Being a woman – yesterday and today – and my how the role has changed.

Being a woman is and always has been challenging. Historically, we have been expected to be and do so many things. In my lifetime, I have had the opportunity to learn from and identify with so many different women, and thus, experience, if not first hand, at least in time well spent, the various roles we as women have played and play today.

Many of you are avid followers of my award-winning column Living the Sweet Life where through the years, I have tried to inspire and share stories from my own life experiences. In this premiere issue of Focus on Women, I am pleased to share with you “Woman to Woman” and the opportunity to share with each of you how I have created balance and have become the woman that I am.

First things first. Behind every woman is a long line of others that have come before her. There are influences that have, in their own way, done their part to making today’s woman. We all have similar stories and our own understanding of what it means to be a woman today. And, our definition of being a woman has changed drastically from that of just a few short decades before.

My grandmother, Nana, has been a favorite of mine to write about because she was in every way so much of what the “old school” woman characterized. Born in 1902, she married at eighteen and never finished high school, but she ran a farm, raised my father and could cook up three meals a day from “scratch”. She wore on her left hand a simple gold band with the inscription “All my love,1923. ” And although not glittered up with one single diamond, the band meant everything to her. Her meaning of “woman” was to be a faithful and obedient wife, a church-going woman, and a strict mother that looked to and leaned on her devoted husband in good times and bad, ‘till death did they part. She never drove the horse and buggy, and even when cars were invented, she never wanted to learn to drive. Her grandest accomplishment was to see her son do the impossible - to go to college and become a doctor. She held on and raised all of us after my mother was killed and instilled in all of us values and insights from a time gone by. Her world, her dedication, and her entire identity as a woman was in the home.

My Granny graduated from East Carolina and taught school. She was the first female in my family to do so. Granny kept a clean home and cooked three meals a day. She raised three children, and she also worked. Granny’s cakes came from a box with a few extra ingredients and her coffee was “instant.” Granny was a little before her time in a lot of ways, but she was very similar to Nana in that they both thought the most important thing to do as a woman was to raise children, support their husband and be a “good” wife.

When my mother attended nursing school, she was expected to find a bright doctor from a “good” family. The roles she was given prepared her to do just that, and she married. After a few years of working as a nurse, she settled into motherhood and wifely duties. She was different in that she cooked “gourmet” meals and attended socials with other doctor’s wives. She became very active in the Junior League and Women’s Auxiliary and church choir. Luckily, she had Nana living with us to help baby sit, and Georgina to come and clean up our house! Her life, although taken at 31, was being the wife of Dave, and in doing so, meeting the expectations that society had placed on her within the context of that role. She was a good mother. I’d be hard pressed to say anything different from what I remember of her, and she was very involved with being the doctor’s wife.

And then here comes Alisa. First of all, let me say I was raised to be anything I wanted to be. I married young by most for my generation at 20 and despite my father’s fear of getting pregnant beforehand, I graduated from St. Mary’s and then The University of Houston. With my education complete, I began to feel the pressure from my in-laws that staying at home and making babies was what I was supposed to do along with supporting my husband in his job and learning how to cook and clean.

My father had different ideas. He wanted me to see a head hunter because he felt with all those years of schooling, I should be able to find a good job. I remember going in and talking with a woman in Houston. She came back out after I had taken what seemed to be a multitude of tests and simply stated, “I can not find a job for you.” I asked her what they had available and she said, “We have plenty of jobs, just not one for you. You are an entrepreneur, a self driven type- A sort and the best advice I can give you is to go home and create a job.” At the time, I did not find this at all funny and you can well imagine what my father thought! Today, looking back, if I could find that blessed woman I would pay her for what has proved to perhaps be the best advice that anyone could have ever given me.

With this “Woman to Woman,” I hope to be able to show you and share with you how I have created my own little world. Some months I will write about the balance of raising children and managing clients, which by the way is not that different! Other times I will share with you that the same steps of goal setting that I do at my dinner table to motivate my children to make good grades is exactly the same goals I set for myself as an artist and business enterprise.

As a woman, I am a wife and a mother, and in these roles, I have learned how to creatively cook, sometimes from scratch and sometimes by dropping into a favorite restaurant. Never the less, my family gets three full meals each day. I have, as a wife, stayed married to and more importantly, in love with, Brian for 19 years who is a rare gem in the social climate that we now find ourselves in. As a woman, I am also a business woman owning and running a successful portrait studio for 11 years. I am also an award winning columnist for our sister magazine, Fort Bend Focus, and have launched this year my second company, Alisa Murray Publishing. My children’s books and photo coffee table books will gradually start to become published as I continue to grow the brand of Alisa. As a woman I feel compelled to give back and have done so with my breast cancer calendar now in its sixth edition.

For me, being a woman today is a very different undertaking than in my Nana’s time. I am a woman who feels that I have embodied everything that I was and always will be expected to be, but I have also recreated the role of woman for a time in which was finally ready to accept and embrace the kind of woman I am!

Take Care of You!



Comments

[Wendy Miller]

Alisa,
I feel like I've known you many years after reading this post and yet, we've never met. I've come across your site often as I look browse the net and see what other photographers creating. You are an inspiration to women everywhere and I greatly apprecaite your dedication and work. I have a near 17 year old daughter that will graduate next year and she is having a tough time deciding on a major. I will be sharing your "woman to woman" story with her. Thanks so much and have an amazingly blessed day.

Wendy Miller