She was used to being shunned. It was something that she had grown up with her entire life. She was raised to be a free thinker and a strong woman. Her family made her that way. She was taught to question authority, and she did. She challenged every rule and norm she found fault with from a very early age.
Ripped out of the protective nest of women who raised her from a baby and thrown in to live with HIM! Her mother’s new husband became her judge, jury, and executioner. Locked in her room for weeks on end with only her books and an old AM radio for entertainment and companionship. It was easier to keep her on restriction than to field her questions and challenging behavior. Shunned by her family.
Shunned in a new school because she was new, talented, smart, beautiful, the best reader, the best singer… and she was developing breasts while the other kids were still babies. The boys teased her, “Here comes BB…Big Boobs!” They all laughed.
Shunned in middle school for her liberal ideas on sex and religion. “There is no proof that there is a God,” she told her social studies teacher one day in class. During a private counseling session she also said, “I don’t think marriage is a precursor to sex. When I meet the guy I want to go all the way with, I will.” The teacher, who was working on his master’s thesis questioned her further and gave her a series of tests. To her the Rorschach test looked like a bunch of bugs, bats, and butterflies.
Shunned in high school when she spoke out for inter-racial dating and Gay tolerance. She hung out with all types of people; Gays, straights, Blacks, Mexicans… even a deaf kid. She sat in the quad alone during lunch while everyone else was eating. She had no food or money and no reason to go to the cafeteria. She decided to take another course during lunch so she wouldn’t have to think about food.
She signed up for girls’ chorus. The girls didn’t like her. She was a threat to their relationships with their boyfriends and plus, she got quite a few solos. Shunned by jealousy.
Shunned for Coming of Age in the late sixties, a time of turmoil and social upheaval. She led the pack for Women’s Rights, not by handing out fliers and protesting, although she did her fair share of marching for every cause, but by living it. She lived the free life of a woman with the full benefit of rights, sexual freedom, and independent thought.
She was at the forefront of the sexual revolution. She practically wore a sign, “Act Out!” Yes, she was a Hippie chick. She fooled around, went on the pill, took drugs, smoked weed, and had indiscriminate sex. The men who were her contemporaries were in the same vein acting out by growing their hair and beards, refusing to wear the standard uniform of the day and opting for pajama bottoms and tie dye shirts. They were shunned too.
So, now that her adult children have grown, she still has an attitude about her behavior. She is still pushing the envelope, pushing for her liberal ideals, and she is shunned again by her adult children. Her children are instituting rules for her behavior. Fuck it! She’s been through all this before! She is shunned again. All she can do is try to make herself a better person according to her own values.
She will dance and sing, write and paint. She will play in her garden and swim in her pool. She will take day trips to the forest and the ocean to worship nature… and she will screw around in her old age with her old hippie husband. #Shunned
(First published 12/11/12)
