My Turn: A Femifesto (Feminism and Religion Post)

It’s coming up on a year now that pretty much everything changed in my family’s life. My over twenty years of married life, up until last year around this time, had been built around football. John’s work as a coach in the NFL and Division I collegiate football had moved us all over the country—coast to coast and in between.

This time last year our move was for me to take a job. No more football. And a move not for football meant massive shifts in the daily life of our family.

I cannot count the number of times since I took this new job that people have said to me, “Finally it’s your turn!” Most often this comment comes from other women, with a celebratory, triumphant tone. As if, after all my years of catering to John’s profession, now I finally get to be the one whose profession is being catered to in our family.

The first few times someone said, “It’s your turn,” I felt myself being squished into a container that was someone else’s reality. It was curious to me how people over-laid that interpretation on my life when it resonated so little with me. As I continue to hear this comment, it has become the cause of some critical thinking and some feelings of being unseen and misunderstood.

And so begins what some may label as a “feminist rant,” but what I prefer to call my “femifesto” on what this new chapter in my professional life actually says about me as a feminist.

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