Since a young age, since being a girl growing up in Athens I felt that I had to somehow hide. There were places where I felt it was safe to be in my power but little by little I grew so accustomed to hiding my power that it became the norm for me.
And now that I am towards my 50s, I wonder whether I was not alone in feeling this way and acting accordingly and weigh up whether fellow women and girls who grew up in Athens, London, Jerusalem or New York in the 70s may have also felt likewise.
In a sense, I ponder whether hiding women’s power was the norm at the time. I ask myself further as to how much progress we have made for girls and women to be in their full and authentic power today without needing to hide it away.
One of the few places where I felt encouraged to be the whole of me as a child was with my father when helping him out in his motor boat. That was supposedly a masculine type of work and my father encouraged me to know how to help him with his boat’s machine tools and keys, with the ropes when we arrived at a port and the fenders, so that not to hit the neighboring boats at the port.
My Jewish father hid as a “Christian” kid in Athens. It is thanks to his fake identity that he actually survived the Second World War. My father who empowered me as I helped him on the boat, encouraged me to play it safe in public, and I remember that during most of my middle and high school years I was in partial hiding of my true self and power.
And now that I am a mother myself and have daughters of my own I understand that my father’s instinct was a life preserving instinct, hiding being for him a survival mechanism.
Thus when I was accepted at Athens College, an all-male high school in Athens, my class became the first mixed class in the schools’ history, I subliminally knew I had to play it safe, and carry on with the hiding in public. The competition was fierce in the school and excellence was highly valued, but I as a student –other than at the very last grade– sought to remain under the radar.
Only at the very last grade of high school did I feel safe enough to emerge, and allowed myself to share more of myself with my classmates and teachers.
Towards adulthood, I felt eager to break with the hiding, and slowly allowed myself more freedom to express myself fully. I started writing for the newsletter of the Jewish community of Athens, the American College of Greece newspaper and the magazine of the European Union of Jewish Students. Writing had become for me a liberation platform from the tight grasp of what was safe for a girl/woman to do and be in the world.
It pains me to say and to admit that still to this day, women encounter a “glass ceiling” and find that when we expose the whole of our power, it is often the case that the societies we live in feel threatened by our power, and try to restrict us to roles that are controllable.
And towards this International Women’s day, I ponder and wonder as to whether I am not the only one who feels this way. And wonder how much more do we have to spend hiding and adjusting our “size” and “volume” to our environments? Or how much longer will women have to suffer repercussions for daring to be our true selves and in our power?
And by now that it is common knowledge that the personal is political, I wonder how women can mobilize to endorse woman-to-woman solidarity and cooperation. How can we collectively stride towards a feminism that promotes supporting, encouraging and empowering our sisters’ success?
It is important to me that our society opens up, and that we break the “glass ceilings,” and the hiding, freeing women to be all of who they can be; offering their gifts to the fullest.
We have three young girls in our home nest who will be soon out there in the world trying out their wings. We would like for them to be free to fly, free to be their true selves, sharing their gifts and talents with the world in all of their magnitude.
I urge us mothers and grandmothers to set the tone, weave the web of co-operation among us, so that our girls fly out in the world without the cuts and wounds that we carry on our wings from the banging.
From Jerusalem with love,
Great. Trank you.