I have been a feminist long before I was aware of the word. It also is personal, but I will share it here, since of late, my blog has transformed into a political machine towards empowering women. It is the same when I teach literature to my college students — I want to make change, but I have a small voice and I belong to a small world — for now. One day I hope to make my voice heard worldwide, woman-wide, and change the way society, politics, and governments devalue women.
I became aware of women’s trivialized and diminished roles in society at the age of four — the same time I became conscious of my mother and who she was. I watched her beat my father with the want of a demonic fury — she punched and scratched and kicked his masculinity to a muted existence. Her power was overwhelming to me, and my brothers and I feared her with the same intensity with which we reviled her. After my father left us all for good and my brothers were taken away and placed in an orphanage, I watched with curiosity as she gave this physical control and power away to a gypsy pimp who turned my stay-at-home mom into a prostitute. Of course, she was never your typical version of the stay-at-home mom — she was violent, abusive, negligent, and she filled the walls of our tiny Greek home with the strange and ugly noises of her sex-making with men other than our father. Prostitution was not a far reach for her — a woman who had spent her childhood as an indentured servant to wealthy men who raped her since she was four years old. But I didn’t know this about her until long after my adoption.
I watched my mother prostitute herself for money, for the protection of an equally violent man who still haunts my dreams and incites rage in me. I watched the violent thrashing of bodies, of hairy fists pounding against her face and breasts, and of money exchange before I even learned to read or write. She was the first woman I came to know — the first mother to neglect my needs — the first woman who modeled womanhood and motherhood for me. Her life, her violence, her pain and madness, her dual life as oppressive and oppressed shadow me and highlight my interest in women’s rights. Since my adoption at the age of eight, it was her face, her life I used as a means of driving me towards the opposite direction. I educated myself towards a Doctorate so that I would never feel it necessary to prostitute my body and have my kids taken away from me if I couldn’t provide for them. I stayed a virgin until I was in my mid-twenties and had met the man I would marry because I didn’t want to be like her. And I studied literature in ravenous search for women who embodied strength and power that was purer than hers. I ran from my intimate knowledge of her and straight into the arms of empowered female writers like Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Adrienne Rich. They were my mothers, sisters, and the guardians of my girlhood.
I have not seen my mother in years, since the day I re-met her in the hovel she shared with the same pimp that debased my childhood — an abandoned lot she called her home, full of emaciated dogs, abandoned cars, and debris. But I think about her every day — a warning of who I could have become had I not educated myself, trained myself to reach higher, control my impulses, pick my paths in life, and secure my footing, under no one else’s control or will. It is her face I think of when I teach my students about self-possession, education, literacy, and empowerment — both men and women. It is her precarious life that guides my pen when writing about misogyny, rape, violence against women, sexism, stereotypes and oppression. It is her lack of mothering that drives me to mother my children with single-minded sensitivity and awareness. I am sharply and deeply in tune with every feeling, every emotion, every sad look and frown that surfaces upon my children’s faces, and I address them in ways that my mother never addressed them in me. She is the mother and woman, debased and unempowered, that governs my writing, my activism, my drive to change the way women are treated, objectified, sexualized, and denigrated simply because they are women. Had I not known her — had she not maneuvered my childhood upon the rocky and unstable storms of her dysfunctions — I would not be here, consumed with fire and passion in pursuit of female liberation from the restraints placed upon them by society and its unjust laws, people who devalue women by resorting to sexism and stereotypes, and patriarchal norms that insist women do not belong in public spaces still dominated by men such as politics, business, and war.
Copyright© 2010 by Marina DelVecchio. All Rights Reserved.
Thanks Marina for this interesting and moving personal story. Violence and power are two very central themes in the gender debate, and women’s violence is an area which is to a large extent unexplored. Violence and victimhood are also completely intertwined. Looking forward to read more on this subject! Congratulations on your good work & best wishes from Brussels, Andrea.
Andrea, I was just thinking about you and how I have not visited your site in a long time. My apologies, but I’m glad you found me. I promise to get on to your site and subscribe to your posts. Happy New Year!
Wow….this almost leaves me speechless. It makes me want to give you a big old hug. i’m not a bible thumper, but it says somewhere in the Psalms that what-is-God will give “Beauty for Ashes”, saying that when you have endured (a miracle imho) WILL be transformed into beauty and strength. Thank Gods you had inner strength to embrace that transformation!
Strong women that have been really inspirational to me: The Peace Pilgrim. Sojourner Truth. Jane Addams.
Thanks, Beth. I love hugs! I also love when people point out key messages from the bible. I haven’t read the bible in a long time, but I enjoy the messages I get. I’m thinking I should open up the book again. There are some great insights there. Thanks for commenting, and this is why I loved your poem — it is very soothing.
Marina, you are amazing, for surviving and for making yourself into such a warrior. Let me share with you a debate that my dear friend B and I have from time to time.
B had a horrible childhood, maybe worse even than yours if you can fathom such an extreme. I had a challenging one, not horrible but with elements of domestic violence nonetheless. B is of the school that believes, “If I could go back to childhood, I wouldn’t change a thing. It made me who I am today.” I disagree, saying, “But what if we hadn’t had to endure such torture? Who or what might we have become?” We both cling to our beliefs, unyielding. What do you think, Marina?
Hi Lynne, that’s a loaded question that I often ask myself. I wouldn’t be as strong as I am if it weren’t for my childhood, but I also wouldn’t be as messed up as I am — I am affected by all of it and trying very hard to shield my kids from it. I think that deep down, I wish I hadn’t had all these experiences — and yet if I hadn’t, what would I be writing about today. It does shape my focus in my writing and my feminist idealogies — and I like these. I’m torn between the two.
WOW babe, I don’t think I have your coping skills. I don’t think I could have survived that kind of childhood. I would be a blatherring idiot and you are a super spokes woman for womens rights. It has made you not take for granted love and kindness and decency. You were wise enough to chose your path and stayed on it. I give you all kinds of respect. I too want to give you a big hug. You are a survivor.
Lots and Lots of love and best wishes to you.
As for Lynne, she raises a great point. We are the result of our lifes experiences, as experience is the best teacher. But having had a decent and loving home growing up I do take it all for granted. I provide it to my family now because thats what I learned. I was just lucky.
If you read John Bradshaw _on the Family_ he talks about traits passing from generation to generation. Both good and bad. Its hard to break the chain of abuse and violence etc…more than kudos to all who do break it.
Hi Doreen, thanks for the kudos! And for reading. I try very hard to hold on to my coping skills, and really the only one that has really worked for me is writing. It is the most therapeutic form of self-healing out there. Thank goodness I picked up on that one early on. And I think it’s great that you came from a loving family and give that to your children. They do need to be shielded from chaos.
This revealing article gets to so many deep places. I think there is a ton of wisdom that we gain as children but that wisdom is not valued. It sounds like you really held onto what you learned in those terrible experiences to make you the person you are today — and I am sure appreciative to have connected with you.
And I beleive that something is stirring out here regarding the empowerment of women and moms. When you are at the beginnings of something that has the potential to grow wildly, it’s very hard to see the road ahead.
I personally was protected by my mom from violence and harm. It is a good lesson to see how to be a protector. I have the peace of mind and compassion born of motherhood to spread that this empowerment message too. The flip side is that women who do not experience these awful things directly tend to ignore them when they actually are in place to be another woman’s best advocate. Female complacency and apathy is really a problem.
It’s unimaginable that you and so many girls experience this. I deeply respect your message and story. It certainly colors my view of your efforts to see all women raised in a better world.
Thanks for sharing!
I agree with so many of your points, Heather. I appreciate having met you as well — via blogging! And there is so much complaisance out there — on all fronts. If we are not personally affected by certain events, we don’t care. I think every woman should care about how women are treated — because it’s how their daughters will be teated also. Thanks for your kind words!
Hi Marina. I love how you write, and am saddened by your story. Athough i knew bits and pieces of it, i was not aware of how much you had remembered… You are a great person and a wonderful mother and wife. Once again, i will repeat a former comment a made, I did not know Marina. Kathy was my sweet childhood friend, and i have sadness in my heart for her, and what she hid, but i am glad to have spent some of our childhood together. I wish you love and happiness in the new year. Love, Helaine
Healaine, you’re a sweetheart. I think it shows how much weight a lot of kids carry and no one knows about it — even their closest friends. Makes you really think about kids and what pain they conceal. Thanks for reading, my friend. Marina and Kathy are one and the same — Kathy still treads lightly inside me.
This is a great example of how a horrific childhood can mold, shape, and influence a life…many lives. It is my greatest wish to teach my daughters how to be strong, independent, and how to make themselves happy.
Lanita, yes. It’s the most important thing to do as parents. We really need to teach and instill strength on to our girls. They can’t learn it all alone. Thanks for reading, Lanita!