The first step towards freedom is in refusing to reveal one's age (especially if you are a woman)

I picked up my lovely niece at the San Francisco International Airport last Friday. At 14, it was her first time flying on her own. Flying in general and being independent have been essential to my sense of freedom throughout my life and while driving to the Bay Area, I reminisced about my first time flying on my own at age 18. A few years ago, having encouraged my son to do the same when he turned 12 (he flew from San Francisco to Montreal alone to visit my family in Canada) was so transformative (for both of us, actually) that I wanted his cousin to experience the same. Plus, she is really dear to me and so mature and evolved as a human being. It has only been a few days and I have learned so much from her already !

A few hours after she arrived, so luminous, so poised, even more beautiful than my recollection (we had not seen each other since 2019 because of the pandemic with the exception of a brief, 1-h visit at her home last December), we went to our cruise that was booked to bring us to this former federal, maximum-security penitentiary: Alcatraz. I had seen this mythical yet depressing place over two decades ago, with my sister (also her mother), and our cousin, and it had not changed. 

As I walked by the deserted cells, I remember vividly all the reflections about human rights, morality, redemption it generated in me back then. In parallel to some work experience in forensic psychiatry in Canada and later on at the jail unit in San Francisco General Hospital, I have always been interested in detecting and outsmarting the psychopaths of our world. But jails and prisons are not exclusively filled with mass murderers or rapists. Many people end up there after a passage through the juvenile justice system, or coming from the pipeline starting with poverty, a magnet for other adversities, such as family dysfunction, neglect or abuse. There is a study in Canada that found that 80-100% female inmates have been victims of sexual assault. I can tell you that from my work as a psychiatrist, most people who end up in jail have suffered some form of adversity, injustice or trauma. Conversely, children who grow up in a nurturing environment don't usually end up doing things that would put them in jail. For the less fortunate, a pervert cycle continues as they enter the traumatogenic environment that jail often is. How can you ever get out, not just from behind the bars, but from the negative representations society has of the incarcerated people, and all the injustices and inequalities that persist ? Where is anyone's ultimate freedom ? I think freedom starts with an awareness that we often have a choice (to breathe, to select our thoughts and escape from mental prisons, to focus on the positive, to create beauty, to learn), that sooner or later, oppression will be dismantled and become ruins, finally letting the light in.

We can opt out of the consumerism that spends unimaginable amounts of resources dictating what we need in the form of assaultive and brainwashing advertisement, or question any convoluted process that feels like a cogwheel or conveyor belt you cannot easily escape from once you embark in them (higher education in the USA, divorce in the USA, technology upgrade, assisted reproduction, academia, cosmetic enhancements...) because some end up being lucrative (and by lucrative, I mean to everyone else but you). Even with good intentions initially, any organization helping desperate people (some wanting to divorce, others wanting to become parents etc) risk becoming a business or corporation. There is nothing fundamentally wrong in stepping into those conveyor belts or treadmills, but one needs to be fully informed for such a decision to be exercised with freedom. I certainly did enter a few doors in my life, not knowing they would be hiding endless conveyor belts, and I am still paying the price.

But in very concrete ways, I consider myself a free spirit. I will wear clothes that I think looks nice on me, not what a designer says is stunning.  I want to be me. I don't care about fashions. I don't rush to the store whenever I need a certain piece of furniture for instance. If I need a coffee table in my living room, I will create one with a board and old books (in fact I did just that recently).

Rejecting the false narratives that people or society try to stick to me is my freedom. As a woman in my second adulthood, creating my own self-definition is my freedom, instead of agreeing with corporations brainwashing women into thinking we need to undergo some kind of botox mummification at the first wrinkle, not go into the world without designer handbags, and display non-graying hair. I will not be part of a cohort in an imagined sequel of the Feminine Mystique, a book which opened my eyes about the oppression, harassment and misogyny women still face, like by letting their role be influenced by appliances companies through their creation of the myth of the "happy suburban housewife", a machination that evolved from the fear of patriarchal structures regarding women entering the workforce and "stealing" men's jobs.

Now that I am reading "Fear of Fifty", written by the colorful, hilariously irreverent Erica Jong, I am saddened to acknowledge that there is truth in what the author bluntly says: that women after 50 are viewed not as the wise crones they should be honored to be, but as mere consumers. It is tragic that so many grown women feel insecure and believe a society that says they are no longer attractive and therefore let said society decide what they should look like. I think it is the opposite. How can you not be more attractive as you age ? Because, as you age, you gotta love yourself more, having been in your own skin and acquainted with yourself for so long. Having endured and survived so much has to translate into a deep attachment for the heroine in us, an enhanced self-love. And what is more attractive and luminous than people who care about themselves and feel more self-confident ? Plus, women are sexier and more alluring the older they get, whether it is from a more sculpted, defined face and the aura of self-confidence from having come to terms with objectification and finally reclaiming their bodies and sexuality through a more vivid erotica. Their charm is plain contagious.  I am so serious about my resistance to materialism that I tend to glean discarded but still usable items, mend my clothes, not wear stilettos (I never did anyway), and I am ready to use inexpensive moisturizers for the rest of my life, never dye my hair, and decorate my House of Enchantments with red, wear bold colors, and bikinis until I die. 

This blog is also a consolidation of my freedom. Letting go of the tyranny of perfectionism before starting anything is my freedom. As much as I have had the chance to work with great, supportive editors in some venues I am writing, I am never completely free to speak my mind entirely.

But fortunately, there is always a way to infiltrate one's freedom in any tyranny, just like flowers can thrive where patriarchy is decaying.

And to avoid being the target of corporations and advertisements, no, I will not reveal my age. And by that I don't mean literally, but through my whole being. I will live, dress, kiss, laugh, eat, dance and make mistakes like whatever age I feel at any given moment, whether it is 9, 15, 37 or 92.