ANIBETH writes:

Your writings have had a profound impact on me during the eight months or so I have been visiting your site. I am a traditionalist, married mother. But I have not been confident in this role. I have berated myself for years for not being a “successful” career woman, all the while being an “I-am-my-kid’s-mom” mother. I shuddered at the thought of dumping my child with someone else while I pursued my dream. I loved my child with an intensity that truly did hurt. I protected the innocence which our world tries so hard to steal away. I’ve homeschooled.

Through all this there was always the underlying yearning to be the full me. To do that thing I was meant to do if I could only find the time in the evening, early morning or when it was my off week at homeschool co-op.

Then I found your site and I found myself losing those desires. Now, I can only try to wish back all those wasted hours and days yearning for something so superficial when I could have invested that energy into savoring and remembering my gift from God, my daughter. Now she is 11 and I am so thankful to have woken, come alive, from that sleep I’ve been in for so long.

Thank you so much, Laura Wood. Also, thank you for your tribute to and care of Lawrence Auster. His writings were also an inspiration to me.

Laura writes:

Thank you for writing and for your appreciation.

Most homemakers are demoralized in the way you describe so don’t be hard on yourself. Most of us have wasted time planning the next stage when real life will begin. The prevailing view is that being a housewife is just one of many equally valuable options, a beautiful hobby that can be picked up and put aside depending upon our finances and personal inclinations and that basically ends once the children are in school or grown up.

Just because a woman is a housewife doesn’t at all mean she believes in her role. Many women have one foot out the door.

Congratulations on your change of heart. You have many great adventures ahead of you.

— Comments —-

Paul writes:

Anibeth and others like her should know that many people know by instinct and by rearing what she has learned about motherhood. Many years before I discovered traditionalism as a philosophy, an older psychiatrist was describing how one evening, at his wife’s huge annual party, a woman came up to him, presumably because he was a psychiatrist and was seeking solace. She had raised a family but said distressfully, “I’ve accomplished nothing.” That is, she had accomplished nothing in the business world. He said he did not know what to say. I immediately said, “She accomplished something big, raising a family.” He sheepishly replied, “Yeah, that would have been a good answer.”

We should have Mother’s Day and Father’s Day as holidays instead of President’s Day, Columbus Day, or MLK Day, considering time is fleeting. This would reinforce the reality that children need a mother and a father.

Bill O’Reilly, who probably does more good than harm, has been pointing out accurately that traditionalists, who by definition are devoted to the role of motherhood and fatherhood, need to be using arguments against nontraditional roles other than simply homosexuality is sinful. Although the sinfulness of homosexuality is without question (which the so-called Catholic O’Reilly fails to express as fact and even condones), he is right that many are not being swayed by this argument. He must be conflicted because he is asking to be convinced. Anibeth’s witnessing is a powerful argument. Movies, TV, and books are ways to get out this powerful argument. Let’s hope the Net will be a decisive weapon in the future.

Anibeth responds:

I am heartened to know there are people out there such as you and your readers such as Paul.

It is an unspeakably sad commentary on this society, that our natural roles and calling are so vilified and despised. It is hard to imagine women, en masse, prior to the baby boomer generation, looking down their noses at wifehood and motherhood.

I now understand why I have been depressed for so many years. It has been an arduous journey through darkness, gradually awakening over the years, but this website indeed sounded the clarion call. This was the final jolt which was needed. It is such a blessing that you are out here doing this. There are other excellent voices of traditionalism, but this site has a certain forceful directness some others may lack. Not that the lack is a bad thing, those are just different types of sites.

Years ago, all I wanted to do was marry a good man, help him, and have childen with him. In my naïveté, I found a man I thought wanted the same things. What he wanted was for me to be more independent and to find a job outside the home, which I did. It’s a long, sad story not meant to be told, so I’ll just say the marriage lasted only a few years, no children were produced.

I and four siblings, grew up with a father who was extremely unhappy with my mother for not working outside the home. He abandoned us when my younger siblings were very young. To this day, he expresses his disdain for women who don’t work outside the home. Meanwhile, he sits home as his current wife spends her days working full time because she says she cannot afford to retire.

I saw my mother as trapped with us five children. I listened to the disdain my father had for “non-working” women and saw how all the women in his family worked outside the home. I absorbed some of the attitudes of my ex. The vast majority of the media delivers the message that women are not fully human if not “having and being it all.” Even much of the so-called conservative media puts across this message. Dr. Laura, who helped me (before I’d even had a child) realize the depth of commitment we owe our children, even had her very own fabulous career.

Anyway, how ironic and strange that what was once common sense is so foreign to our society now. It does not seem real.

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