What is your purpose?
Who are you?
Where have you been?
Where are you going?

Long ago, under the weight of oppression, without rights or recognition, women in America fought for our rights - our civil rights. And we won, or so we thought. Off into the work force we marched. We left our children at home with caretakers and tackled the board room. We studied and earned our degrees, and proved without a doubt that we are just as good as men are -- no, we were not just as good. We were better.

Time marched on and we stopped marching. Yes, there was a glass ceiling in the work place but some were able to shatter it. We became content with those who didn't mind the cuts and bruises. If a few could make it to the round table in the board room then so be it. No thought was given to pulling up those who looked on wistfully below us. To those on the ladder of success, who fell victim to the falling pieces of glass, we turned a blind eye.

We lost our sisterhood. We lost our desire for a family and a home and set our sights on a more concrete goal: Property, assets, stocks and bonds; jewels and furs, and luxury cars. And because we had so much money, we were rich enough to offer free love and free sex.

Perhaps we were not respected but we didn't let that stop us. Perhaps we were not valued but what did it matter? We didn't need a man to value us, we said to ourselves. We would prove our worth to the world.

Yet, amongst Doctorates and Bachelor degrees, corner offices and six figure salaries why then did we feel so empty, with our barren wombs? And when had the idea of a home and a family become so appealing? What was happening?

After having spent so much time developing ingenious ideas to stop the process of fertilization we were desperate to start it up again. We wanted to be pregnant NOW. Aborted fetuses became painful to remember for some, while Invitro-fertilization became a household name, as many others struggled with the inability to have children at all. You see, we didn't want to adopt. No child of another woman's womb could satisfy our yearning. We longed for -- no, we desperately wanted our own children and our own husbands as well.

That's right, that man - you know, the one who we shunned and marched against; the one who we said we didn't need and could do without? Yes, the very one; we wanted him, too. In fact, we didn't just want him; we needed him, in a strange and desperate way. And even as he emotionally abused us, we clung to him; and even as he used us, we clung to him; and even as he lied to us and misled us, we still clung to him. As we became unraveled and dismantled, we clung to him, because without him, we felt we were nothing. It was in him we defined ourselves. It was in him, we esteemed ourselves. It was with him, we felt whole.

He oppressed us emotionally, just as he did long ago, when we first developed the courage to march for women's rights, but this time we chose to stay. We chose to stay this time, because we had convinced ourselves there was no where else to go. No amount of education could convince us of our worth. No amount of financial success made us feel valuable. Without a family, we found, we felt worthless. Without someone to reflect back to us who were were, we did not know ourselves.

How ironic! As we marched, did we ever realize we would march down through history and come full circle? How is it that we now marvel at how our mothers raised six children, when we can hardly manage the two or three we have? She was supposed to be the weak one; the one who foresook a career and a full, promising life for the sake of a husband. But oh, how we envy her strength, while we struggle to work outside the home and take care of our families, all the while finding it an impossible task.
Now, we wrestle with dismay at the fathers who've walked away from their children, tossing a comment over their shoulders that they are sure we can do it all alone. In fact, we said we could, long ago, remember? We said we didn't need them, and now our words have come back to haunt us. `You're as good as we are', their taunting eyes challenged, So go ahead, do it yourself'.

But since we have realized how much our children need a father, we don't want to do it alone. We wish we could take our words back because we finally understand the pain we saw hidden behind our mother's eyes, when our own fathers did not come home.

Why did we go out searching for our value outside of the home, outside of ourselves? While looking for a stamp of approval from society we managed to lose our sense of self. Our careers were not able to define us; our assets failed to complete us.

We are horrified at the Female Genital Mutilation occurring in Africa, while we live with molestation here in the United States. Children are sold into sexual slavery to feed their starving families in India, but we turn a blind eye to prostitution in America, because the exchange of currency makes it somehow different. Young boys are rented out to men for their perverse satisfaction in Europe, and in the same way, young parishioners are violated by Priests in our Catholic churches.
What has happened to our children and our families? Why do we focus our compassion on the outside, when inside, at home, we've come undone?

Women, where art thou?
Who are you?
Are you looking to fulfill yourself with someone else's life?
Are you a mother, a partner, a friend, a wife?
Does your marriage compliment who you are or is it just a poor substitution for a fragile soul?
Can you protect your children and teach them what they need to know, not how to survive in this world, but how to thrive in this world?
Remember, you can only do this for your children, if you have first done it for yourself.
Do you have anything to offer the world or do you only seek to use what you find in others?

When God created woman he did so with the idea that she would become a partner to men in the raising of their children; she was to be the backbone of the family. God did not create half of a human being. He did not leave women lacking. We came to the world whole and fully functional, to do what we were meant to do: Nurture, protect, love, inspire, uplift, console, and to create life with a loving man who regards us with value. We were never meant to cheapen ourselves with someone who abuses us, and certainly we were never to conspire to do everything on our own.

Are we still searching fruitlessly on the outside for what God has placed within?