Inspired by a New Generation

It's the story of social activists the world over, whether one is out leading a crowd of marchers or sitting alone, working quietly to do the grueling work of a dissident writer. That's what I do most days for hours, quietly nurturing readers while looking for opportunities to strengthen and enlarge the platforms to address the complex problems of complicity with sexual and domestic violence.

Every one of us have to fight against the voices in our heads. "Why don't you just give up this passion of yours?"

That's not my voice, I reminded myself early this morning. It seldom is.

This morning it was the voice of a 75-year-old scholar I heard from yesterday, telling me she had given up and was winding down. Unlike me, she's made a career, rather than an avocation at this work for which we share a passion--the work of trying to wake the sleeping giants who hold the power to change the world and to join forces with women to fight the terror that exists in homes, all too often in the homes of these guys who stand in the pulpits every Sunday morning.

Therein is so much of the problem, she understands, same as I do. Yet I'm not ready to give up yet at 71. Maybe I will be at 75.  Or 72, if I wake up many more mornings feeling like I did today.

"If I would just totally accept what Brene Brown encourages me to believe in Rising Strong, that's what I'd do," I tell myself in a voice that's clearly my own. "Yet believing that no matter what people are choosing to do, they are doing the best they can."

So how do we get thru? How does a writer with a prophetic message get thru?

"One person at a time--seldom does it happen otherwise," I answer, reflecting the response Marie Fortune of Faith Trust Institute gave me years ago when I turned to her about as discouraged as I am this morning, a few months after How Little We Knew was released.

It was a 25-year-old activist named Ashley Easter who served this week as one of the biggest breaths of fresh air I've had since I discovered Nobuko Oyabu, the photojournalist who reached out to me and then went on to be on Lifetime TV.  Ashley's gathering forces to provide an ecumenical conference in October, called The Courage Conference.

Twenty-five years ago it was our common understanding that survivors of childhood trauma, due to arrested development, were seldom developmentally ready to face their past until they were close to forty years old. I believe this was true back then. It's not what I'm seeing now, however, and young women like Ashley. I'm amazed at the conversations now going on because of the foundations we Baby Boomers have managed to lay.

Call me the eternal optimist if you wish, but I'm not giving up. Not even close.

It's high time the old sleeping giants, resistant to change, either give up or move aside. For change is on the way!

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