Wednesday 20 March 2013

what shall you teach your son?


In the light of recent events, it's time to stop telling our daughters to be careful and start considering what we should be teaching our sons. As the mother of a son I know the kind of man I want him to be. It's my failure if, as a woman, I raise a boy who does not respect women.




               
How do we fix this shit?
Let us start with what we teach our sons                                  
Yes you, my innocent little man;
If you ever lay your head next to mine
And whisper that you have hurt, degraded or demeaned
Some woman
Any woman
Any girl
The old one. The ugly one
 The pretty flirt. The one whose skirt
Is too short or blouse too low.
The silly one. The shy one. The odd one.
The one who was mean. The one who said no.
The one who passed out.
The one your mate said was loose.
Any one of them
You will feel the power of your mother.
  You will quickly learn that I am woman, too.
But I love you, my son.
So I will teach you first  
No means no.
Drunk means no.
Unconscious means no.
Uncomfortable means no.
But before that I will teach you
She is entitled to wear, speak, like, dislike, walk, drink, think, live
How she pleases.
And before that I will teach you
There are just people.
Not a war between sexes.
Just people.
You are people.
She is people too.
And when some people try to make you forget that, I will teach you
To say
NO.

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Saturday 2 March 2013

It's her world....but I think I'm living in it too!

One of my favourite tactics when procrastinating about my own writing, is to read other people's writing; sometimes in my official and therefore virtuous role as Editor with the PPP Publishing Collective but all too often in my role as lazy and unmotivated writer with a two year old time-sucking machine. So imagine my joy when I read one of my favourite blogs It's Her World: We Just Live In It and found the newest entry was about ....not writing!

Any blog writer who confesses "Hello Friends, remember me? I'm the lady who USED to write this blog. Now I'm the lady who wishes she had time to write this blog." is all right with me. I sometimes - on a bad month, when my total contribution to the world of literature is a Kafkaesque attempt at a shopping list - refer to myself as "the woman who USED to write poetry." 
The writer of this blog is a mother with two toddlers and therefore has twice my excuse for being unproductive but I add in elderly parents, a business and a really lazy streak and I reckon we are about even. It's a great read, I won't ruin it by dissecting it here, but go enjoy it. One of the reasons this is top of my blog list is the self deprecating style, coupled with genuinely amusing observations and a core of truth. You all know my hatred of clever but empty writing- well, here is some clever but real writing. Top past posts for me were A Letter to my Spirited Child and Facebook Bullying: The New Normal?

Anyway, the title of this particular post "Endless Inspriration, Zero Energy" really hit a chord with me. Endlless Inspiration indeed - I have drawers, and computer files,  full of beginnings. Novels, poems, Short Stories. Some reside in darkness because frankly they are too horrible to see the light of day. But other pieces languish in obscurity because as excited as I was by the flash of inspiration that ignited a frenzy of words across a page.....I was equally incapable of sticking at the damn thing. They reproach me, they berate me, they accuse me...and yet I still ignore them.

Some day I will find myself with that elusive and extraordinary gift - free time. In the meantime I will read blog's like  http://ceeceescrazyworld.blogspot.ie **and enjoy someone else's witty reminder that I am not alone. I leave you with a promise to create more poetry this year, and in the words of the blog "I miss having something burning inside me that I just gotta get down on paper right then and there" 
Also, I too miss my breasts. 



. ** Ceeceescrazyworld blog is written by MamaZinga All copyrights reserved: extracts reproduced here courtesy of author for review purposes only.

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