Ever in(up?)ward...I

Hope in the Prison of Despair ~ Evelyn de Morgan

...have discovered that societal attitudes towards women in regards to marriage and childbearing can spiral me downwards into some of the strongest feelings of despair. I have come to feel as if there are some truly terrible messages about what females are worth hidden in some of the most benign, mundane occurences and interactions.

Simply put, I am shocked at how many woman (women! not just men) in society subconciously act as if your worth is lower if you've never been married and had children. If you point-blank asked many of these women, they would say, of course they don't believe that. That's what they would say. However, their smaller actions tell a different story. I am completely surprised, over and over again, and I really can't just go off and find someone to marry and have kids with to make it all better...Is it true? Women really are trained to believe that their ultimate worth is wrapped in marriage and pregnancy...even to the extent that other women who can't or don't have those social signfiers do not "count" as being fully actualized human beings? I don't know why I am so shocked, but I am?

In a way, it's as if  this feeling is due to a collection of small, subtle choices, day in and day out, week after week, month after month, year after year, which, when they add up, collectively scream out something completely degrading and suffocating about how woman are valued or worth anything to societal forces... Why are there such gigantic inequalities on this planet?

If women were truly respected on this planet, then those women who experience difficulties with childbearing would not be expected to disappear and not communicate their experiences...

Single mothers would not be treated with such disdain by other women...

Women would not be earning lower wages...trained to apologize for themselves, make themselves smaller...all the horrific sexual violence in real life and in the media, as forms of entertainment...

Breathe!!! Find other messages...what can be most healing...