A New Look at Women's Strengths

BY CHRIS BURDETT-PARR

Book Review of The Female Power Within: A Guide to Living a Gentler, More Meaningful Life by By Marilyn Graman and Maureen Walsh, with Hillary Welles, Lifeworks Books: 288 p.p.

At the beginning of Chapter Two of The Female Power Within — A Guide to Living a Gentler, More Meaningful Life, our generation of women is described in this way:

We are among the first women who have the opportunity to live a considered life, rather than one that happens to us.

Marilyn Graman and Maureen Walsh, with Hillary Wells, have written, among other things, about discovering the ways in which women are strong — and that those ways are not necessarily those usually associated with power (being tough, aggressive, etc.)

The authors suggest that we have become distracted by looking at men's lives to see how our own lives are going, and that this serves to limit our true self-expression; that by being like men only goes so far for us as women. They suggest that realizing this opens us to a discussion of what might really constitute a natural, authentic and powerful female life.

I personally found one paragraph to have particular resonance:

Layers of cultural expectations, old beliefs, limiting ideas of who we are and what we can expect in life, lack of self-love, and psychological compensations and defenses stand in the way of being our authentic and powerful selves. When we identify and gently remove these layers, our selves can emerge whole and magnificent.

The authors discuss creating your own roadmap for this process — and getting to know your "internal committee." These are the conflicting voices I know we have all often heard from time to time within ourselves. They represent the many aspects of us as human beings and women, and these aspects don't always reflect the same needs, wants and desires — as this paragraph describes:

If you imagine your conflicting voices as members of a committee engaging in dialogue about your life, you can begin to identify which committee members serve you and which ones you need to heal. Some committee members may be disempowering you. Some committee members may be vestiges of childhood wounds that will heal as you do the work of this book.

The book also examines our dilemma as women today and how the shifting cultures of the last century — the depression, the effects on women of stepping into traditionally male factory jobs during World War II and then being expected to return to the home or clerical jobs when the men returned, the Civil Rights Act, feminism — brought us to where we stand today.

The book is very readable, with a feeling of comfortable accessibility. Although hardcover, it is light in weight, and the design, formatting and typefaces used create a sense of exploration and help sustain interest in the material.