes! Love the list of "what if" questions. Made me think of so many more. Perhaps if we focused more on community and less on self we would abolish things like patriarchy, racism, and war, we would be able to start to solve hard problems like climate change, and we would spend more time seeing the similarities between us instead of our differences. Maybe then we could truly respect the sanctity of all human life regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. I want to live in that community.
Better still, could we see the differences as healthy diversity and celebrate that, rather than succumbing to the urge for uniformity?