by Rachel Toalson | Poetry, Wing Chair Musings featured
How to Be a Woman
don’t speak too loudly
don’t disturb
don’t argue
don’t assert yourself
let them do
what they will do
shake it off
let it be
pretend it
doesn’t matter
play the part
make the grade
dress for success
by which we mean
show us your skin
and make sure
you’re perfect
always perfect
forever perfect
this is how
to be a woman
How to Be a Real Woman
take off your makeup
let down your hair
take a good look
at your naked face
in the mirror
and smile
stand tall without
the whole world
on your shoulders
believe in beauty
and know
you are
beautiful
say what you mean
in your own voice
in your own language
don’t let them tell you
who to be
or what to look like
or how to live
choose for yourself
and then stand strong
proud
true
this is how
to be a real woman.
This is an excerpt from This is How You Know: a book of poetry. For more poetry, visit my starter library, where you can get some for free.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
Lately I’ve been studying fairy tales, because when I research something, I tend to get pretty obsessive about it. I’m reading an encyclopedia on fairy tales. It’s more than 1,000 pages. That’s how obsessive I get.
A fairy tale that is pretty consistent throughout all the traditions is Cinderella. It may be called something different, and the morals may point to something more in line with the values of a particular culture, but, for the most part, Cinderella is a story about the importance and necessity of kindness.
In some of the Cinderella stories I’ve read, Cinderella allows her stepmother and stepsisters to come out from their limited-means way of living and live with her at the castle, returning their cruelty with extreme kindness. In some, she simply leaves them to their own lives without seeking retribution for the wrongs they did to her.
It’s a fairy tale, but stories always have applications for our lives.
Kindness seems to be growing increasingly uncommon in the world today. We live on our computers and communicate more and more across the Internet, through social media, separated from one another in both time and space. It’s much easier to be unkind to a person who isn’t staring you in the face.
I’ve been collecting data about bullying and what it looks like in the middle school world today because I have a story—perhaps even a series—planned that will highlight that experience and how amazing pre-teens maneuver it. I guess this, coupled with my study of fairy tales, is why kindness has been foremost in my mind lately. I’ve even talked about it somewhat recently. I want to talk about it again.
We get something from kindness. Cinderella got her prince, and we get something similar: relationships. We learn more about people when we’re kind, because people are more receptive and open to those who treat them kindly. We get to make friends, and we get to be the beneficiaries of what those people can offer us. And maybe what they offer us is not what Cinderella got from her prince—happily ever after—but we are filled and healed and strengthened in community.
But the most important thing we get out of being kind is identity. We are made to be kind. We are made to uplift, encourage, speak life over others. We are made to cheer one another on along the journey of life. And every time we make the choice to do so, we are solidifying our identity as kind, courageous, strong people.
It takes courage to be kind. I know. I make it my goal to be exceedingly kind wherever I go—whether I get strange or judgmental looks, whether someone makes a rude comment about me or my large family (and they do), whether I am ripped apart online for the choices I’ve made in life. I smile, I excuse myself, I let them get their vitriol off their chest—because kindness is about more than an interaction. It’s also about the way we choose to see those people who tear us down. I choose to see them as people who are hurt or disappointed or maybe just lonely.
Exceeding kindness changes us. We begin to open to the stories and perceptions of other people, and even if they don’t return our kindness, we can rest knowing that we have done our very large part of making the world a better place. We may be the only kindness they ever meet.
Cinderella got to rule a kingdom for her kindness. I wonder what we’ll be asked to do.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
This week I got a message from a friend telling me about an organization he was starting. This organization will find the fatherless children in his small city and pair them with male volunteers who can become like honorary fathers to them.
I thought this was a brilliant idea. I grew up fatherless, and I know what growing up fatherless can do to a child.
I immediately wanted to start my own organization in my city.
The problem is that I’m already working on building an organization. A couple, actually. They all have the same intersection (the disadvantaged), but my limited time cannot handle another facet of it.
As much as I want to do it all—because there are so many people in our world who need help—I can’t. I am limited by time, energy, and resources, and if I try to spread what time, energy, and resources I have between all of the problems of the world, I will be inefficient at addressing even one of them.
This is where corners come in.
My stepfather used to enjoy watching boxing. If you’ve ever seen a boxing match, you know that when a round is over, boxers retreat to a corner. This is their corner where they plan their next course of action, where they analyze their previous strategy, where they regroup and prepare to go back out into the ring and win the match.
Corners are the same for us.
We all have our corners of the world—the places where we can do the most good. There are a lot of corners in the world, though, and sometimes we get caught up in wanting to defend them all. We can’t. It’s simply not possible. There are too many needs in the world to personally address them all, and if we try, we will find ourselves unable to address even the one that presses the hardest on our heart.
We have to find our corners, and—here’s the real challenge—we have to draw our boundary lines around them. The worst thing we can do for our corner is add another corner and then another and then another.
There are times when I have spoken out about my corner of the world. And, inevitably, acquaintances will question my passion. They will say, “If you care so much about that, why don’t you care about this?” It’s not that I don’t care about “this.” I care about a great many things. It’s just that I know my corner. And in order to become the greatest force of change I can possibly be, I have to stay in that corner. I have to trust that others will step up and into that other corner.
So how do we find our corners?
I believe that process is unique to every person. But I also believe that we can start with our passions, our experiences, and our expertise. Often, where those things collide, we will find ourselves in the corner where we can make the most difference.
So go find your corner. And change a piece of the world.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
This morning we left before dawn, and as I was walking out the door, something rustled in the rose bushes to my right. The porch lights were on, but the bushes were shadowed, and my mind invented all manner of frightening things that might emerge with an intent to eat me—or worse. But it was a small brown rabbit. I have seen this rabbit, or one very like it, before, hopping around my backyard, chewing on grass. This morning it was startled from rose bushes.
Does it live there? Was it merely resting before it slid beneath the slats of my fence? Was it the same rabbit that seems to have taken up residence in our backyard?
I watched its ball of a tail shudder as it hopped away.
And here are some things I thought:
1. The creatures are up very early this morning.
2. I am up very early this morning.
3. If I had not been up so early this morning, I would have missed this cute creature.
4. What other creatures have I missed because I did not get up early in the morning?
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
April was probably one of the hardest months I’ve survived as far as mental health is concerned. My emotions were all over the place—anger, fear, anxiety, despair. And they were intense. I almost died from the flu (not really. I did have the flu, but I didn’t almost die. I just like to be dramatic), I couldn’t get out of bed for two days, I worried incessantly about anything and everything, but mostly finances.
And then May came in fanfare and celebration: I had an essay print on Upworthy, I met some amazing new writer friends, I published a book, Mother’s Day came and went, and I sold my first middle grade manuscript to a traditional publisher.
Some observations:
- Emotions don’t last forever. You find yourself in a slump, you’ll get out of it.
- You can handle more than you think.
- There’s nothing wrong with being down in the dumps.
- You have to get back up. Life is too beautiful—too surprising—to miss.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
It’s a hard world out there, isn’t it? I’m feeing a little beaten down by it this week. Insults and fury seem to have traded places with kindness and empathy. Sometimes I feel so discouraged by it all that I don’t want to emerge from my safe shell.
But then I remember that the world needs sensitive people like me. And you, too.
One of the reasons I write books (I don’t often advertise this one) is because stories cultivate empathy in their readers. Empathy is becoming ever more important for this state in which we find our world today and, sadly, ever more diminished. Stories help heal that gulf between Me and Them. And readers like you are the ones who step into the gap.
What many in our world often forget is that no one hears us when we are mean. We become a clanging cymbal, a sounding gong, a drone in the ears of our fellow, honorable, beloved people. What we need is to torch our assumptions and stomp (or perhaps dance?) on their ashes, because they don’t belong in respectful conversation. They don’t belong in a loving humanity.
Here are three things I tell my sons in heated situations:
1. Take some deep breaths until you feel calmer. (If it takes days, give it days.)
2. Remember who you are—strong, kind, courageous, but mostly son (or daughter).
3. Love is the whole and more than all.
My 7-year-old created that picture above this message. He wrote the words on a piece of heart-shaped notebook paper. I know it’s naive (I’ve never claimed to be anything else), but I would like to see his words become a possibility, a dream with strong, beautiful, tireless legs—but in order for that to happen, we must first let down our walls and invite others in. We must unlock our guarded hearts. We must become unafraid of being hurt, ridiculed, beaten down because of our improbable, unquenchable love.
We must learn to forgive and accept ourselves so we can learn to forgive and accept others.
“Finish each day and be done with it,” says Ralph Waldo Emerson. “You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
Remember who you are. Strong, kind, courageous, but mostly? You are simply son or daughter. There is nothing you have to do today or any other day to prove that you are worthy of love. You were born worthy.
May you end each day knowing that you have loved well. You have loved bigly. You have loved truly.
