What if we Listened?

What if the human beings, who are caretakers, of our most vulnerable population: children, what if they were also cared for?

What if, statistically, instead of him getting his needs met, she had her needs noticed?

Would we notice her, especially when she persists?

We would be…

… checking in on her, sitting with her in her emotional or physical pain, carrying the baby while she eats a meal, not judging the baby’s outfit, or criticizing the child’s every whimper, and maybe then, we finally would have the grace to see her when she’s hurting.

We would be…

PROVIDING A BETTER SYSTEM OF SUPPORT TO MOTHERS, which includes better childcare systems. She’s working and she’s mothering, it’s a lot, and it’s been too much even before COVID.

If…, she wasn’t just an object, we’d listen at the medical offices to her physical pains, instead of chalking it up to her high-stress levels and sending her home from her first doctor’s appointment in 3 years.

The studies are out there, overwhelmingly so. Study after study will tell you about this problem. Women, and especially black women, are not heard and often not treated seriously or compassionately enough within their medical provider's walls.

Oftentimes, for many women (especially for women veterans) we have layers of medical provider-related shame, from previous experiences. For many women, because of medical trauma, actually going to the doctor (any doctor) can be very overwhelming.

We often stop going and we lose more of our connections to our physical self as a result.

We do not take women’s healthcare issues seriously.

We especially don't take black women’s medical complaints seriously. The horror of the psychological torture and violence committed in the name of medical science against black women is heavy, and yet… Fucking yet, we still downplay when a black woman comes in for medical treatment.

Recall in the news this last year, as we heard about the number of black women who died of COVID. We heard the stories of black women trying to obtain medical care but being sent home, and while this did happen to everyone, the number of black women sent home to die from COVID was statistically and ridiculously much higher than all other genders and races.

De-humanizing and turning women into objects cost society and it costs the military and our veteran community a great deal.

Women often do not identify as veterans in my veteran community. We often don’t talk about our military service, because, on top of being an object in society, she is also responsible for ensuring his emotional security AND feelings of comfort in his male masculinity. If she is a veteran and many men in that community are not, well now she’s upset the menfolk.

Telling an insecure man that you served in the military, is more often going to be responded to in a way that is about power and control. He will either own that object or he will dominate it.

This could be one of many reasons women veterans tend to hide their service. It can also be the reason why there is so much shaming of women who served in the military.

So, if you hear a woman veteran raising her voice it's because she is tired.

She is tired of being an object. She is tired of having to carry the weight of the emotional and physical load of the people around her.

Often times when we get so tired, we believe what biases we tried so hard to fight against. We start to believe we are objects. We are robots who have lost their sense of self and their connection to their meanings for being. She shuts down when she gets tired.

She disconnects.

With that disconnection comes a loss of self. A loss of feeling like you know your purpose. A loss of knowing who you are.

If we stop trusting ourselves then we lose our creativity. To be creative, you have to be willing to be vulnerable and open to failure.

If we can’t trust ourselves to handle failure then we avoid anything that may look like or lead to failure. This rigidness or stickiness to what is or what was, will continue to stunt communities and societies that don’t see it for what it is.

It is exactly why we have biases in the first place. As humans, we find satisfaction in knowing we are safe and the things around us are safe.

In order to know we are safe, we want to know what and who is around us. We learn anything different may be dangerous to our safety or security.

We learn certain coping mechanisms as children and also as a people that helped us to survive, those same coping mechanisms, however (the military way) can also lead us to feel alone

Our creativity is what makes us human. Our creativity comes in all sorts of ways. We need it to imagine how our future looks. We need it to imagine how our date is going to go later. Or how delicious the food you are cooking will be later.

Because we need to trust ourselves. In order to do that, we need to feel our humanity. All of us. Not just women. And yet we expect women (who we have treated as objects) to now handle all the emotions in the room. The emotional loads that mothers and women have to carry on a daily basis are too heavy.

If you don’t know what I mean, Just look around next time you are at a restaurant. Who is taking care of feeding the children who can't feed themselves? Who is scheduling all of the appointments? Who is making the phone calls for doctor's appointments? Who is ordering uniforms? Who is planning the gifts for the holidays or birthdays?

Women carry so much already. We carry and we carry…

Often times when we lose our humanity, we feel like objects with no purpose. No meaning for being. We oftentimes lose trust in people and we get pretty cynical.

And I gotta tell you, after all these years in working with people… we cope with trauma through connection. The best way to find meaning after trauma is to connect with other living creatures, and this very much includes other humans.

Not only do we have to contend with the onslaught of many days of problem-solving at work, within our families of origin, and within our family system now, however that looks and works for each family, but we also have to carry the emotional fucking load of all the men around us. And while this is getting minutely better, we are far from the place we should be.

“In every single place, girls are given the message that they are weak, that they are vulnerable. That their bodies are a target.””

- ROBERT BLUM, A PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF POPULATION, FAMILY AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AT JOHNS HOPKINS

We tell our girls and women that they have no power from a young age. We are a culture that teaches women their main power will always be their bodies. We teach women how to protect themselves because compared to a man they are vulnerable. We teach women that their bodies are always open season for hunting time.

This focus on women’s physical attributes creates so much shame and stunts so many people’s ability for emotional growth. We as women, and as people cannot grow in relationships with ourselves or others if we are constantly living from a place of unworthiness. And how can we not be living from a feeling of unworthiness? How does someone find worthiness when their worth is based on their hows?

How does she look today? How does she make the room feel? How does she walk? How does she smile? How was her infliction in her voice when she talked to her superior? How are her mothering skills? How did she bend over when she dropped that thing? How was her body language? How was her facial expression? How is her cooking? How appealing is she to the eye?

We don’t do this with men. And it’s so blatantly obvious.

Women are taught they provide value if they can ensure everyone’s comfort. Think about this. How often are women made to feel uncomfortable by hurtful questions or comments?

She can hear comments daily on how her outfit flatters or doesn’t flatter her “figure”. We as women have to constantly be berated about our current relationship status, fruitfulness status, and financial status. It’s exhausting, I’m tired, and I don’t have to experience the added layer of racism.

For the women who are not white in America, they face extra challenges in their daily lives. As we teach women how to be and men what to be, we lose the humanity in both.

I can tell you while I worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs, on a daily basis there was at least one comment made by a veteran about my physical attributes. While making comments about someone’s physical appearances in some people’s lives doesn’t happen too often, for me it happens frequently.

The constant focus on how pleasing I am or how not pleasing I am, physically to the male species has been in more conversations in my life than I feel is fair. These conversations have never been uplifting to my emotional needs, they have always resulted in me feeling objectified and demeaned of what power I had.

For so long, I have often felt small, voiceless, powerless, and helpless.

When you are treated as an object, as is the case when men constantly feel the need to discuss or comment on your physical appearance, you begin to lose your voice. You lose your voice because there are so many who have decided your voice is pointless unless you can be pleasing to their eyes.

As an object, you feel as though you are not your own self, as though the only self which is acceptable to others is the one, they have determined you need to fit in.

This is what women are tired of. We are tired of being the object which caters to humans.

We are tired of having to be on guard all the time. We are taught from a young age that men are the aggressors and women need to constantly be on guard. It’s exhausting, I think, for all people.

Grace and Peace,

Aarika Powers, LCSW