My hair grows very fast, so if I dye my roots dark brown, it looks good for about a week or so. About two weeks out, I get a noticeable shiny line right at my scalp. Within three weeks I have what my pal Carrie Snow calls the ‘grey yalmulke’—the spreading circle of grey at the swirl in back of the head.

I turned 48 this year, and because there is more grey than ever, I decided to stop coloring the roots and let the grey hair grow out. Nine weeks later, I have a good inch or so grown out from the roots. It’s too long to hide the roots via ponytail, head band, etc.—and too short to get the non-grey part cut off.

It’s awkward.

I suppose I’ll have to live with it as it is for the next few weeks. Of course, I could start to dye it again, but that relief only last a week or two. And please, no ‘highlights’. My highlights would come out a lovely reddish blonde, nothing at all like the grey, and then I’d have several colors going on at once. I’ve tried the spray-on temporary color, but then I forget and run my fingers through my hair. Grey roots, brown fingers…

There’s no way to hide the process. So for now, I’m living with my mostly-dark-brown hair with the inch-long-silver-and-brown stripe at the top. Every day is like my own little pride parade, outing myself inch by inch as a grey haired person.

I’m actually looking forward to the end result. And who knows? Maybe it will look good.  If it doesn’t, I can always go back to touching up roots every two weeks.

As they say, “Choice is Power.”

When all we do is slap one another across the face with a gauntlet of ideology and challenge one another to a rhetorical duel, we lose sight of reality. In this case, we literally throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let’s stop arguing about Roe V. Wade, and think together about what is actually going on in the lives of women who become pregnant.The rhetoric makes dangerous assumptions about women, infants, and birth.

First, I wish to state that pregnancy and birth is an amazing, sacred, messy, scary, and uncontrollable business. The process of gestation is fraught with possibility, not all of it good.

The current political climate that surrounds the discussion of so-called, “Partial-Birth” abortion, or late-term abortions, is one that dismisses out of hand the realities of some women and their pregnancies.

In October of 2004, Women’s e-news posted an interesting article about women and late term abortions. This article outlines the stories of three women who were forced to face some challenging and tragic realities about the babies they were carrying, pitting those realities against the health of these women.

In order to be fair to all, the health of the mother must absolutely be a consideration in ALL medical care of pregnant women.

Further, if we wish to curb abortion overall, we absolutely MUST step up in terms of the economy. Women need decent income to support their children, and decent health care to ensure both planned AND healthy pregnancies.

It may come as a surprise to many that in fact, under the Bush Administration, abortion has increased. Abortion numbers fell during the Clinton Administration. Glen H. Stassen, a pro-life ethicist, took a look at the numbers and wrote a ground-breaking article, “A Pro-Lifer’s Critique of Bush.” 

The way I think of it, we ought to be concerned about life. All life, born and unborn– and while a woman is carrying a child, and after she gives birth, we ought to care about her life as well.

We as women can no longer allow dogmatic and mean-spirited dialogue to prevail, no matter which side of the political rhetoric we prefer.

 There’s a birth control commercial that features animation of women swimming in synchronization. The promise of the commercial is that women can get out of the enforced, lock-step daily pill and be ‘set free’.

My hope for us as women is that we can stop allowing ourselves and each other to be marketed as fodder for ugly political rhetoric, and get off the enforced, lock-step choosing up of sides. Let’s listen to the real stories of real women.

One thing we can all agree upon: There is no baby without a mother. If we support women, we can achieve what Glen Stassen originally stated, an opinion that made it into speeches given by Senator Hillary Clinton and others: abortion should be legal and rare. He goes on to say that there is much common ground between so-called pro-life and pro-choice groups. If we really care about women, babies, and life, we’ve got to pay attention to actual facts and common-sense solutions.

Let’s lay aside our cherished ideologies in order to embrace and cherish women. Support women, and then we’ll truly make inroads on saving the lives of their babies.

My favorite Belva Lockwood story is about how she demanded her law degree from the ex-officio President of the National University of Law in Washington D.C., none other than U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant. She wrote,

“Sir, you are, or you are not, President of the National University Law School. If you are its President, I desire to say to you that I have passed through the curriculum of study in this school, and am entitled to, and demand, my diploma. If you are not its President, then I ask that you take your name from its papers, and not hold out to the world to be what you are not.”

She won her diploma.

Belva Lockwood was a strong woman who opined that the best way to overcome prejudice against women was actually to do something to show that women were capable.

At a time when women were thought to be truly incapable of holding forth in legal and political matters, Mrs. Lockwood got her law degree, and successfully lobbied Congress to allow women to be admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court.

She was a friend and correspondent of Clara Shortridge Foltz, the first woman admitted to the Bar in the State of California. In 1884, Foltz inspired Lockwood’s bid for President, as Foltz and another woman had declared themselves, “The Equal Rights Party”, and had jokingly ‘nominated’ Lockwood as the Party’s presidential candidate. Lockwood didn’t get the joke, and earnestly accepted the nomination. She did win some votes. Along the way, she  caused some rift amongst the Suffragists, as her candidacy was seen as an opportunity for ridicule of women as well as competition for money and resources that some felt should go to the Suffragist efforts rather than Lockwood’s campaign. I’m impressed that she carried on, in the face of ridicule and criticism.

Personally, I love her drive, her intelligence, and her forthrightness. She’s a wonderful strong example of the women upon whose shoulders we stand, as she advocated for women to be independent, educated, masters of our own destinies and leaders of society. In this election year, I am saluting her as one of the women who ran for President of the United States of America.

Perhaps in the modern era, she might even have won!

–Sandie

The differences are, of course, that whilst we may all be on the same page, we differ as to what that page should say and how it should be laid out.

This blog is intended to be a sort of a conversation about women and strength, and how we might best cut through our idealism to find some real ways to address our situation. I’ll be posting items of interest here, that will empower us to be strong and to live WOMANSTRONG. I hope you’ll send your recommendations and comments.

-Sandie