Friends since high school, judi and I have fought the battles of body autonomy and reproductive rights throughout our lifetimes. Her words resonate within my hollowed-out-by-it-all sense of loss.
And then Ruth Bader Ginsburg died.
And before anything else it was a visceral blow back to the time before our bodies were our own. To the times of relegated to, not slavery but owned just the same. To the Mrs. Doug Clark of it all, loving or not beside the point. To the not being spoken to directly of it all and with the permission of one’s father or husband of it all, to the “Of course you don’t want to do that, Dear!” of it all. To the anything for a son of it all, to the silent until spoken to of it all, to the barefoot and pregnant of it all; to the no mind of one’s own of it all.
To the not so long ago of it all.
Lindy Low LeCoq 