March is Women’s History Month where we celebrate the accomplishments and contributions of women. It began as International Woman’s Day on March 8, 1910. A German activist named Clara Zetkin suggested the idea at an international working women’s conference in Copenhagen, and it began to be celebrated internationally the following year. Many countries recognized and celebrated the day, but the United States didn’t begin celebrating it until 1975.

A task force in California created Women’s History Week in 1977, and President Jimmy Carter made March 8 the beginning of National Women’s History Week. In 1981, a congressional resolution sealed the deal. By 1987, Congress declared the entire month of March Women’s History Month. Since then, every president has declared the month of March Women’s History Month.

Title IX was passed on March 1, 1972. In fact, the first-ever Women’s History Week was created in order to bolster support for Title IX, which prohibited discrimination due to sex in federally funded education programs.

The theme of the month this year is Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories. This theme recognizes “women, past and present, who have been active in all forms of media and storytelling including print, radio, TV, stage, screen, blogs, podcasts, news, and social media.” Clarissa Pinkola Estes is a master storyteller, and I wrote the poem below after reading her book, Women Who Run with the Wolves. My poem is based on the myth of the Wild Woman, who travels the desert picking up bones of wolves and assembling them on the desert floor. When she assembles a complete wolf, she sings and sings until the bones rise up into a live wolf.

Wild Woman
after Women Who Run with the Wolves
by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

A wolf is running free in my soul
toward fire of dawn where she is fed
on bones I gather from a scattered whole.

Legends of dark myths take their toll
as nearer to the core of life I dread
to find the wolf running free in my soul.

I grasp at fading light to gain control
but fall through shadows to my bed
of bones that lie within me as a whole.

Damp mists surround me like a stole
and draw me down within the quiet dead
to run with the wolf free in my soul.

Lithe fingers of a silent dawn unroll
a glowing path where, weary, I am led
to ivory bones that rise a trembling whole.

I soar into the past to meet my goal,
laughing with the sun around my head.
A wolf is running free in my soul;
I sing her bones into a howling whole.

© 1993 Dorothy A Joslyn

Information for this blog came from the following website:
(https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/womens-history-month)

Write about a woman who means, or has meant, a lot to you. Why is she special? How has she influenced you to be the person you are?

Send a card or a note to a woman you care about or love. Tell her how much she means to you.

If you are a woman, celebrate yourself this month in some way that makes you happy.

My word for 2023 is “Intentional.” I want to live intentionally, give my time to what matters to me, be useful in some way, find purpose in my daily life. Like many other people, I often live randomly, just wandering from one activity to another, unplanned and disorganized. I know I can’t plan every moment of my life. In fact, that wouldn’t be a good way to live. There has to be time for spontaneity, for just doing things in the moment or not doing anything. But even then, there can be direction and purpose.

I haven’t explored completely what intentional living means. What I do know is that to me it means paying attention, looking at things carefully and clearly, acting with kindness and compassion, working toward intentions I have selected for myself for each day, week, month and the year. I use the word “intentions” instead of “goals,” because to me goals are end results of plans, and intentions are a way of life, ongoing, and may not include specific endings, and that’s how I see myself living. I may not get “there,” wherever “there” is, but the journey is what matters and what I do while I’m on it.

I wrote this alpha poem, or acrostic, (a poem where the lines begin with words that use the letters of a word or phrase) using my word, “Intentional.”

Intentional

Internally generated by my mind,
Nothing left to chance, I
Turn my thoughts
Energetically toward my truths,
Noticing the source first,
Then determining how to proceed.
Inner resources are ready,
Only focused on
Now, not yesterday or tomorrow, but
Allowing myself the
Luxury of some uncertainty.

It’s not great poetry, but it helped clarify for me how to begin the exploration of what “Intentional” will become for me in the coming year.

Write about what living intentionally means to you. What steps can you take to be intentional in your thoughts and actions.

Choose a word that has meaning to you as your word for the year. Write about that word and how it will help direct your way of life this year.

Write your own alpha poem/acrostic using your word and see where it takes you.

Our country and the world seem to be in chaos all of the time these days: extreme weather events, political upheaval, deep divisions among people with different ideologies, wars, racial discrimination, starvation in many parts of the world, mass shootings and on and on. How can we be grateful? Yet, there are things I am grateful for tucked in among the anger and hopelessness. I have to stop sometimes and put aside the negatives for just a while and bask in the joyfulness that somehow bubbles up in me if only for a moment.

The things I am grateful for are large and small, all of them important, though. I’m going to list a few things here:

a loving family
very good friends
my life as it is
reasonable health (for my age)
my warm, comfortable home
the resources to put food on my table
fall is here (my favorite season that has been especially good this year)
the ability to engage in activities I enjoy

I could go on and on. I have a good life. It is the time of year that we often take stock and think about the things that make us happy. Sometimes we are brought up short by terrible things happening around us, maybe not to us, but things that affect us and our ways of life. What can we do? What should we do?

We can be kind. We can try to understand how someone else may be feeling and give them space to be who they are. We can love fiercely. We can give of ourselves and resources to causes that may help change the world. We can care.

In this season of Thanksgiving, let’s find things to be thankful for and do something that makes the world just a little better.

Make your own list of things you are grateful for. Spend some time basking in feelings that the list creates in you, then act on those feelings to help improve the lives of others.

Write a love poem or essay. It doesn’t have to be a romantic love poem/essay, but one that honors someone about whom you care deeply. Then, if you’re comfortable, share it with that person.

You may not think of September as a new beginning as you do January 1, the new year, but to me it feels like a time to take stock and maybe even do something different. The hot days of summer are receding into cool nights and warm days. I feel more like tackling projects and spending time outdoors.

Although I have no children in school, school starting up again feels like a fresh start. I live in a college town, and students are everywhere. Something about seeing young people out and about invigorates me. The promise they have kind of rubs off on me. I would love to be going back to school!

So, what am I going to do with my perceived fresh start? Hopefully, I will write more. I got great feedback from a piece I submitted to a literary publication even though I didn’t win the contest. It’s unusual to get feedback on non-winning entries, so I’m going to take advantage of it to revise the piece and maybe submit it elsewhere.

I may go to some parks just to soak up the fall air. I may find a labyrinth nearby and walk it for a spiritual boost. I can revisit some of my 2022 intentions and fulfill them. Now is the time!

September’s Hope

It is here,

that time of year when time feels fresh,

when the air is crackling with possibilities.

I can breathe deeply

and soak in the season.

I embrace the revitalization of my spirit.

There is a pause before whatever is to come

tempered by no promises

except change.

Soon leaves will be falling

in a rainbow of color,

and the grass will fade,

but I know they are only resting

and will return in the Spring.

I always hope for peace on earth,

but this year, especially, I send out peace vibes

on the crisp, cool air of autumn.

© 2022 Dorothy A Joslyn

 

Some people think of autumn as the dying season. What does it say to you?

Do you have projects for this fall that you’ve been saving because of the heat of summer? Write about them.

What is one of your hopes and wishes for right now? Send out the vibes!

As I am writing this, the US Supreme Court has overturned Roe vs Wade, taking 50-year-old freedoms away from women in this country. It’s about abortion, yes, but it’s about so much more, too. It’s about a group of people who want to impose their beliefs on everyone else. It’s about control. It’s about keeping women “in their place,” which is farther down the ladder than white men. I’m always amazed at women who subscribe to this type of control, who are willing to bow to whatever men and some religions want and demand. We are strong and able to control our own lives. Why would any woman want to be subservient to anyone else or ideology?

What is even more difficult for me to understand is the lack of care people give to unwanted children. Many are against any kind of social programs that might help families take care of their children or prevent unwanted births, like free child care and birth control. They only care that the child is born, not how it will be cared for in the long-term. I’ve heard the phrase, “pro-birth” not “pro-life” that describes those people. Some unwanted children have terrible, violent lives or not enough to eat. Many are homeless. Some end up dead from abuse. Where are these high-minded people when such need is so great?

This month also includes Independence Day, July 4. Somehow it doesn’t ring true this year for me. The rights of women have been diminished. Where is our freedom?

I wrote the following poem after Texas passed their anti-abortion law, but it serves to describe this new blow to women’s freedoms, too:

Her Voice

Her faith abides by the cycle of the moon.
See how perfect she is. from “She Is” by
Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

Her voice is swallowed by air rising. . .
from somewhere outside herself.
It takes her breath away; she is suffocating.

Waves of wind blow into her nostrils,
and she cannot do anything to stop it;
now there is no sound.
It is all silence;
then it is a cacophony of words shouted.

Then it is done. It is over; she has lost her voice.
It has been taken from her. . .
and her body.
Her mind is paralyzed.

She cannot believe words cried above the din of loss.
She is alone with nothing to hold on to.
She is sinking back in time, back when fear was alive.

It is alive again, even now in this age of awareness.

Darkness is falling fast into the closing window;
there is nothing to see.
It is all gone, taken away by the signing of a document,
hand-cuffing her to words she did not utter. . .
to which she did not agree.

She will fight though her mouth has been closed.
She will not let this stand.
She weeps in grief, in anger.
She rises to do battle and stands strong.
It will not stand.

She is the perfect storm. See how perfect she is.

© 2021 Dorothy A Joslyn

Write about your feelings that have come from recent legislative and court decisions regarding women’s rights, abortion, or other women’s issues.

What can you do to help keep more legislation from becoming law that demeans or denigrates women?

How can we make this a safer, more livable country for children so they don’t grow up abused, hungry, and homeless?