Shadow Work: Day 34

What are/were your preconceptions about masculinity? Where did this come from?

As a child, I was taught the man takes care of everything. The man works so that he can take care of and feed his family. I thought this until I got married.

My dad was lucky. He got into computers in the early 1960’s and went with it until he retired in the 1990’s. He did not go to college, but he did go to IBM school. He had a good job. Again, he was lucky, and that luck doesn’t follow everyone.

They say that you want to marry your father, and at the time my husband was in restaurant management. He also had one check that was the profit of the store for the prior month, and sometimes that was abysmal, and when I had my daughter, I thought I was going to have a provider, someone like my dad. He was a good dad and he worked hard, but the winter I had my daughter was a cold, snowy one and the profit was abysmal. We didn’t have money, and my husband wasn’t as perservering as my dad, or willing to put up with shit, and he didn’t keep his mouth shut. Over the years he has moved from job to job to job. I am very fortunate to have always worked, to be the breadwinner at times as well….

I learned that masculinity may not be financial security. I learned that I could create that….

As a child, I wanted one of those blue and red drills. I was told by a grandparent, “Girls don’t play with drills.” They got me a mixer, but I turned it into a drill. I got them. I think in my life I have been more “one of the guys” than a girl. I think I was more accepted by males. Conventionally unattractive, I was the key to the girls they liked, which I got tired of, but guys were never petty. Guys never insulted me. Therefore, I have always, and still am, one of the guys…