Not your mother’s feminist
January 9, 2010
Both before and since I’ve had children, few things have driven me as crazy as the debate over “motherhood VS. work.” Seems that our polarized nation of Democrat/Republican, stay at home/work outside the home, feminist/NOTfeminist language forces us too often in one camp or the other. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve felt alone on one side of the discussion around women’s roles.
Post college, I could not get enough Naomi Wolf and Katie Roiphe, not because I agreed with everything they preached in their new wave of feminism, but because they were talking a language that was relevant to my generation. They had a refreshing honesty about female independence. Yet it seemed completely devoid of any faith perspective.
Then I met Lilian Calles Barger. Not only did she bridge the world of intellectual feminism and faith together for me, but she refused to be trapped into all the big church-based questions that so many in my world got stuck on — “Can women lead in the church?”, “What is their proper ”role’?, etc. She rightly pointed out that so many in the faith community are navel gasing and talking amongst themselves — yet have nothing to offer to the broader academic community when it comes to feminism and its tenants. She dared to ask, “Why would (or should) we recommend wholesale rejection of feminist ideals without engaging thoughtful feminist academics on the basis of ideas?”
It’s Lilian who’s worked tirelessly to create a third way of feminism and faith discussion that avoids preaching, platitudes, and easy answers. Classic Lilian….in one of her blog entries from the summer:
“ Why can’t we get beyond this dicotomy between motherhood and work? Women, like men, have been created for two God given purposes, relationships and creative work. They are NOT mutually exclusive.”
Since she founded the Damaris Project in 1997, she has launched salons across the country to create forums for open, honest discussion about culture and feminism. Lilian has also gone on to write books on our view of the body and the role or experience of Christian feminism. I love her unending quest for Truth.
Alive
August 1, 2009
It’s pretty tough to write a blog post on something as sobering as cancer while listening to the Black Eyed Peas “Alive”….BIDIA (But I’ll do it anyway), as I document what’s going on in our family on my mother’s side.
Thought her ovaries are now gone, thanks to a scheduled hysterectomy, my mother has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and will begin chemo in three weeks. My aunt Marti was diagnosed earlier this year with a form of abdominal cancer. And my aunt Eva was diagnosed with ovarian cancer last year about this time…All of these different forms, each of these various stages and all discovered in different ways. Not since my Aunt Mim’s illness and death roughly 6 years ago has something like this hit our family so directly, yet never so frequently.
Siegrist blood runs through us...Mom, Mia, Marti and me
Genetics? Environmental? As of now, we don’t know. We’ve asked all the questions and will continue to ask more as my mom’s, my aunts’, and perhaps even my own path unfolds. We’ll study the disease, meet with the specialists at Johns Hopkins Ovarian Cancer Center, pray for healing — for all 3 women I mention, and seek peace amidst suffering.
The only thing I know for sure right now is that grace can sustain these women, all followers of Christ, all deeply loved not only by us (their family), but by the Creator of the Universe. My friend Sara Sicks, who wrote so beautifully and honestly on suffering last year as she was going through chemo for breast cancer, has summed it up in one of her posts…she says, “It is through the crucible of suffering that we can change and slowly become more beautiful ….. May God have his way with us so that we turn into the people we were meant to be, people who are joyful and satisfied with our place in God’s family (we are his beloved!).”
May we truly feel ALIVE… Indeed, ” I’ve got so much love….I’ve got so much love..”
Happy New Year
December 26, 2008
Happy New Year! It’s the day after Christmas and for me that is New Years day. My birthday. The day that feels less like a birthday and more like starting fresh day, cleaning up from the Holiday (even though it is still the height of the season) and taking stock in my last year of life, planning for the next. This year i turn 38. That is officially late 30ths; certainly not early and no longer borderline mid-30ths. Late 30ths. Big deal? No, just a fact.
So, let’s get right to the point…Why a TonyaKlause.com? Probably a bit narcassistic? Perhaps…But how is this really different from a Facebook page? If you already know me, you’ve probably followed House of Klause, launched in 1999 long before more people knew the meaning of the word blog….as our family has grown, it turned into something much different than my personal blog — it now, rightly, feels more like a family album/documentation of growing kids. TonyaKlause.com — a more well-suited forum for my expertise and interests. In these pages you won’t get away from the occasional kid picture — but you’ll hear ad naseum about the other loves of my life – God, Rob, Graham, Mia, coffee, Louis Vuitton (read: style search), all things digital, girlfriends, work, and whatever else might emerge through our conversation…
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Tonya is a Community Content Producer for
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