A to Z Challenge Blog 2024 The Letter W

I’m going to start my post with a song this morning, a parady song from 1959, that I remember well. Weak women, damsels in distress, always needing to be rescued.

We’ve come a long way, baby, but we’ve still got a ways to go.

Today’s letter is W, and for me, it stands for women, no longer the frail damsels in distress of the past.

While there continue to be mysoginists everywhere and women continue to be repressed in many parts of the world, treated as property in some, losing control of their bodies and reproductive rights in others, in my little section of the world, women continue to improve their lots in life. Girls are encouraged to follow their interests. They are no longer placed in career lines marked male or female. When I graduated high school in the sixties, I had four choices: salesgirl, secretary, nurse, or teacher. And then, I was expected to get married.

The last thing I would ever want to be was a old maid! That would’ve been a sure sign of failure on someone’s part, most likely mine. A woman’s purpose was to marry and have children. So while I played with girl toys and girl card games, I was far more interested in reading about the glories of Ancient Greece and Rome and the adventures of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.

I wanted to be a journalist, an archeologist, a paleontologist, a detective, but those careers were not what my parents considered acceptable for a girl until she got married.Not that there was anything wrong with that.

I did fall in love and marry a wonderful man, and we’re still together after 52 years. I enjoyed being a stay-at-home mother for eight years, and once our three children were all in school, I needed more. With the help of my family, I went back to school for a year, in a different city, to get my degree in education and started work as a teacher.

How times have changed! Today, women can do almost anything a man can, although I haven’t mastered peeing standing up, but that’s another issue. They can be doctors, scientists, mechanics, carpenters, electricians, astronauts … anything they want to be. They can be bodybuilders, welders, miners, sea captains, and pilots. They can be wives, but they don’t have to be. They can be mothers, but again the choice is theirs.

So what does that mean to me personally?

I have one daughter. She’s a terrific athlete who loves sports. Back in high school, she wanted to play football. They wouldn’t let her because she was a girl. Today, if a girl is good enough to play, she can. She worked her way through college as a bartender, serving drinks and busting up fights. Today, she’s a social worker, a widow, who raised four children. Her youngest once gave her a Father’s Day card. Come September, one will start university in Health Sciences, another college in the Skilled Trades.

I have three granddaughters. One will be a pharmacist in another couple of years as she continues her studies, another will work in construction as a carpenter, and the third will be hopes to start her courses and apprenticeship next year towards becoming an electrician.

So what does this mean to me professionally?

It means that I try not to put all of my heroines into traditional careers. In my Harvester Files series, she’s a journalist, a detective, a reserach scientist, and FBI analyst. In Fire Angel, she’s a forensic fire invetigator. In Desert Deception, she’s an attorney. In Hello Again, she’s a mechanic. In Emerald Glow, she’s a professional photographer. In Beneath the Ashes, she’s a museum curator, in Holiday Magic, she’s a jewelry designer. In Echoes of the Past, she’s a forensic pathologist. In Buck’s Fizz, she’s a singer. In Atonement, she’s a witch who saves the world. In Listen to the Stones, she’s a chef.

I also have CEOs, princessses, teachers, bartenders, nannies, artists, but all of my charaters have one trait in common. Determination. While the hero may help save them in the end, and they do have a happily ever after, none of my ladies and simpering weak damsels. If they can get out of it on their own, they will, but sometimes like women in the real world they need a little help.

I’ll close this morning with one of my favorite songs.

That’s it for today. We’re down to the last three letters, X,Y, and Z. Come back tomorrow to see what I do with X

Check out blog posts from other participants here: https://tinyurl.com/w54yupwe