Angels and Babies. Angel Jewellery.
Looking back on it all, having a family of seven children in the 70’s was pretty amazing, and a little outrageous in the light of those times. Don’t get me wrong, my children are my life,.. I just wonder sometimes how my Angels must have sighed.
Had i been living behind the great firewall of china, and unaware of the liberating times, I may have been excused. But listen, i was a child of the 60’s. I was educated for heavens sake, I grew up with television, radio, newspapers, and, by the age of 15, was well aquainted with feminist writers such as Dorris Lessing, and Betty Friedan. I was passionate about CND, I followed the progress of the feminist movement, the women’s social amendments campaigns in America, the civil rights, and the gender equality movements, the freedom of speech and the campaigns for world peace.
At a time when a huge percentage of young women, all over the world were challenging the traditional roles of women, coming out of the kitchen, declaring their independence, delaying marriage and planning their families with contraceptives, I was popping out babies to my hearts content. I loved my babies, so, turning my back on the values of mainstream society, I decided I was going back to living the simple life. This was my stand, my part, in the revolution of conscience.
I birthed my babies at home, without a midwife, (though my friend’s husband had delivered calves), and most times I hadn’t even visited a doctor. I loved every minute of it all, I felt confident and alive. I believed that healthy young women gave birth to healthy babies, easily. I had not a doubt in my mind that we would be perfectly well, and thankfully, we were delivered, safely, every time.
Without electricity, or telephones, without a kitchen, or a bathroom, without water from a tap, or food from a freezer, without a car, with barely any remnants of the 20th century save a dozen brand new, 100% cotton nappies my Mother gave me for my newborn, I left my white, middle class, professional parents, my nice comfortable middle class lifestyle and my place in the renowned Drama department at Bristol University, to live, and have my babies in a cow barn, on a small isolated farm, on the west coast of Ireland: a place known to have the highest rainfall in Europe.
Angels: (sigh).
This was my personal contribution, my “fingers up” to the status quo. In my young idealistic mind, I was taking action to achieve an ideal. I wasnt just sitting around and talking about it, I was living it.
And so I wished for,… for a better, safer world: a world with clean water and clean air, and wholesome food. I wished that our children might live without the fear of rape, and violence and war, and I longed for a deeper more spiritual source of happiness than the plastic, depersonalised money culture I had grown up in.
My wishes are the same today. Keep the dream alive, and the dream will come true.
“Idealists…foolish enough to throw caution to the winds…have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.” – Emma Golman.
Today I thank providence, and the Angels for looking after us. The idealistic dreams I had back then, of a better future for our world, were fired with the enthusiasm and foolhardiness and passion of youth. Curt Cobain said “the duty of youth is to challenge corruption”. Benjamin Disraeli said “We live in an age when to be young and to be indifferent can be no longer synonymous.”
Be the change you want to see in the world
do it now…act with love.
linda.