Insisting in living outside the typical norms
I let you in on some knowledge on female strength I see running in my family lineage. When I look at old photographs of my female ancestors, I can see a strength in their eyes and the body language of the women. I know that so many women through history have set themselves aside, but in my family runs a kind of proud stubbornness and strength in insisting to have “a voice” and at the same time also setting themselves aside. Of course I don’t know every women in my lineage, but the ones I do know of on my mothers side insisted in having something to say and surely spoke up about it. My grandmother was divorced through the second world war, and was a single parent with 2 children, and I can imagine that it must have been hard financially. My grandmother lost her father as a young child. He died in a work accident, so my grandmother have experienced hard times before in her upbringing. During the second world war my grandmother insisted in her and other women rights, and wrote to the local newspapers about the social injustice that single parents, especially women were confronted with. My grandmother was a proud woman, and I remember as a child that she rode a motorcycle across Denmark, doing “her thing” and insisting in living her life outside the typical norms for women.
My grandmother insisted that we, her grandchildren, was educated in knowledge, and she was actually very uncompromising in this. Now I know that knowledge is power, and know the value of “capital of knowledge”. My grandmother knew this so every time I visited her, I was invited in talking about a subject, and if I wanted to know more about a subject, she just said “you can do some examine yourself and use the books in my bookshelf”. Needles to say that we, her grandchildren, always got books as birthday and Christmas presents.
Sometimes when I visited my grandmother, she was watching church services on the television, and we, her grandchildren, should be quiet and listen (!). What she was teaching us then in her own way was values of the danish theologian and philosopher N.F.S. Grundtvig, and some of these values are present in my family today. Grundtvig was famous for the danish “højskoleværdier”, so my grandmother and my mother sometimes spend month on a danish “højskole”. We also had a tradition at my grandmother to enjoy West Side Story and other musicals, at New Years we were enjoying the Vienna Philharmonic New Years Concert and Dances on the television. I guess that my mother chose these cultural values in her life. My mother was very fond of dancing and singing, as well as being very social, and today I’m so happy that these values are present in my family today. You might ask why I’m telling you all this? I tell you because I know that although it can be a life in survival mode for women, it surely have been for my grandmother and mother as well, we women somehow always rise as a phoenix above it.
So I’m grateful that women in my lineage have found the strength to create better conditions, although sometimes dysfunctional, so that generations after their lifetime women have other possibilities than they have had. I for my part see what the values past over through generations in my family has meant to me. I’m undoubtedly made of the same strength and have developed the art of saying “no” to societal pressure. I naturally react to injustice and I surely don’t trust any authority who manipulate with power. I insist in human rights for everyone, and I’m concerned about the majority of people, at least in Denmark, seem to ignore the increasing social control from the government.
A shift in collective values
At the same time I’m full of trust in the future. I notice a shift in the collective values rising up, not as a Top-down movement, but as a Buttom-up movement. That is to say – people are taking their power back especially the women. “As each of us lives our own truth, we create a new World” as Chris Griscom beautifully wrote. Have you noticed how a minority of parents are insisting in having time with their children? and have you noticed how many families are moving out on the country to live a slow, simple and sustainable life? At least it is happening in Denmark. Theres is a conscious movement away from consumerism and a conscious choice of sustainable values in respect for the children and in respect for nature and planet Earth. These choices creates better conditions for generations to come, and I’m happy and grateful on my child and his future children and grandchildren behalf.
So let’s get out of that conformity box 
Happy New Year!!
