on becoming a mother

Pregnancy. I was unmarried, attending school in another city, which seemd to me the best of all possible worlds. I felt like the very embodiment of femininity: a creative, productive person carrying a life within!

Natural childbirth. It was an achievement! I felt proud, elated and relieved. I also felt less virginal than at any other time in my lifel

Postpartum depression. I'm certain it has less to do with hormonal changes than with the mind-blowing reality of motherhood.

Motherly instinct. This just doesn't exist except in the most rudimentary ways. For six weeks I lived in constant terror that I was doing everything wrong.

..

Resentments. Whatever happened to mobility, privacy, and my own identity? And why do I feel guilty for wanting them?

Fathers. Men are just as devoted and loving to their children as women, if they are encouraged to be that way.

Mothers. They are people, tool I admire the good ones, and feel sorry for the bad ones (and their children).

Family. A child makes us a family, a warm, cozy, happy thing to be.

Posterity. I care.

Life. I am newly aware of the cycle of nature, and of my purpose within it. It mat ters whether I live or die.

Feminist mothers. We should not have to be childless to be free, whole persons. We can and must change the way our culture restricts mothers and children.

Coaches File Charges

The Cleveland Heights-University Heights Women's Coaches Association, which represents the district's 11 women coaches, has entered the official grievance procedure dealing with sex discrimination by filing a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission against the Heights board of education and their teachers union.

The charge states, "The Association believes that its members (and all female coaches within the school system) are being discriminated against because of their sex.

"}

Five areas of most apparent discrimination are named in the charge. They are:

1) Male coaches generally receive a higher stipend for coaching than female coaches "in spite of the fact that both have the same

coaching duties and spend the same amount of time performing these duties."

2) By offering fewer girls' interscholastic sports, the opportunities for women coaches to earn supplemental stipends are restricted.

3) Male coaches generally receive a stipend for each sport coached while women coaches receive a stipend to coach every sport offered. 4) Men are recruited for coaching jobs although they are also expected to teach; however, women are recruited for teaching jobs, although they are also expected to coach. 5) By discriminating in the award of supplemental contracts, the school board has adversely affected the salary and fringe benefits of women coaches.

"These acts of discrimination are the result of joint negotiations between the school board and the teachers union. Although objections have been lodged with the union concerning these discriminatory practices, the union has failed to represent us in these matters," the complaint said.

Marilyn Cerny, chairwoman for the Assoc iation, said, "There is a sixty day waiting period during which time either the board must settle, or at the end of that period, we can file suit."

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Women's Law Fund is representing the coaches. Also backing the Association is the Coalition to Study Sexism and the National Organization for Women,

AN OPEN LETTER TO A LOVER by Ann Weld-Harrington

To my darling:

When you came to me amidst the shadows of "our" cellar bar, I had no idea that you would become the woman, the only woman, for whom ! would share my existence, for whom I would reveal all locked secrets, for whom I'd cry and laugh and sing. No, my darling, before you there had been many women, and I as a gay woman realized that permanence in any gay relationship was impossible under the conditions that society allows to exist. Why should anyone want to suppose that real love could exist and flourish amidst our precarious position in society? One dare not ever hope.

But, you were different. Calm beautiful, Jewish,

GAY WOMEN'S NEWS

with eons of mystery inbred within your fibre. You were everything that any gay woman would hope for as a lover. I dared not let myself believe that you could perhaps love 'me'. Wrong! You did and I believed you were perfect. You began by never

lying to me; you were so sure I needed to trust you and I did. I believed you and I fell ever so deeply in love with you.

Seven short months of perfect bliss. Seven months of loving intensely and through those months gradu. ally relinquishing my grasp on "uncertainty", gradual. ly I let you know that "it was forever" and that no matter what ever happened, no one could ever change my feelings for you-my belief in our relationship.

Wrong! One day I awoke and you had left my life. You needed freedom while all I wanted were a few moments a day to worship you and love you. Freedom to what, my darling, a freedom back into the streets and the bars, freedom away from something we both believed in?

Now, what shall I do? I can no longer trust my love to anyone, I can no longer walk those same streets or enter those same bars-for the torture of seeing you in your new freedom would be too much to bear.

And what of "our" children...mine by birth and of a marriage that no longer exists, and "ours" through

your making them believe in what you worked so hard to make me believe. Trust. Their friend and confi dant has left them and she promised she never would. Their wide eyes trusted you as my age-wise eyes trusted you. But to them I explain it was not intentional deceit-you just wanted freedom. How can 1 explain your freedom to them when I cannot explain it to myself,

I am a ghost now, have banished myself from the familiar and returned to the not-so-familiar. Here on my beloved Cape I seek solitude and peace for my mind. But your shadow is everywhere, I hear your voice and often in the night when I am alone in the darkness I reach out and believe that I'll touch you. I awake some mornings with anticipation that I'll see you today. But no, The "High Holidays" have passed, and I had planned to cook the holiday foods for you, to learn more from you, to endear myself more to you. And your freedom has stolen that from me.

There is a lot of work for me to do here in Provincetown, a good community of gay women. I would like very much to join them and help them, but first 1 must grasp sanity again, I must cleanse my soul of the pain and despair.

And if I should seek help and comfort from my pain-to whom should I turn? There are really no counselors equipped to give me understanding and solace. No, I fear instead my pain and despair woul, be laughed upon. How could I expect another gay person to be able to cope any better than I? There has been joy-much joy in the gay life and perhaps severe pain as well as the overt oppression from ciety. It is the price we all must pay for the privi of such joy and the few peak moments of infini love and bliss.

page 5/What She Wants/November, 1974