My
social media news feeds are brimming with the highly styled vignettes of home
interiors, and filled with pictures of perfect families in perfect locations,
shot by professional photographers with no expense spared.
A
reality that none of us are sharing in the day to day of motherhood or
womanhood.
I
wonder if the alternate realities we have created for ourselves amount up to a
little paradise that we don’t actually reside in, we reside here in the
messiness of life.
The
attainment of perfection can only lead to the feeling of failure that undoes the
path that the fight for feminism laid in decades past. It is women who are
robbing other women of self-esteem and replacing it with new and impossible
standards for family, work and rest.
In
our factory manufactured, and fast paced society there is little room for the
faults and flaws, that remind us of our humanness and root us in the earth.
While the wonder of the Earth’s creation is complex and largely unknown, we do
know that from the dawn of time the animal kingdom has existed and survived
(with the exceptions of the interference of mankind) and this survival is born
of instinct.
I
fear, that if we are not free to experience the raw, unedited emotions of
womanhood, we are actually captive to our world.
When we growl and gather our cubs to us, it is for refreshing and it is for
protection. There is very little joy in gliding through our plastic and
contrived lives, muted and edited, as opposed to living open and feeling.
The
insightful and gracious Steve Bidolph, psychologist and author of Raising
Girls, says “nobody can handle reality all of the time.” He encourages us to have
outlets, channels to escape even for a few moments into another place, because
the literal reality of a situation can be inexplicably too much at that time.
In reference to the western world he states that, “ …people living in tough
places were happier…when I came back to affluence, everyone seemed miserable.
The experience convinced me: we are
supposed to be happy. We are not meant to be depressed.”
Escaping
the truth of a testing time is different to trying to live in perpetual
perfection.
The
resurgence of the handmade product in the past ten years is an huge step
towards freedom of the mind and in womanhood.
The
process of making and crafting something is a tangible way to react to our
physical world by responding to it with a brand new creation. It is here, that
we can find a harmonious way to leave those difficult realities momentarily, to
recover ourselves, without buying into the fake reality sold to us through
branding, advertising and consumerism.
The
blessing in handmade is abundant.
In
the developing world, women in small business use their talents, and work with
natural available resources to craft practical objects for use.
In
the developed world, we are free to responsibly source these sustainable,
fairly traded products and enter small business across the seas in partnerships
with these women. We face less hardship in a county like ours, I would
encourage you to feel and get caught up in the joy of the maker.
There is
something very rooting, grounding and resilient about allowing the seed of a
design to be shaped, grow and come to life.
We
are all women, who face challenges, build resilience, possess skills and
talents, and we do not want to be blinded to injustice any longer.
We
do not want to mask depression with pretences.
We
want to have the conversation that leads to freedom of the soul.
Before
my passion for the handmade product, came my motherhood, and before my motherhood
came my womanhood.
I
want freedom in all of it.
My
inner animal tells me to fight for my children, to fight for my passions and
ultimately to fight to protect my heart.
It
guides me in my integrity. It warns me of danger. It reveals injustice. It
seeks truth, and resists the lie.
In
it’s nature, my inner animal bonds me to the earth, and takes me on journeys
where the process is the lesson, and that
is where the riches lay.
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