One of the blogs I read most consistently is by Cindy LaFerle, a wonderful writer who talks about family and women’s issues.  Cindy always writes the most thoughtful and thought-provoking posts.  I always find something there of interest.  

The other day she wrote a post called A Room Of Your Own which is a take-off on Virginia Woolf’s famous essay on women and writing.  Woolf says that women need their own income and a room that is theirs alone if they are to produce substantive and significant literature worthy of publishing.  I read that many years ago and hadn’t really thought about it since, but interestingly enough, I had just mentioned it myself in a comment I made on another blog a few days before Cindy’s post.

I think that Woolf’s points go beyond writing literature.  In essence, she was talking about independence, that a woman needs some measure of independence in order to have at least some part of her life where she can find and express her identity, develop her own sense of self.  

I wrote a comment about this in terms of a woman needing to have some profession that did not include kids, home and husband so that she could always feel that she could make the best decisions for herself and her kids.  Being financially dependent on a husband can cause women to stay where they shouldn’t or be left in the lurch in case of divorce, death or illness.   I’ve seen too many friends and their kids be left in difficult financial straits after a divorce from a marriage in which they did not work at all.  It’s a very hard thing to watch.

But, Woolf’s point goes beyond just economics.  We all need a small place in our lives where we have the chance to cultivate our creativity and our identity.  Whether it’s a job, or a hobby, or a group we’re part of...we need that space to find and keep hold of who we are.  Our kids, our job and our husbands won’t fall apart if we carve out and hold that space for ourselves.  We might think they’ll collapse if we’re not there to get dinner on the table, spend another hour answering emails, or running the kids to one more appointment in their already overbooked lives.

The sad truth is, we are expendable.  Life would go on without us.  Not the same life perhaps, it might be a sad life, but even if we disappeared completely, everyone would go on.  So, my point is that holding fast to some small bit of time and space for just us will not only NOT cause everything around us to collapse, it will actually make the time we give to those other parts of our life much more meaningful because we’ll be bringing a richer self to the picture.

What do you think your family and friends would prefer?  A harried, unhappy, stretched- too-thin you?  Or, a content, centered you confident in her place in the world and her ability to take care of herself?

Seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it?

What does a room of your own look like?

Allison Allen is Founder of WomenBloom.com.  She is on a reinvention journey of her own with all the twists and turns that entails!  She keeps telling herself she believes it's the journey, not the destination, and keeps telling herself....and keeps... :)

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