Strong, Loving, Supportive Females in my Earliest Years?

I am grieving today…finding myself once again angry and despondent about how theology used to be a balm for me, but is no more; how women continue to be unseen and underserved in the ecclesial settings in which my beloved spends nearly all his energies; how I feel impotent to do anything ultimately healing of this raw place in me. This weekend also instigated an active lament--or a rant--given a sermon Brian preached for his congregation. (Timbre and tone of it can be glimpsed here). So when a spirit-friend tendered some pretty specific questions that arose for her, with me in mind, it felt Invited, oxygenating, some salve for the situation I seem to be in at the moment. Thanks, Susan.

Did you feel close to either of your grandmothers? I never felt close to either of my grandmothers, though I was quite proximate to one of them, Grandma Ruth. My father stayed close to her, both in geography and as a dutiful son, so we saw her regularly. Sunday afternoons after church, before school would start up again. My other grandmother lived four hours north, by car, but we only visited once a year. It was a stressful time for Mom, visiting dutifully but being relatively estranged from her entire family, by choice. She felt they were unsafe for her children, which I respect.

Who was the strongest, most loving and supportive female in your life growing up? Who Truly SAW you? Tears are close with this question, rising and seeping out of my eyes. I sit for a while, sipping my cup of hazelnut coffee, culling through all my earliest memories…and no one fits that description in my life. 

I was a lonely little girl, the second daughter of a lonely mother. I learned when I was seven to speak the public truths of my household, living more and more deeply into the private truths of my experience, my body. Connections with Dad were the source of belonging, knowing I mattered, which set up a sibling rivalry of sorts with my only sister. The most present or proximate female in my life growing up was of course my mother. The strongest female in my life may have been Lois Sensenbrenner, the preacher’s wife and high school Sunday School teacher with whom I bonded when I got older. I loved her capacity to speak to the pastor with a seasoned humor, even an irreverence that didn’t take him as seriously as he took himself, or that others seemed to take him. Or maybe it was my piano teacher, Mrs. Phyllis Warner. She was strong, but also exacting, even hurtful, in her pursuit of excellence in her students. My third grade teacher, Miss Donley, who became Mrs. York after my year with her, emerges in my memory as the first most loving presence I encountered when I was growing up. I would stay after school “to help her” in her classroom, but really I simply needed to be with her. She felt like home to most of me, more than my own home did. And then Mrs. Carol Schnell, the school librarian, came into my life during my 5-6th grade years. I would come to the library every morning when I got to school, just to be with her. I think she was the first strong, loving female who really SAW me. She gave me an embroidered handkerchief once, “as she would have given to her daughter, if she’d had one.” I continued visiting her even after I went to college. I actually spoke with her by phone a couple months ago, feeling nudged in a preaching seminar to see if she was still alive, to reach out to her if she were. She was. Brian was the one who saw that she was my “Mrs. Elm,” the loving, helpful, supportive school librarian companioning Nora Sneed in her “between-lives” journey at the Midnight Library (a recent book I devoured and have listened to multiple times, by Matt Haig). 

My best high school friend, Ellen Kehres (now Kumler), may have been the first female in my life who fits the description of strongest, most loving, supportive female in my life. She came into my life in 8th grade, and we navigated various social-high-school challenges throughout the next four years, forming a circle of friends–four guys, four gals–that seemed to hold a space for us all to laugh, love, explore, and learn. She was strong too. Her junior year “writing-speech project” was an homage to agnosticism in a classroom full of Ohio-grown, unthinking religious types. She was the first friend I came to love, getting to experience saying it aloud to her with both intimacy and reciprocity. And she seemed to be for me in all my own quirks and fears, as I was for her, in hers. She and I reconnect still, from time to time, most recently a couple days ago. I am driving over to visit with her at her family’s farm east of Columbus in a couple weeks.

Pausing for a moment, then, in these questions… Oh how I grieve, ache for, this absence of the feminine in my earliest years. I grieve for my mother, who never knew it herself. Still doesn’t know it. Once I grew strong enough, I carried her grief for her, for decades…until I wouldn’t any longer. I love my mother, and we are no longer close. Both by circumstance–she and Dad moved to Portland, Oregon, and she has a hearing aid in both ears, so struggles to hear across technologies today–and by choice. She is less and less present, inside and out. She has been receding for years, not unrelated to my awakening to the feminine that threatened her deeply. “You’re dead to me,” she said at the lowest point of our rupture. Neither of us seems willing to reconnect at any substantial level. I refuse to carry her emotional weights for her any longer; she is unable/unwilling to do that emotional lifting or risking for herself. But today, I grieve for myself. The sadness seeps through everything. I was a lonely little girl, second daughter to a lonely mother, sibling rival to an older sister.

What were their joyful interests? If I expand this question to simply name and celebrate the joyful interests of the females in my life…? My mother loved playing the flute while I was growing up. She would teach students on Saturday mornings, an offering and connection as an educator that I think gave her joy. She pursued local politics as we grew older, landing a City Council slot as a Democrat in a Republican stronghold, for fourteen years running. I think that gave her joy. My sister loved anything handicraft–cross-stitch, macrame, now quilting. She’s really good at it too. I’ve seen some of her recent art quilts, made with minimal pattern, with spiritual or scriptural intent. The family seemed to enjoy itself when we would go camping, for family vacations in the summer. We traveled well together (mostly), and I have fond memories of playing games at the picnic table at night. Making fruit hand-pies in the embers of the fire, better than s’mores in my view. Hiking. Seeing both the Northeast and the West of these United States. Then Canada too, particularly Banff and Jasper. There were many other interests, of course, but I would not name them as joyful, per se. Achievement and performance reigned in our home, whether it was in piano or school. Even sports, to some degree. Soccer. If I wasn’t visibly good at it, it didn’t stick around for long. I remember wanting to do Brownies, then 4-H, but I never received much support for things that were “in addition” to choices Kathy had already made. 

Did you have loving Aunties? I did have aunts that loved me, though they were not what I would call “loving Aunties” in that way I know that phrase now. My father’s family got together regularly for family reunions, so I got to be around the wives of the Brothers, as they are known. I particularly liked Aunt Gina, who was a young woman who came into my uncle John’s life after his second divorce. She was young enough to feel a friend, as well as a woman who eventually married my uncle. They are probably the most loving extended family I experience today, though Gina has really struggled with chronic fatigue, then Covid and post-Covid challenges that brings. There was fear that she would refuse John to be connected to his extended family at all anymore, given her fear of Covid, still. She has some deep motherline wounds as well, which play out in this scenario, lamented by the Brothers but understandable if lamentable by me. None of these aunts are particularly close to me today, nor do I speak with them directly that often.

Drawing this musing time to a close, beginning to lean toward breakfast and some spiritual direction work I am offering today, I’m breathing more deeply and much more aware of how sad I am that my early years lacked the strong, loving, supportive Feminine I know today. It’s good for me to sit with this sadness, just letting it breathe with me, exist without excuse or rationale in support of others. 

I was a lonely little girl, yearning to be all of who she was but also unseen and unsupported in that way. Supported in others, of course, but not that way. Strange to know what i know today, be in such abundance with all I’ve been Given, which regularly demonstrates such contrast from my earliest years. 

I wonder if grieving ever eases…? No need to know, or name, outcome. Thankful for this morning’s sacred abundance, nature all around me, Nala close by, space and time to be present in this way.