A day of pleasant surprises / Lockdown Day 489

Today turned out to be unbelievably special, with one pleasant surprise after the other. 

From shortly after we awoke, my daughter and I started getting good news. We'd both been waiting for responses from different parts of our lives and today was as though a plug had been pulled out, allowing all the uncertainty to wash down the drain. What a lovely feeling! 

We've been talking a lot, recently, about breaking out of our default way of thinking, which is to assume that amazing things happen to others, but not to us. We both have a tendency to put ourselves out there, but not expect positive results - insane, right?! It's like keeping a door locked and pulling on the handle with all your might, trying to open it. 

We've both been doing a lot of meditating and manifesting, focussing on shifting out of this pattern of behaviour, because it's really counter-productive. It makes no sense at all. What's the use of having goals, writing them down, doing years of preparation, and then not boldly putting yourself out there, where the opportunities are? 

I spent some time thinking about where I'd learned that behavior, and I know it's from my mother. And she probably learned it from her mother. I am by no means blaming anyone in my family for this. In fact, I believe the roots of this shrinking-violet behaviour are socio-political. My grandmother, one of thirteen children, was born in the early 1900s. Their family lived in a rural area and they were raised within a strict religious context. With both the teachings of the church and the constraints of their socio-economic conditions, I assume that the women were raised to be pious, obedient and to become adept at domestic chores. The only job I'm aware of that my grandmother had was that of the household cook for a Jewish family, the Blochs, in Gardens, Cape Town.  (The house is still there, and I've driven past it many times. I remember my mom taking us to visit the old lady who lived there, when I was a teenager.) 

My mother's high school education stopped when she was in Grade 9 (Standard 7), because she had to find a job, to contribute towards the household expenses. This is less common nowadays, but not that rare in working class families. She started out as a domestic worker, in the Bloch home. Her next job was in the printing industry. She and her sister, Helen,  worked in some type of assembly line. Throughout my mom's years of raising us, she had menial jobs. She worked at different printing companies, but there was also a time when she worked as a cashier at a supermarket. Despite that, we always had whatever we needed, for school, and I now understand how much she sacrificed for us.  

Because of my mother's talent and love for music, she also worked in the music world. In her prime, in her twenties, she was a leading opera singer, but none of the Coloured singers earned anything for their hours of rehearsals or any of their stage performances. Only the White orchestra members earned something. (I will refrain from editorialising on that, right now.) When we lived in Durban, my mom taught for a term at a teachers' training college, substituting for someone. Other music work she did, over the years, was singing in the ad hoc chorus of CAPAB (Cape Performing Arts Board), when they started accepting Coloureds, and working as a full-time chorus member for PACOFS (Performing Arts Council of the Orange Free State), based in Bloemfontein. She spent three years there, from age 57. That was where she bought herself a house, for the first time in her life. When she returned to Cape Town, she taught Voice Production for the Eoan Group (at the Joseph Stone Auditorium, in Athlone). 

So what is my point? The South African society into which my grandmother and mother were born, was racially segregated. Even though apartheid became a formal system only in 1948, my family was well aware of their second-class status in the country of their birth. When you are labelled "Non-White" in a segregated country where dissent is violently suppressed, you do everything you can not to be noticed. Imagine that kind of pressure on top of the other kinds of pressure on women to be invisible. If that's all you know, you don't end up being bold. You end up wanting to fade into the wallpaper. You're apologetic about the space you take up. I used to hate going to the supermarket with my mother, once I'd become politically aware, as a teen, because she would literally apologise her way through the aisles, giving way for everyone, even if she had the right of way. It was the most glaring example of how she had internalised the inferior status her oppressors had imposed on her, and it broke my heart. 

But - back to today and my main point. I am still learning to take up and claim my space unapologetically, and even though I've been outspoken about this while raising my children, it was - for many years - a case of "do as I say, not as I do". This was because I had spent the first 32 years of my life living under apartheid, with those same restrictions and prohibitions that my mother and her mother had lived under. 

I work, on a daily basis, on stepping into my power, being all I can be, living my truth - all those clichés - and I will never stop. My children have a different reality, including the benefit of many different influences, so they already approach life with a lot more confidence and clout than I've ever done. 

So..... today was a truly special day. Both my daughter and I had been waiting for responses to things we'd out out into the universe and had received good news. 

And the journey continues.

                                          My daughter, my mom and I - Dec 2020