Maya Angelou & Other Marys

In the hospital where I work, I keep a frame in the reception area with a quote for patients to contemplate as they await treatment.  Not one specific quote, I actually change it several times a week.  Most recently I displayed a quote by poet, writer, activist and performer Dr. Maya Angelou.  It is a quote that you hear Oprah Winfrey citing on her shows in which Dr. Angelou says:“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”  

I really like this quote because of what it implies--a gentle understanding that we are all works in progress who are doing our best--but more so because it is Dr. Angelou who is saying it. A woman who spoke multiple languages, wrote 36 books, had 50 honorary degrees, worked with Civil Rights Leaders like Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor in 2010 by President Obama. This same woman, said she had made mistakes, struggled and acted from ignorance because she just hadn’t gained that bit of wisdom yet.

I desperately need people like this in my life.  But not just people, women.  I need wise women to guide me. To model for me the art of living.  Now, Dr. Angelou is deceased (May 28, 2014), and I obviously did not know her personally, but her life and words stand as an example for me just the same.  Women need other women, past and present, who can model how to navigate this journey we call life, but who do it in a warm, humble and compassionate way as Dr. Angelou’s words suggest. Women who are sturdy and solid in who they are, that to stretch themselves to make way for other women is actually no stretch at all.

I think of these women as “Marys,” as in variations of Mother Mary, La Virgen de Guadalupe, the Divine Mother, the Goddess, the feminine energy of god, or what have you.  As I’ve said before, to me, the name is just a label, just a word, a symbol; already something way too small and too human to represent something so enormous and vast.  But alas, words are what we have…

I see Marys as sages who walk among us, or who’s footsteps preceded us; women who are so grand that we can be held in their shadow alone.

I particularly need Marys at this time of year.  Not because she is on my mind per se with all of the singing about the birth of her son Jesus, but because I tend to have trouble Thanksgiving through Christmas. The holidays. I know I am not at all unusual in this way, and it actually wasn’t always this way for me. I have some really wonderful childhood memories of the holidays- however romanticized they may be now.  But the tendency toward the blues still seems to knock at my door each December just the same, and I long for a Mary to hold me, figuratively speaking of course. 

One of the ways I meet the need for this longing is I read the words of the real life women, like Dr. Angelou, who help me embody the compassionate but strong image that my Marys represent.  I try to close my eyes and draw into my heart the wisdom gained through generations of women who have struggled through adversity and came out, not on top, but with dignity, self-worth and kindness.

Another famous Dr. Angelou quote: "When you get, give. When you learn, teach" reminds me of one of my absolute favorite sayings that is an African American proverb: lift as you climb. It was the motto of the National Association of Colored Women founded in 1896. When I imagine one of the women I admire, I pull from that image.  It is not an image of a saintly perfectionist.  She is a real human being.  Who through blood, sweat and tears evolved and grew enlightened.  It is that image, that woman, who has room on her coat tails to pull you and me "onward and upward” (as my own mother used to say).  Even through the holiday blues.

Which Marys do you model your courage after today?  To name a few...