CHAPTER 1

Mile Marker One: Remember Who We Are

The foundation chapter for the book explains pressures on women to "forget" whowe are and suggests strategies for remembering the infinite possibilities opento us.

Mile Marker One: Remember Who We Are

All my life I've wanted to be somebody. But I see now I should have been morespecific.

—Jane Wagner, Lily Tomlin's collaborator

It's a challenge to create fully realized lives without road maps. What womenhave taken the road to power before us and how did they do it? We hardly know,since the few markers they left have been demolished or overtaken with weeds.During the last generation, we've unearthed some of the signs and learned toread symbols previously misunderstood—or erased. But these precious guides todiverse life scripts continue to be few. Growing up in "a man's world" hascreated voids that we fill with imagination, if we follow an impulse to escapethe one narrow route that is visible. We are constantly creating something (ourlives) from nothing.

Just like God did, but we don't get near the credit.

With no good map in hand, imagining that we are capable, that we make greatengineers or heads of state, is still unthinkable for most women. Our mental mapis dated; it comes from the old world and gives us an image of a universe inwhich we aren't the heads of anything. We're usually the hands—and the heart.

This outdated map is still being re-issued. For instance, when a would-besenator from California was recently found to have an undocumented nanny in hispast, his first comment was that his wife had made the decision but he, "as headof the family, should have vetoed it." (Uh oh, Father didn't know best.)

The reality is that women, as heads, have created a powerful global movement,opening many new roads. To continue traveling, we have to keep expanding ourpicture of what our lives could look like.

It's hard to remember our capabilities when we have so few accurate mirrors:powerful, public women whose presence reminds us, "I can do that too!" We'venever had a woman visibly and openly orchestrating national policy. When HillaryRodham Clinton tried to lead the national health plan, she was widely vilifiedas a power-monger only too eager to step in and make decisions abdicated by herhen-pecked husband. (All strong Presidential wives, like Rodham Clinton, NancyReagan or Eleanor Roosevelt, have been accused of usurping power.) We've learnedthat we can influence policy so long as we settle for the back seat, the "powerbehind the throne." Too often our brain is the stealth brain, remaining safelyunder cover, running no risk of igniting other female intellects. Thus we remaininvisible to each other, and even to ourselves. So we "forget," or never notice,how often we actually lead the organization, generate the strategy, or write thebooks, so pleased are we to have any role at all.

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did itbackwards and in high heels.

—Ann Richards, former Texas governor

We still aren't used to seeing anyone other than men—usually tall white men—bein charge of the really big things. Even our money, that paper that makes theworld go round, is imprinted only with that one visage. Everyone else is seen asincompetent or, if too clearly capable to be so easily dismissed, overreaching.

With this kind of distorted road map, leading to constant dead-ends, how dowomen get an accurate sense of their capabilities?

We need new maps. And there are many ways to create them.

Some of us paper our walls with markers. When put together, they lead us in anew direction. In my study, for example, I look at a page torn from a newspaper,picturing all the women in Congress. I see a collage I made in a seminar,magazine headlines pasted on bright red paper:

THAT'S WHEN I DECIDED THAT MY NEXT HERO WOULD BE ME, AN ENGINE MOVING 79 MPH,THE FAST TRACK.

I have a poster entitled, "Sanctuary: The Spirit of Harriet Tubman." RememberingTubman, a woman who was definitely on the fast track—as she not only rode, butcreated an underground railroad to free enslaved African Americans before theCivil War—keeps me moving along on my own journey. On my study wall I also see a"Women and Physical Power" calendar, with its photo of a focused teen winding upfor a pitch, and am reminded that reclaiming physical power is part ofremembering ourselves. I see an envelope from my son addressed to Joan Lester,Author, sent when I first began to realize I was one. I have poems and notesfrom friends, letters from women I admire, publicity posters from my bookstorereadings.

We must hear the voices and have the dreams of those who came before us, and wemust keep them with us in a very real sense. This will keep us centered. Thiswill help us to maintain our understanding of the job we must do.

—Sonia Sanchez, essayist and poet

I also look at images of Aunt Jemima as even she has changed. Seeing the shiftfrom plantation cook to professional woman reminds me that our work has made adifference—and that we're only halfway there, for she's still somebody's aunt,with no last name. (Can we envision a CEO called Aunt Jemima?)

Over my printer I've posted a collage of old women, mounted on neon pink papershowered with sparkling stars. A drawing shows one gray-haired woman with armsthrown back, standing tall beneath the words "I Survived 5000 Years ofPatriarchy." There are newspaper photos of several blooming hundred year olds.One, Audrey Stubbart, is a full-time columnist. And there's a radiant hiker,seventy-five-year-old Cecilia Hurwich.

My walls give me constant, subliminal support. They become the bread crumbsshowing me the way.

Some women personalize computer screen savers, putting on variants of I AM THEGREATEST to remind them of who they are. Others post notes in their cars,bathrooms, or on refrigerators: I AM SMART. I AM STRONG. Stitched in...