Womanhood 101: Advanced Course for Beginners

Mom never discussed what I was likely to experience regarding the evolution of my female body.

The lesson on the development of breasts was reduced to a training bra left splayed on the bed I shared with my younger sister, a confusing and embarrassing surprise returning home one afternoon from fourth grade.

Menstruation, a vital and transformative passage to womanhood, was explained not by my mother, but demonstrated by a young friend as we huddled in her second floor bedroom with the door securely locked. Speaking in hushed tones just above a whisper, she removed her gingham shorts revealing a pair of delicate, pink-laced underwear which she retained throughout her demonstration. Stepping gingerly into something she referred to as a sanitary belt – a thin, circular, elastic contraption with dangling straps and tiny metal pieces, spaced strategically to hold it together – she slowly lifted one leg at a time into its center. After wriggling a bit, she wrenched it up over her hips until it fit snuggly at her waist. To this odd belt, she attached a seven-inch-long white pad, placing it lengthwise between her thighs, securing it to the straps, and nestling it closely to her vagina.

“Voila!!!”, she exclaimed, turning in a circular motion, while modeling the odd gizmo.

Following the final twirl, she suggested I would need this gadget and the accompanying pads at the first notice of blood on my underwear. She didn’t have a definitive name for the bodily part that bleeds, but referred to the phenomena as her ‘period’.

To say the least, I was in a state of shock when the lesson was over!

If Mom hesitated to speak of bras and periods, as you might expect, she NEVER uttered the word…SEX. The vast majority of 1950’s mom’s, inhibited by the social norms of their time, were unlikely to discuss any form of physical development, or God forbid sexuality, with their young daughters.

As I fumbled through adolescence, my knowledge base for sexual development and experimentation was pieced together through muted conversations in private spaces, like the middle-school girls’ bathroom with other ‘tweens’…whose ‘facts’ were often inaccurate.

We were, basically, on our own.

In the 1960’s, birth control was not available to unmarried women or legal minors. If there were manuals or books written to enlighten teens on the topics of sex, sexual attraction, sexual pleasure, or avoiding pregnancy…I was certainly unaware. Google did not exist to spit out such information in a nanosecond. Schools did not offer sex education classes. And, my Mom’s lips were sealed

Abortions were illegal, relegated to back alleys, performed generally by those NOT in the medical professions, resulting too often in death. A woman’s right to choose what was best for her body and her life, was non-existent.

It was 1966.

I lived in a small, rural, working-class town about ten miles from a city. Life was simple and sheltered. For me and my high school female counterparts, the thought of graduating and living independently, seeking an education or career far from the safety of our little town and all that was familiar, was frightening and nearly unfathomable.

Young women of the 60’s were generally limited in regard to what their future might entail. There were few role models of successful woman traversing life on their own. Few, if any of our Mom’s had a college degree, most had never traveled alone, and many still lived in the tiny town they were born in when they married.

As young, impressionable girls, we were fed images from television programs like “Leave It to Beaver”… and another, literally entitled, “Father Knows Best”… both portraying the female ‘mother’ role as the subservient caregiver. With hair perfectly coiffed, a strand of pearls hugging her neck, and 2-inch heels to match a dress suited for a social event, the television “Mom” prepared the meals, delivered them to the dining room table, and cleaned up when everyone finished eating…while donning a permanent smile.

I was Catholic. I observed the men of our Church preaching on the altar in their colorful, regal garments and crown-like headgear, as the congregation sat silent, motionless, submissive in the pews. In comparison, the nuns sharing my gender, wore loose-fitting, black dresses that began at their necks, concealed their arms, and fell to the floor lightly brushing the tops of their leather, laced footwear. Their faces generally appeared without emotion, framed in that same black cloth, completely covering their hair and exposing only a partial forehead, eyes, nose, and mouth. Their movements were stiff, almost robotic, and I noted how they sprang to attention and bowed whenever a priest entered the room.

Male authority and control was also evident in my high school. The principal and assistant principal were men.

This was also true of television news reporters and anchors; my medical doctors; the city and town police officers; firefighters; business owners; the vast majority of politicians, including the President and Vice President of the United States, Speaker of the House, and the majority of Senate and House members, all male.

It was apparent who had the power, who was in charge.

Girls, like me, could only imagine a future with a short range of opportunity…choices limited for the most part to becoming a nurse, a teacher, a secretary…or a wife.

Although my Dad encouraged me to attend college, I knew in my heart that it was unlikely. I could not imagine taking that leap on my own, by myself, without my friends who, in fact, did not express an interest in furthering their education.. The pervading atmosphere of male dominance shrouded my ability to think out of the box. Although my grades were top notch and I was enrolled in advanced classes providing the stepping stones to a college career, my closest female friends, one by one, entered the secretarial program. Not to be left behind, I joined them.

The default next step… was a ‘Mrs. Degree.”

I was 17…and…‘in love’.

Captain of the football, baseball, and basketball teams – of Italian heritage, dark complected, ebony-colored hair with a hint of wave – was the most sought-after guy in our senior class. He was first prize in the potential husband department…and he was mine.

We depended on the boys to give us status. Men were the assumed ticket to stability, the pathway to a future.

At that time, many of us began experimenting with sex, pressured by the guys we dated, and a concern we would otherwise be heckled as prudes, or even worse, be overlooked. Sex became a badge of honor, a giant leap into womanhood. After only two encounters, one performed on a twin bed while his parents were out to dinner, and another in a wooded section of town known for such activity in the back seat of a borrowed car, I soon discovered I was pregnant.

In the late 1960’s, only married women had access to diaphragms…and birth control pills were not available to single women until 1972.

The Vietnam War was raging. Young men lived in fear of the draft. We opted to postpone marriage, and I would continue to live with my parents until he returned from a military stint in the Texas Air National Guard, an assignment arranged by an uncle who had a position of power.

I was navigating pregnancy unmarried, as a high school senior. I had disappointed my parents who had imagined me as the first of our huge extended family to attend college. For a period of time, my Dad, overwhelmed with disappointment, hardly spoke to me. I hid my pregnancy under ponderous layers of blouses and sweaters, so not to be expelled from school….protocol in the 60’s. I experienced unimaginable guilt. To be unmarried and pregnant during that decade assummed a ‘scarlet letter’ of shame.

Months passed.

I graduated high school, primarily undetected, coping with an expanding bulge.

It was a late evening in early November 1967 when I began to feel something odd.

I was not prepared for the pronounced back ache and the overall bodily discomfort I was experiencing. I was in my ninth month of pregnancy. My male obstetrician (at that time OBGYN’s were 95% male) often flirted with any female friend who accompanied me to my appointments, rather than attend to me as I lay exposed on the examination table, my heels firmly planted in the metal stirrups that pried my legs apart. I was too overwhelmed, embarrassed, and humiliated to ask questions, so I never queried him on what to expect as time grew closer to my delivery date.

It was 1:00 a.m.

The household was still, aside from the movement of life in my belly.

Lying on my back beside my sister, in the room that would soon also harbor my child in a basinet at the foot of our double bed, the pain increased until this space of refuge could no longer be tolerated. Holding my bloated abdomen, taking quiet steps in the dark, I approached my parent’s bedroom as I held back the urge to moan.

I remember the courage it took to wake them.

My Dad would accompany me that night to the hospital, stopping to pick up the father of my unborn son on the way. My Mom, who was not equipped to enlighten me on womanhood, chose to remain at home. I knew all of this must be overwhelming. Her very young daughter, her first-born child, was about to become a mother.

As I passed her standing in the doorway that opened to our driveway and a pitch-black night, I said, “Ma, this hurts.”

Her response, “Well, it will only get worse.”

The men sat aside one another in the front seat, engaged in conversation, as my father drove down the darkened roadways leading to the hospital, about 30 minutes away. I sat by myself in the back, attempting to remain calm and comfortable, as my anxiety and fear reached a pitch I had never before experienced.

The remainder of the night was a blur, aside from vivid moments spent in a type of ward, alongside multiple women in labor readying to give birth, separated by curtains in a room dimly lit. Intermittent sounds of pain permeated the thin sheeting in low groans. At times, they were my own.

A female nurse checked periodically to assess how I was progressing, but for most of the experience I was alone.

It was a relatively brief period of contractions, two hours, before my son was born. I write these words as though it were a simple process. It was not.

These many years later, fifty-five to be exact, I sit at my laptop, re-living this event, writing about it for the first time, breathing into the awareness of how my life was acutely altered by this one moment in time.

I married at age 19, and divorced within ten months, as the drinking that began in high school for my son’s father was clearly a pattern, and not just teenage experimentation with alcohol.

On the extremely important ‘other hand‘, there were many valuable gifts offered throughout this odyssey.

I successfully navigated life and all its complications as a single, divorced Mom at the tender age of 20.

College eventually became an option…delayed until my late-twenties when I married my current husband, who happened to be a Dean of Students, affording me tuition-free classes. I went on to a Master’s program and became a psychotherapist. I chose my life’s work based on an encounter with a blind counselor I met during my pregnancy, who ‘saw’ my tears through her soul, and with gentle words, set me on a journey to shed my shame. I knew in that moment I wanted to be a therapist, and dedicated much of my career to empowering female adolescents and young adults, as well as working with other marginalized groups.

I admire the courage I possessed that persevered and buoyed me throughout the experiences etched on these pages.

I acknowledged my ability to overcome obstacles and attain goals, in spite of a culture that minimized the capabilities of women and squelched their rights.

I have the enormously precious gift of John, my son, who taught me how to be a caring and loving Mom, and brings joy to my life…every…single…day.

I was fortunate to have loving parents who provided what I needed as a single Mom to care for my son.

I learned that growth does not come when life is lived in its moments of comfort, but more likely when the challenges of change, transition and calamity are met.

And…having personally experienced the overwhelming dilemmas, enormous heartache, and loss of freedom that occurs when vital data required to make sound judgements and decisions are restricted or unavailable; when women are relegated to the status of second-class citizens; when male dominance make choice and option non-existent…I know firsthand, women will suffer.

It is imperative that we, women of the 60’s, be conscious and vocal about a women’s right to have access to choices concerning her own, precious body. We need to be certain our nieces, great-nieces, daughters and granddaughters are afforded equal rights and freedoms in all areas of their lives…and not be saddled with the dire restrictions we were forced to challenge and overcome.

Let’s not step backwards into a blighted history of male dominance… let’s move forward asserting and celebrating womanhood in all it’s intended glory!