Forgive my eye roll as I listen to discussions in the news on how women are most fulfilled by staying home and raising babies. Everyone knows how much I love my children and how I enjoyed being home with them, but…here’s my story.

When I went to college in 1963, women were beginning to be expected to work really hard through high school to get into college and then…well, the options we were given were ok but really an excuse to stay in school and find a college educated husband. If you had to work after college until you found one, that was ok, but you were still kind of expected to start a family as soon as possible.

I’m not sure I really had a goal of any kind. I was smart, observant, in love, and thought my life would mirror my parents’, which was pretty nice I thought. I was very naive about how the world was going to work for me and my friends. I got married right after I turned 21, finished school, started grad school so I could teach while my husband finished up, and had my first child. Our life progressed as we thought it would and I stayed home and had three more kids before I turned 30. My husband worked with my father, I loved the babies (which I had never even thought about before I had them), and we were happy.

But, there was the fact that I got bored when the kids were asleep or at day care, preschool, school. Housework and playing bridge weren’t really doing it for me. I started doing volunteer work, as was expected of those of us who had it so seemingly easy, and found an unpaid career that filled my time, brought me new friends and taught me more than I ever imagined. I learned new skills and attained new leadership positions. My thought was that I couldn’t be out saving the world, but I could save my own little world, one day at a time, while still doing all the mom things, which I loved.

By the 1980s, I had edited a cookbook, a magazine, planned for city growth, worked with the arts, helped educate people on Historic Preservation, served on Boards of Directors and was feeling pretty good. It was the 80s and women were speaking up more and more. I had heard Gloria Steinem speak when I was in college and read all the women’s and new magazines and current books and was up on Women’s Lib, as it was called, sometimes not in a nice way. I understood and empathized, but I was busy driving a billion carpools and leading committee meetings and selling popcorn after school – all things that were needed. I wasn’t out marching for Women’s Rights. I didn’t have time.

The Equal Rights Amendment was in the news and states were ratifying it and dismissing it. Would it ever get passed? Nope. Women were slowly gaining more rights but were still not considered equal under the law in the United States. That’s the truth and still is to this day. It doesn’t mean that we can’t get more rights, but it means that they can more easily be taken away. Eventually, it was out of the news and women were content with small victories along the way. NOTE: we never should have stopped fighting for it.

I thought of myself as a person who was good at bringing people together to make decisions and finish projects and get things done. I was aware of inequities for women, but I wasn’t much of an advocate – yet. The Junior League of Tulsa was a bastion of educated women who spent their time trying to make the city a better place. It was the epitome of what women, even women who were proud homemakers and mothers, could do to make change. In 1983, two projects were proposed for the coming year. One was to work with domestic violence advocates and organizations to increase awareness. This was a new movement at the time.

The second project was to collaborate with The University of Tulsa to open a resource center for women who needed help as their lives changed due to numerous upheavals and changes of direction. This included women who needed to go to work, women who were widowed or divorced and left to fend for themselves and would help women who didn’t have the opportunities and contacts my friends had at the time. I first heard the term “displaced homemakers.” For some reason, the Catholic community decided that this project would be doing abortion counseling and there was a big uproar with even the Bishop becoming involved, articles in the paper about it all causing much division in the Junior League membership. After all of this, when it came time to vote for new projects to give our time and money to, I wasn’t sure if we should do something that was causing so much friction. I’m not sure how I voted, but both projects passed and were ready to go. Then it was time to choose chairmen for the projects. I was more than shocked when I got a call to chair the women’s resource center project. My first inclination was to say no, because why did I need to have stress like this, but a good friend convinced me that I was the right person precisely because I didn’t have a side in it and could work to bring everyone together. Flattery and a new challenge were appealing and I took off on a year that would be life changing in so many ways.

Our joint committee of volunteers and representatives from TU worked for nine months to set up the policies and hire a professional Director for The Women’s Center, as we decided to call it. We had a converted house donated by the university to furnish and set up, materials to collect, and publicity to generate. By the time we opened in January, 1984, women were pretty much lined up for the services. I’m proud to say that the center, under a different organization, still exists in Tulsa today. I met women who were desperate for job counseling, looking for places to live, needing just anyone to talk to. Nobody was asking about an abortion, by the way.

A couple of years after this project, I was asked to chair the domestic violence project as the new shelter was opened and new programs being developed. After that year, I continued to serve on the Board of Directors for six more years, including a year as Board President. In all those years, I never spoke to a community group without a woman or women coming up to me afterwards to tell me their story. They were beginning to break free with education about the issue.

This was becoming personal because I was the mother of three girls and I felt like I needed to be a role model in the fight for other women. I needed to expose them to the things that happen to women. And, I was the mother of a son who needed to be a man who respected women. My son was the one who worked for women’s rights while he was in college. Hopefully, they all absorbed some of what I was doing.

Another reason this was becoming more personal was because at the same time, my friends were also going through major life shifts. In my parents’ time, there were few divorces, mainly because the women had no recourse. They had no education or skills, no money except through their husbands, and no support from churches, society or even family. You were expected to stay in a marriage, no matter how bad it got. Cheating and abuse and addiction and gambling and men who couldn’t provide for their families are nothing new, but nobody talked about it. It was the age of secrets. By the time I was in my thirties, more marriages were falling apart. We had married young for so many reasons. Birth control was new and only available if you were married. Girls had to either have abortions in secret places, give their babies up for adoption or get married. Guys could get exemptions from Viet Nam if they were married or couples married because the guy was drafted. You were expected to have your children young for health reasons. But now, maybe some of those reasons weren’t good enough for a sustained marriage. Guys who cheated felt free to leave their families for their new love, husbands died, husbands were cruel. I also had friends who realized that they were gay, which was fine with me. They really weren’t any different, just happier. When I wasn’t out saving the world for others, I was on the phone with friends who were facing new realities.

Those who suddenly had to find work learned that those degrees we got were pretty useless if you hadn’t been in the work force building up your resume. Many sucked it up and called people they had worked with as volunteers to see if there was a paid job they could do. Networking was key to survival. Whatever job was found was mostly at entry level and many still had children at home to take care of. Divorces were messy and many a friend became a fierce advocate for their children and themselves in courtrooms where men still had an advantage. Once you were out there, it was just becoming a thing for women to get their own credit and bank accounts. There were those who suggested that women should stay married no matter what and were no support at all.

Through the 80s and into the 90s, I did a lot of writing, speaking and advocating for these women, these “displaced homemakers.” In that time, my own children went to college. The three girls married and had their first babies and my son was in college. I had gone to work part-time, then full time and had my own business. Then, suddenly, I was one of the displaced. My husband died of cancer very quickly and, after almost a year of being immersed in the world of medicine, I was out there on my own. After putting four children through college and having three weddings, selling our family business and watching my husband have to reinvent himself, our resources were at a low. I was a widow at 52. Life happens.

In the 25+ years since, I have reinvented myself so many times, used every skill I ever had, laughed and cried with friends and watched the world changing all the time. There are so many new developments in medicine and technology for my children and grandchildren. My friends are still going through transitions and reinventing ourselves for our later years. I survived because of the experiences I had through the years, the friends and family who gave me love and support, and because of the strength of the women in my family whose stories I tell with such pride. My daughters, and daughter-in-law, mother and grandmothers and all the women I have known have made me stronger and happier than I ever expected. I ride on all their shoulders.

Looking back, I smile at the dream of the “Happy Homemaker” that we believed in so blindly. It is a great part of life, but it is only part of who we will be as women. “Children are the best thing in your life” is an easy thing to say, but they can be a challenge. Some are born with physical or mental disabilities, some become addicted, some just seem to defy everything we give them, some make bad decisions. And some die. Some women cannot have children by birth and may struggle through fertility issues and adoptions. And, some women just don’t want to have children. Children cannot be the only way to happiness.

I am a lucky girl. My children were healthy and sweet and fun and came out ok. I am a lucky, lucky girl. I will always be grateful for my wonderful children. I will also say that I also had wonderful men in my life, including a supportive husband. I will always be grateful for the loving, kind men I have known and been friends with throughout my life. Because I have been so lucky, I will aways fight for the women who haven’t been. I will write and talk and post and march and vote for the homemakers and the “displaced homemakers” and those who chose another direction.

The thing is that we cannot make decisions for other people. We cannot force them to believe as we think they should or live as we think they should. We cannot judge them for their beliefs and decisions. None of us know what is going on in other people’s lives. We need to support and love and listen. We need to live the Golden Rule. Life isn’t always easy and we don’t need to make it harder for anyone. We need to be kind.

Politics has become a way to beat other people down instead of lifting their lives up. We need to be better.