Yes Virginia, there is a confident woman

*NOTE* The title of this blog is a tip of the hat, or curtsy if you will, to a woman who played a pivotal role in women's literature. While I respect Virgina Woolf immensely, I sometimes wonder if we met for a spot of tea how our conversation would ensue. The calendar has shed many skins since A Room of One's Own was published. Women and their roles in this world have evolved. Woolf believed that a woman must have money and a room of one's own to write. In her era women played their roles as housewife and mother, with no time for self. The role of woman has changed. Women are running for president these days, not running households. Each of us has a room of our own, but is it a room or a prison? For sometimes too much time for self can be hazardous to our health. Our thoughts bounce from one wall to the next and insecurities begin to echo within the quiet corridor.

Here are a few quotes that you may want to read before reading this blog. They come from Woolf's A Room of One's Own.

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

One must strain off what was personal and accidental in all these impressions and so reach the pure fluid, the essential oil of truth.

Life for both sexes—and I look at them, shouldering their way along the pavement—is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion that we are, it calls for confidence in oneself.

Alone in a room of my own. Dusk dawns. Choir of crickets chirp nature's gospel. The crescendo and impatience of their serenade resonates resembling the sounding of my alarm. Snooze I reach for but have yet to find within all these secrets shared. Friday. pay day. pocket no longer just full of posies, for I have received payment for services rendered. Yes, dear Virgina I have my money and I have a room of my own...but I long for tradition. No distractions linger.lover never found kisses upon my lonely lips. loins yet to have birthed beautiful proteges. No messes to clean up less those that I have made myself. Bed shared with only my desire, dreams for the more of life. Grazing in your green grasses of motherhood and wifery. Bound by our wombs, our words. Sisters are we searching for the essential oil of truth. Conceived by our convictions of failure. Chasing the impossible with maddening hope to produce truth in our fiction, but within our fiction we find our reproduction of non-fiction. For with every stroke of the quill, every pound of the key we produce our offspring. A part of our self attached always to each word for they are our sons and daughters.they have our eyes, they are a reflection of all we have seen, they have our heart they have felt the fire and fright. Within our art there will always be a part of us, we can not disconnect. incandescence. Creatures of illusion we are. Life presents perils packaged in pretty blue boxes. You are right it is in deed a perpetual struggle that calls for gigantic strength and courage and above all confidence within ones self, but is the confidence all an illusion? Must we fake it till we make it? Alone I remain in my room of my own wondering if somewhere on 56th street a miracle is happening or if a grown up Virginia is realizing their isn't a Santa Claus? I will hang my black stockings by the chimney with care, but would much rather them be strewn half haphazardly across the floor in a room that is not my own.