Keep Writing
Written by Holly Ruskin
It is both true and heart-breaking to admit that we are not doing enough for women. I am not doing enough for women. Because I’m busy, because I’m tired, because I don’t have enough time, because actually our current society isn’t set up to accommodate the collective awakening needed to do enough for women.
We run on a scarcity model that in turn feeds a system which runs on our feelings of inadequacy. Though none of us is born on a treadmill, it’s where most of us now find ourselves trapped. Shoes are worn through from running towards an unreachable goal and away from the only place we can find true liberation. Self-acceptance is not sexy or capable of commodification, yet it is the best possible starting place for unshackling EVERYONE from the lies we’ve been sold and that keep us busy, distracted, pliable.
Women’s fates rest on every single one of us. They rely on deleting the apps that keep us unhappy. Slowing down enough to see past our own pain and reach out with kindness. They need more people to work fewer hours and read more books (read more of anything, really). They will be realized when we realize that self-loathing translates into loathing anyone who doesn’t feed our ego, which is an impossible task because its basic function is to keep us reaching for constant satisfaction. No one can be satisfied all the time, despite what we’re told and sold, so sitting with our dissatisfaction also gives us the tools we need to understand that it is no one’s job to make us happy.
When I hear “cheer up love” I translate that into “stop being so selfish and smile, so I feel better”. When I hear “she wanted it” I translate that into “I wanted it because I feel empty and it was her job to fill me up”. When I hear “she’s so weird” I translate that into “she doesn’t behave in the ways that reassure me and make me feel less insecure”. When I hear “calm down” I translate that into “your anger scares me because I haven’t been taught that women are people who feel everything”.
In fact, when I hear or see anything that spins on the axis of oppression, I know that it is not about women at all. It’s about the ways we’re failing the people who seek to keep us down. Oppression is the marker of lack, and we will never fill ourselves up with the true things if we don’t recognize that we are all complicit.
As a feminist, it pains me to admit that the movement I feel so passionately about has, in recent times, developed a blind spot. There is a sort of emptiness to the contemporary empowerment that is easier to peddle than the harder, more gritty work we don’t really want to confront. And though this more marketable version of freeing women from oppression is sweeping the mainstream, I find comfort in knowing that we are also a world full of artists. Those who recognize, draw on and confront us with their pain rather than write over it.
There are rivulets running off the mainstream that feed the channels which will eventually surge to form the tidal wave of change we need. The women are writing, creating, telling their stories just as they’ve always done. Except now, we have the means in technology to take our covert power and reach out further with it. Small presses, collectives, digital journals, poetry pamphlets and chapbooks are springing up all around us. All it takes is for more of us to find the time to write something and keep writing. Step off the hamster wheel and write a new revolution to push back against the idea that we’re already there.
We’re not there yet. We have a long way to go. We need to keep writing.
HOLLY RUSKIN has been a writer all her life, but started exploring the poetic form after the birth of her daughter in 2019. She graduated with a BA in English Literature & Film, going on to complete an MA in Film, specializing in feminism and the representation of women. She co-founded ‘blood moon poetry’, an inclusive and welcoming place for female poets to submit their work for publication. Holly lives in Bristol, UK.