“Fishers of Men” is
born out of women’s experience of individual and shared trust, hopes, and
dreams. For more than four decades, women have been sharing their stories with
me. Because of what I once wondered, “Why me,” I have developed an enhanced
appreciation for the will of women never to give up or to give in, even when
giving up might be the better and more productive option.
Women are now and always have been primary to my life. I am
born the son of super women surviving the ravages of the segregated south of
Jim Crow, and my fathers, who more often than not thought themselves privileged
as did other men in some sick perception of being lords by right and power to
have rule over women. These conditions are unjust and their influences lingers.
Women’s stories appear to have been the same since the
arrival of our prehistoric ancestors on Earth to the contemporary NOW. Women’s
early roller coaster life experience too often brings painful, post-traumatic
stress generating events of sexual violence. These events can affect women’s
self - perception and relationships for more than 20 years before seeking help
to resolve their personal and collective pain. Strip clubs and venues of
commercial sex work populate with women struggling to find themselves and their
identities while seeking ways to resolve their personal and collective pain.
From getting their periods in early adolescence and
associated pain, to engaging males, to falling in love, to the disappointment
of love, and to engaging boys; girls and women can know life as one challenging
experience or rite of passage after another. Part and parcel to these rites of
passage include the horrors and the joys of sex, to their 20s, to dating, to
men, to mating, to marrying, and procreating.
It does not stop. On to their 30s come divorces, more men, abortions
or adoptions, more divorces, tubal ligations, hysterectomies, into their late
40s and onset menopause. Occasionally, I wondered whether a sign tattooed on my
forehead said, “There he is. He is the one. Tell him. Tell him your story. You
can trust him to help you bear your pain.”
In the midst of women’s whirlwind life experiences of both
pain and joy, women seek to honor their biological prompts to mating. For many,
the notion of mating and marrying for happily ever after seems bleak but no
quitting. The search goes on and the trial and error of unsuccessful
relationships may slow women but does not stop them. Hope lives eternal in the hearts
of women.
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