I am notorious among friends and family for reading books three quarters of the way through. My convenient excuse is that I’m involved in so many things and I’ve got myself constantly painted all over the map. In spite of this, however, there are a few books that currently keep me warm amid my closest bookshelf. Some I’ve even read cover to cover more than once... and others, well, I just like the way they feel, as if they sit there smiling at me with gentle reminders of who I am. A lot of my work examines women’s sexuality and relationships, hopefully within a helpful and uplifting context, but often from a distinctly female perspective. My hope is, if I can explore and express the one side clearly enough, it might build some bridges by finding the center; finding the common ground in the so-called war between the sexes. More often than not, for women, sexuality and relationships are accompanied by a loss of sense of self, or perhaps a hiding of one’s true self. So I read, I create art and I go back and read some more... always diving in and out of one side of my brain into another... always searching for answers… always searching for self, but also what is distinctly female about t
hat self.
Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher is a book that uncovered for me some of the reasons why I do this. I began exploring this topic in much of my poetry and art within the past few years because my daughter is coming of age and I wanted to understand it all before she got there. But also it surfaced because after a long isolation on the fringe of society where I have felt pleased to be me, I have been coming home - a prodigal daughter of sorts - to integrate into the real world. And that world, like it or not, is distinctly patriarchal.
I had joined a true boys’ club of writers, one where the boys bully around their ideas as the only way to write, while debunking anyone who didn’t agree with them or had a different point of view. Like a sheepish wolf my first reaction was, "My God! It’s worse than I thought! What am I doing here?"
If you couldn’t guess, I felt they didn’t understand my woman-centered work and they would claim that my unstructured approach to writing was barking up the wrong tree. A classic war between right and left, male and female. The only problem was, the men didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with the picture, and I did. I think they thought the biggest problem was this annoying woman who disrupted meetings by polarizing the room when she tried to offer a more right brain, softer, more female possibility… Granted! I had a tendency to do it with the ferocious side of a female wolf protecting her cubs, but female nonetheless.
Luckily, I was able to interview and meet with Linda Seger before I totally lost my mind and cool. She saved my writer’s life. I had been a published feature article writer and had my degree in creative writing; yet still, these boys had me backed against a wall scrambling to defend my way of writing. I couldn’t keep myself from wondering, Is it them or is me? Or is it just the set up?
After I read Linda Seger’s, When Women Calls the Shots: The Development and of power and influence of women in Television and film, I understood it was indeed the set up. But more importantly her book gave me not only a sense of where I stood, but why it was important and valid for me to have a voice once again. The irony was I was a feminist. I thought I knew that stuff already. Perhaps not as well as I thought I did… It was, after all these years, still deep in my bones and it didn’t take much to flare up again like an ugly sore, even long after being painted. But Linda also gave me insights on how I could work within the system when I was ready, and how to make reasonable changes without denying myself or anyone else. The key bit of information, here, of course, was "ready". I wasn’t ready.
I would have died to have John Vorhaus book in my hands during those years with which to wage war, shouting like an out of control child, "Nah, nah! You stupid idiots! You love John! Even John knows I’m right!"
But it’s a good thing I waged war within my own creative process instead. So I have to thank John for his book, Creativity Rules! A Writer’s Workbook. "Timing is everything, John, thank you. Who knows if you had written it sooner, then I might not have wigged out enough to need my poetry and art."
But then again, I probably would have, because the deep creating will have its way with you if you let it. And I like to let it. I’ll have to mention Natalie, queen of deep writing in a bit, but first I must speak of Christopher Vogler. Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers is the consummate storytelling
book based on Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces. He will show you how the Lion King follows the structure of Hamlet from the character’s point of view. Now someone is speaking structure in a language I can understand! Yes. But he also taught me to see it is those boys at the writer’s club for who they were: true characters, true threshold guardians. The ones who make us stronger as long as we don’t beat ourselves up for no good reason trying to get into their doors.
This leads me to Natalie Goldberg’s Wild Mind and Writing Down The Bones. Either one a must-read for any writer engaged in the writing process. Let me repeat myself here…. If you are writer you owe it to yourself to READ THIS WOMAN! Okay, enough said. She says it better herself, anyway.
Yet another must-read for any woman, is Jungian psychologist Clarissa Pinkola Estes’, Women Who Run With The Wolves. Estes speaks to the soul of a woman, as she knew she would. I read this book to the last page, savoring every metaphor and connection like it feed me something I had been starving for all my life. It was no mystery to me I had a connection with wolves. I had had that connection for years, owned a few wolf-hybrids, was constantly visited by them in dreams. My poem, "She Wolf", comes directly from a dream, but Estes told me why this happens. She gave me a way to understand the role the wolf played (and she does like to play); as well as, a way to embrace her within my psyche. I am, have always been, at least in this life, the living She Wolf and she is definitely in my bed.
"Ah, beds!" An analytical left brain writer might say, "See how she sets you up for the next book?" Ha, yeah right. Guess again. This is just how my mind wanders from all the influences and books, one by one, as they surface to show themselves. Like a wolf? But back to that bed. My next book I hold dear is, Passion Play: Ancient Secrets for a Lifetime of Health and Happiness through Sensational Sex, by Felice Dunas, Ph.D., with Philip Goldberg. This was the first sex book that I’ve read in a long time I liked. It could, at the same time, satisfy my woman’s psyche, my feminist’s sensitive nerve, my lover’s curiosity, and my fiery passion. I still might argue with the book in a place or two, as I really do love a good fight, but it embraces the feminine and masculine within all of us. And so I come full circle, finding the middle within myself, through my reading, through my writing, through my art and my relationships.
Of course, these are just a few of the books of the process, never mind the movies. I love movies, but I am sitting at the Two River’s Park outside of Nashville with my laptop and my feet are getting cold. I’m going to have to leave soon to bring my son to an animation class out at the wonderful Renaissance Center in Dixon. And, you locals, know, That is a trek! But check out their website: http://www.rcenter.com
You can take a virtual tour and maybe decide to take a course. This place marries both sides of my brain for me without an argument. They find the peace between right and left, man woman, creative and editor, science and art. Sometimes I like to bring my drawing pads and sketch people when they move.