As Erica, Sabrina, and I continue to settle into our new office at 1440 Maple Avenue, I realized that it was the perfect time to talk about a woman who not only helped us ready the space for opening, but who was an extremely influential person in who I am today: my mom. My mom (who I call “ma”) is one of the most badass, ahead of her time, coolest women who you will ever meet. I didn’t always appreciate her to the extent that I do today – I mean, what teenage girl doesn’t butt heads with her mom, right? And that might be an understatement…sorry, ma! But as an adult, I could not be prouder to be her daughter, so it seemed like a perfect time to introduce her to you.
If you have been to our new office, you may have enjoyed our private bathroom. No more sharing with other offices, it’s all ours. It’s made a bit more special because my mom, Lynn, installed the toilet, the vanity, and the light in the bathroom. I know, it might sound weird to get warm, fuzzy feelings about your mother whenever you get to pee in peace, right? But even today in 2020, a lot of people might assume that that is a job a father would do. But Ma has always done things like this for me, like making platform beds for my college roommate and me to increase our storage (who am I kidding, it was to be the cool party room), and all sorts of handy-woman tasks over the years. She was doing the “dad” stuff as well as being a great mom.
Working in a Male-Dominated Industry
Although she retired as a machinist, and now owns a small business as a handy-woman, Ma (whose name is Lynn) has had several interesting careers throughout her life. She worked for a while as an executive secretary in an office, and when I was a young child, she was a Laboratory Technologist specializing in Microbiology at a hospital. Lynn divorced from my father, and she worked to take care of my sister and me while putting herself through college to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor. Unfortunately, the hospital downsized and let her go, so with two children to care for, in need of benefits like insurance, and only partially done with college, she started to apply for jobs in every type of trade that there was.
Fortunately, Ma had learned a lot of skills from her stepfather. She said, “I was the first of five kids, and my step-father needed someone to help him do stuff, so I would bring shingles up to the roof and hand them to him. I could do shingling and tuckpointing, tune-up my old car. People were handier in those days, so I learned how to do things.” Although she was hoping to become a carpenter, she became a laborer.
Being a female laborer in a male-dominated field back then was extremely uncommon. Ma has explained that men did not want women there. “I had a pipe bomb blown up near me, I’ve been punched. There was pornography all over the place, and some guys wanted you to sleep with them,” she remembered, “We always worked in isolated places, and I was scared to be by myself. You never knew what could happen.” One of her supervisors even had a coworker tell her (after Ma had stuck up for herself after being put in a potentially dangerous situation), “You tell Lynn that this is a man’s world and that she’s a troublemaker.”
Helping Women Find Their Strength
Not only did my mother work in a male-dominated workforce, but she has been a feminist her entire life. She has been a rape counselor for DuPage Women Against Rape and taught other women how to be counselors. She taught other women about life in a patriarchal society and how rape is a pandemic because women can be submissive to men. “I basically taught feminism, although we didn’t call it that,” said Lynn, “People signed up to be crisis counselors for various reasons. Many women signed up to help women who were rape victims or survivors, but it turned out that they were a survivor themselves, or an incest survivor.”
In another story that Lynn shared, she said, “Everyone was required to do eight weeks of training, and the first thing we were asked after was if they looked at anything in their life differently. One woman mentioned the old ring around the collar commercial, where people shame the wife for not getting the ring of dirt out from her husband’s collar when she washed it. This woman pointed out that instead of blaming the woman, women should be asking why that turkey didn’t wash his neck?”
Growing up with Lynn as a mom helped shape me and my career path. The things she experienced are things I work on with so many of my clients who still face discrimination in the workplace. Who still face harassment. Who still experience rape and incest. We are still fighting for women’s rights, and for equal respect and treatment. The women in the generations before us were real-life heroines, but they are not just in history books, they are in our own family trees. They attend our barbeques and holiday dinners. Their blood runs through our veins. They gave birth to us and then fought tirelessly to make our lives better than theirs, and the women before them, and the women before them.
When you are in my office and you duck in to use the bathroom, you can think about my troublemaker mom, and how not only can she renovate a bathroom or shingle a house, but that she is an incredible trailblazer for women’s rights. Feminism is her life, it’s her philosophy, it’s her religion, it is who she is. She has instilled this in my sister and me, and I could not be prouder to have her as my mom.
