Motherbots

I've been pondering the completely complicated female psyche lately. Yes, my pattern of analyzing everything to death is naturally one of the things I'm now analyzing to death.

Certain images come to my mind when I picture the essence of what a woman is... Eve, Juliet, Cleopatra, Amelia Earhart, Marilyn Monroe...women who followed the desires of the heart over logic; the same desires that some have said inevitably ended up destroying them. Are the answers simply, with the understanding of many, that it's the faulty design of the female for having an impractically idealistic nature...or do we see tragedy in the idea that a woman can be designed to need for something that was realistically only tangible within her childhood dreams? I suppose a little of both.

In our youth, aging seems centuries away. In our middle ages, youth seems like yesterday. We still feel like the young girl who dreams of a life that fulfills her in every way. Yet, we grow to learn that life stories are more complicated than love stories. Dreams don't account for the part of the equation where our female design insists on feeding our need to feel loved and valued regularly. It's hard enough to fulfill this while being a wife. Now throw in being a mother and there can be very little time for paying attention.

Becoming a housewife and mother largely affects the ability of the emotionally love hungry female psyche to feed. Uma Thurman said it perfectly in the movie, Motherhood. She described the day of a mom being made of concrete, specific tasks that repeat over and over again in a manner in which it debilitates us from being able to produce any kind of passion. These tasks don't waiver depending on whether it's a weekend or holiday, or when we're fighting a flu. Then that day comes where we look in the mirror and realize we've become a 'Motherbot'.

As I glop on more irony I must say from my own experience that even though children can definitely be a roadblock during those times we need to nurture our psyche, it is also their love that gives us worth and value as a woman. It is those small pivotal moments of peace each day when we are able to slow down, look at our children and realize that this monotonous secession of tasks in our lives has also been the primary force that has saved us.

So, where do women find balance with so many challenges keeping them un unstable ground? That is an answer that each of us can only find out for ourselves. I'm thinking embracing who we are without guilt is a good foundation. Our obsession with needing love and passion in our lives is what make us women. It is that exact formula that is part of our design. It is what makes us nurturing, loyal, affectionate and maternal. It's what gives us the generosity to think of others before ourselves, what gives us the strength to nurse the whole family to health, or the patience to be the constant arms of reassurance. Women have an inner passion and energy that draws others like a drug...keeping that passion tamed is truly an art form. If we could only be satisfied with 'Motherbot'. 

The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man. ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge