Welcome to "Telling Herstories: The Broad View," a group blog sponsored by the Story Circle Network. In the interest of full disclosure, I'll admit that I'm an ardent fan of SCN and its mission of encouraging women to tell their life stories. So much so that two years ago I started producing a podcast for SCN and one year ago became a board member. My membership in SCN has been a life-changing experience for me, as I suspect it has for so many women.
That's why I'm so excited today to launch this blog. It's the culmination of over six months of noodling, tweaking, wondering, and working, all to bring together a fantastic mix of women writers who I believe will shape and energize our lifewriting community. At the Stories from the Heart conference in February, I participated in a panel with fellow SCN bloggers Susan Albert, Sharon Lippincott, Pat Flathouse, and Patricia Pando. The panel had such an enthusiastic reception that we vowed to create an SCN blog that would highlight the wonderful talent in our community and encourage new voices to make themselves heard.
Building our lifewriting community is important to me, so I invited members of our online discussion group to name our blog. We intended to call the blog "HerStory," but it was discussion of an article by Meta Wagner that sealed the deal.
Wagner asked, "What ever happened to broads? You know, those larger-than-life women
who swore like sailors, threw back shots of whiskey, sounded like
they'd swallowed whole packs of cigarettes, and aged without apology." The essence of a broad changes with our cultural norms, but we decided we liked the idea of redefining the term "broad" with our own collective notion of a woman who is unapologetic about living an authentic life and telling her story.
We're launching this blog with almost a dozen contributors who will
share their expertise on all matters of lifewriting and creativity. I hope you'll join us every day as we embark on this journey of authentic living and storytelling together. Grab a comfy chair, brew yourself a cup of hot tea, and join us in the circle. And never forget that we all have a story to tell.
storycirclenetwork
Amber Lea Starfire
beccataylor
mjaneross
Janet Grace Riehl
kendrabonnett
Matilda Butler
susanideus
Susan Albert
Linda Hoye
susanjtweit
Judy
Trilla Pando
Sheila Bender
Suzanne Sherman
My mama’s favorite refrigerator magnet read, “If you want something done right, get a couple of old broads to do it.” [Bette Davis]
Congratulations for this launch.
Becca, nice image. We do see broads in the movies from the 1930s and 1940s, don’t we?
My mother wasn’t a woman who belted whiskey or smoked cigars, but she was a woman of power, a matriarch, who could get anything done.
I like your definition of: “redefining the term “broad” with our own collective notion of a woman who is unapologetic about living an authentic life and telling her story.”
Thanks for all your work in launching this blog.
Janet Riehl
http://www.riehlife.com
This blog is just great! From writing prompts and inspiration to practical, hard-headed business advice on publishing. Story Circle has done it again! Congratulations to all involved! In peace, Zaynab
I regret that you are co-opting the word “broad” to mean something much tamer than it meant originally. Partly because I am a writer who cares greatly about language and partly because I am 78 years old, I am unhappily aware how much language has been watered down over the decades of my life.
Language does evolve constantly, of course. But if you redefine “broad” to mean “a woman who is unapologetic about living an authentic life and telling her story”, then please tell me what word we should use to mean “…those larger-than-life women who swore like sailors, threw back shots of whiskey, sounded like they’d swallowed whole packs of cigarettes, and aged without apology”? Such women still abound. (I used to BE one until I gave up my life of dedicated self-destruction.)
So many words are losing their punch it is sometimes hard to know what people really mean. I realize you won’t change your decision based on my objection, especially since it’s been in place for almost a year; however, I felt compelled to comment because it seems to be my job in this life to point out that the emperor is naked. Been doing it since the age of ten, which has led to a troubled, iconoclastic, lonely life – but it is also what made me a writer, which maybe (just barely) has been worth the price.
If you want to read a profile of a true ‘broad’, go to http://www.patriciamcconnel.com/edna.htm, and see if you think the model fits even a few of the women of SCN. I think not.
Toni