Maternal Fight in Community

By Dorothea Farris

It is always difficult when deep, serious, thoughtful and important issues collide in our mind and our worlds and require decision and action.  Our belief systems need revision, and our stability and security may seem threatened and out of balance.  Changes in our lifestyle may be required.

All cherish community.  The maternal instinct, the instinct that invites us to care and to nourish the good, leads us from crib to room to home to neighborhood to wider community to state, nation, and world.  And in all of that development and change, each of us finds security and joy and a sense of belonging in “our community”.  And, more and more, we witness communities coalescing around a belief system, and lifestyle, and a set of activities that encourage and require collaboration and cooperation, and collective support.

We in the Roaring Fork and Crystal River Valleys, despite the intense growth and changes of the past years (pick the number that fits your experience) enjoy the commonalities of our concerns and interests and beliefs, and we embrace the challenges and discussions that result when differing opinions are both tolerated and enjoyed.  But I wonder if, in the current national and world environment of fear and anger and intolerance, we are losing the sense of oneness that must exist if a “community” is to flourish?  Perhaps we need to nourish that “maternal instinct” that supports the good that exists in all of us, as we defy and change the actions of those who encourage violence, intolerance, anger, and fear.

How do we do this?  We act on the power that began its rise during the feminist revolution of the 1970s to shape a world that is decent and kind and inclusive.  Bullying and threat and ignorance and fear and intolerance must not stop our “maternal” fight against injustice, bigotry, and corruption.  We must use our voices, face our challenges, gather together, and support each other.

Our local community and our “community of humanity” depend on each of us to ROAR, and “to live with a resolute integrity and bravery to do that which is morally and humanely righteous.” We are women, hear us roar, in numbers too big to ignore!

Dorothea Farris is a longtime Roaring Fork Valley local. Her many lives have included work as a newspaper editor, a proofreader, a handwriting analyst, a weather reader for the airport, an activist and board member for educational, historical, environmental, wildlife, and political agencies and organizations.