Aren’t the mix of multiple people who, in history, made this country what it is…. oh, so human. Education may not be what it is today if it were not for Catherine E Beecher, sister to Harriet Beecher Stow. And yet, she thought that a woman’s place was in the home. I find it amazing she could actually justify both attitudes. How did she consolidate the ideas in her mind where she basically agreed to the oppression of women while fighting for their right to be educated just like the boys. It is an interesting story. I identify very strongly with Angelina Grimke. That may not be a good thing. I’ll have to think about it. She really is the one who first uttered the ideas of women’s rights outload. But first she was an abolitionist. In dealing with that issue did she realize that women had rights too. Bless her heart!!! She traveled all over talking to women and men (she was told to quit talking t men and refused) about abolition. She married an abolitionist and a man who would support her theory of women’s rights (after he realized he loved her). Long story short, she wore herself out traveling around and speaking. I think probably today they would say she was ‘burned out’. She retreated to home with her family and never took the stage in public life again. Thank God she watched how her family handled their slaves and realized it was all wrong. She left home at 22 and never really looked back, because she felt so strongly about abolishing slavery and truly believed in women’s rights.
I identify with her only because I basically realized what happened to my child. I educated myself about it and how it affects the family. I tried very hard to right the wrongs–though the fight due to ignorance within the family was horrible. In the fall out, I basically lost everyone, save a couple people. The legal fight, the mental fight, the custody fight that came a little later–2 of them. I had to fight my mother for custody of my daughter (A nasty way to get what you want, when the mother/daughter are obviously attached and mother would give her life very willingly to protect said child), and then my ex for custody of both (which lasted for years, like until they were both of age almost), yet in the end he took the daughter and hid her for six years, and abandoned his son. I too, burned out. But, like Grimke, in my life, I have continued to feel that things need to change, and I continue to voice what is wrong, what needs to change, and sometimes I offer some ways of fixing things. My pet peeves: Domestic Violence and childhood sexual assault. I’ve been asked to quit talking about it, just like people asked Grimke to stop talking about freeing slaves and women’s rights. Like Grimke, and Douglass, and Garrison, and so many others from that era. I will shut my mouth when I die. And not before. The injustice of what happens to women, children, and their whole families when they are assaulted is total. The wreckage lies all about them like so many over flowing trash cans you see on a curb. You can work to over come, but you can never forget. The pain of it never really goes away, you only learn to deal with better over the years. But, the dull ache coming from knowing that the child did not grow up to be what she could have been because of the anger that seethes within is haunting. I will never shut up. Maybe when hell freezes over. Someone, lots of someone’s, have to fight the fight.
