{"id":474,"date":"2013-11-14T06:55:31","date_gmt":"2013-11-14T14:55:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nancymthurston.wordpress.com\/?p=474"},"modified":"2013-11-14T06:55:31","modified_gmt":"2013-11-14T14:55:31","slug":"listen-up-honey-bunchkins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nancymthurston.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/14\/listen-up-honey-bunchkins\/","title":{"rendered":"Listen Up, Honey-Bunchkins"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hectate\"<\/a>I was stuck. Defeated. Hiding under Mom\u2019s blue afghan.<\/p>\n

Luckily I\u2019d \u201cmet\u201d a character that could give me just the shove I needed\u2014Hectate, my own combination of the goddess Hecate and my wise inner guide with an attitude the size of Texas. Hectate, never one to mince words, demanded that I get up and do what was mine to do.<\/p>\n

She had me put Helen Reddy\u2019s All Time Greatest Hits<\/i> in the CD player, crank up the volume and sing at the top of my lungs. Hectate wanted to \u201cwrite\u201d me a letter, so I sat at my computer, fingers poised over my computer keyboard, took a deep breath and waited. My fear and trembling disappeared as Hectate began to \u201cdictate\u201d this:<\/p>\n

Wednesday, July 12, 2006<\/p>\n

Church night in the South<\/p>\n

Listen up, Honey-bunchkins,<\/p>\n

Your singing sounds great. How polite of you to close the windows first. Still afraid someone will hear you and Helen singing together? Being loud still too wild for you? \u2026<\/p>\n

You belted out \u201cI Am Woman<\/a>\u201d while you danced with the vacuum cleaner as a young woman back in Boise land. Funny how your wildness came out a bit when you cleaned house.<\/p>\n

Welcome home to the fullness of your life as a woman. It took you long enough. Fifty-two years old is no spring chicken. The power of the lie is so strong it is hard for women to break through much younger. Especially strong, intelligent women like you.<\/p>\n

Like many women of your time, you\u2019ve lived out a strange combination of falling asleep and feeling invincible. You thought you could do it alone, right? At times you almost sank from the weight of your strength. You tried to play by enough of the rules that you could sustain the illusion of your independence from things as messy as sexism and patriarchy. You got a little constipated trying to hold it all in while not noticing. …<\/p>\n

$#@* invincibility and strength. They damn near drug you under a few times. …<\/p>\n

This society does its little jig, pretending everything is just peachy for everyone. You are living in an insane world. That is not the whole picture, of course. Life\u2019s beautiful, too. But it is the insane part that put you to sleep and is causing such havoc these days. Are you ready to wake up? Are you ready to open your eyes and see things as they really are? \u2026<\/p>\n

Time, it is a wasting. Midnight\u2019s near, and it\u2019s hard to see the way. But I need you human women to WAKE UP NOW. You must claim your wisdom and live it in the world. If women continue to remain silent, there is little hope for this little planet. \u2026<\/p>\n

You were created with just what you need to thrive, to live fully. You were not created lacking. Quit acting like it. Believe in your greatness, your magnificence and your power. Yes, most of the current world institutions embody a distorted power, dangerous \u201cgreatness.\u201d $#@* that shit! You are talking about another kind of power. Don\u2019t be so afraid. Live. NOW. \u2026<\/p>\n

If you try to hold back, I\u2019ll drag this out of you. That will really hurt. So get on with it. Generations of women have your back and add their spirits to your breath.<\/p>\n

Find that voice of yours, that WOMAN\u2019S voice, and speak it. Living with only part of your wisdom is a luxury the world can no longer afford. None of us. Not men. Not women. Not trees or plants. Not rocks or stars. Not water or flame. Not air or animals or the cosmos. \u2026<\/p>\n

Amen, so be it, just do it, have fun along the way and all that. You are never alone. Don\u2019t forget, you have a heavenly posse leading the way.<\/p>\n

Blessings, honey-bunchkins, Hectate*<\/sup><\/p>\n

While I still hide under Mom\u2019s afghan now and then, humming along with Helen now and then helped me to remember Hectate\u2019s straight-to-the-point guidance and put a little kick in my step.<\/p>\n

Hectate has made it clear that she wants to share some of her wisdom with a larger audience.\u00a0 She will \u201ctake over\u201d Nancy\u2019s facebook<\/a> author page for her own posts.<\/i><\/p>\n

*Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself (Portland: Rosegate Press, 2012) page 264-266, slightly adapted
\n<\/i><\/p>\n

Drawing by Khara Scott-Bey, Illustration from Big Topics at Midnight<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was stuck. Defeated. Hiding under Mom\u2019s blue afghan. Luckily I\u2019d \u201cmet\u201d a character that could give me just the shove I needed\u2014Hectate, my own combination of the goddess Hecate and my wise inner guide with an attitude the size of Texas. Hectate, never one to mince words, demanded that I get up and do … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Listen Up, Honey-Bunchkins”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[41,134,138,140,157,270],"class_list":["post-474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creativity","category-gender","tag-big-topics-at-midnight","tag-hecate","tag-helen-reddy","tag-i-am-woman","tag-khara-scott-bey","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancymthurston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancymthurston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancymthurston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancymthurston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancymthurston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nancymthurston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancymthurston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancymthurston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancymthurston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}