A few days ago, when I started writing this blog in earnest, I asked my new friends in the FLDS community to suggest things I could write about. I asked them to tell me what things they would like to see people have a different than the popular perspective on.
Last evening I got a note from a friend. She said, tell people about our "brainwashing". Tell them how we are so lost without our husbands, that when most of them are gone from town working, for weeks at a time, we all just fall apart!
Of course, she was being sarcastic! Yet pointing out a very real truism, these days. Many of the men in the FLDS community work in various aspects of the building and construction industry. With the recession and decline in those industries, the men often have to travel long distances, for weeks at a time, to stay employed. That leaves the women at home, keeping things going...making sure that life is held together for the children. Making sure the small businesses some own and operate keep going. Making sure the groceries are bought, the bills are paid, the prayers are said, appointments are kept, schooling continues, the repairs are done....
And for many, this means helping with all of these things while keeping their own jobs amidst this awful recession. Many FLDS women have jobs outside the home, as well as their responsibilities in the home.
Their lives are not terribly different than the millions of other American families struggling and making changes, just to get through these hard times. And just as with the millions of the rest of us, these women are the backbone of the home. And just as the rest of us are being tested by these times, so are they. Stretching budgets and making do. Mending on top of mending, what would have been replaced, just a few months ago. Times are no easier for them, than for any of us. They are not robots, unaffected by the times.
My friend who wrote to me pointed out that with so many men out of town, "escaping" wouldn't be a problem. This is actually what she wrote: "We are so controlled that the men in general are never in town and if we wanted to we could escape at anytime and return unnoticed. =)"
Let me tell you a little about the women I have gotten to be friends with.....
Each of them are very bright. And each of them write wonderfully! Well, to be perfectly honest, one spells just like my son...it's in a sort of "new era shorthand"...she writes in the language of youth...an accommodation for the techno minded.....but she usually writes to me from her phone....and I'm resistant to this new language...so I usually have to have my son interpret what she is writing...
Each of them are funny! Oh my goodness, we write back and forth with tears running down our faces from laughing at our mutual stories of the vagaries of life in retrospect.....
And each of them reached out in friendship to me. When I began this journey, I didn't know these people, their names, and certainly not their email addresses. But they follow the news and the blogs, and they saw that I was struggling to learn without being judgmental, so they reached out...willing to befriend, share, learn, and teach....
And each of them are unique. Beautiful, smart, funny, unique women.
Some folks on other blogs would tell me these women I was getting to know and be friends with were actually FLDS men, creating a ruse. Pretending to be women to rope me in as a mouthpiece. Oh my goodness, did that ever make me laugh! A woman KNOWS another woman...just by the way we write, the topics we choose, the vantage point(s) we describe...the talk of children...it is subtle, sometimes even subliminal, but it is very definitely something men cannot fake!
Let me tell you a little about our sharing....
One woman was a truck driver, for years. Cross country trucking, not your local pick-up truck stuff. No way! We're talking big rig stuff...long trips, heavy work, wondrous adventures....
One woman helps run her family business. Two women I write back and forth with do not have biological children of their own, yet. They are mothering, and loving, and shedding tears over their children, yes, but they have not biologically had children. (Despite the common belief that all women are is 'baby makers') One woman can't stand cooking. Another loves gardening. Another loves teaching, creating wonderful learning projects.
Two pull out their hair finding ways to cope with boys with attention challenges. Another works at keeping up with her adolescent daughter who is a roller blade whiz!
A father has written to me about how proud he is of two of his daughters who both recently graduated from college and have promising careers on their horizons, along with the desire and intent of having wonderful, big families......
I don't know, I haven't asked, but somehow I don't think any of them place any importance on whether they have matching Tupperware in their kitchens, or not. They don't strike me as being in the market for Louis Vuitton (sp?) handbags. Although one mother and I shared the misery of the cost of Under Armor underwear for our men who work outside....
All of them keep up with national politics and issues, and discuss them with ease, and conviction!
Each of them have taken the time out of their very, very busy, full, gratifying lives to befriend me...and I'm not all that easy a person to befriend...*smile*...I've been known to be just a tad crotchety and abrasive, not to mention "intense"...but they have made time for me...and send me smiles and hugs when I need them....
These women are not robots! They work at "keeping sweet". They work at maintaining harmony and calm in their lives. All have some success and some failure at the equilibrium they strive toward.....
Each of them know full well that they have the choice to leave and live in the outside world. None of them feel they live a deprived or subjugated life. Each has chosen to live in their community, practice their faith the best that they can, love their children, love their neighbors, and even love their semi-heathen cyber-friend....
As saddened and angry as I am by the events of April 2008, I will always be grateful, too. Those events expanded my world. They brought wonderful new friends into my life. Those awful events actually opened many doors, for many people....As the saying goes;
The Lord works in strange and mysterious ways!
By the by...keep watching...my friends and I are collaborating on writing a piece about what "submitting" means for an FLDS woman. *smile* It's going to be an 'eye opener'! It isn't what you think!
9 years ago
