o, this is not a post about writing–at least not directly.  It’s a post about my mother.  Mrs. Milan, if you will.  My mother is in town.  During this time, she talked to someone I work with, and when that person asked her what she did, she shrugged her shoulders and hunkered down and said in a quiet voice, “Oh, nothing significant.”

Gah!  I prodded her in the shoulder, and then told the person that she was writing a series of books for parents of very young children, based on her experiences both as a schoolteacher and as a mother.  She has a research agenda and as a schoolroom teacher her methods were overwhelmingly successful.  She has a unique ability to get into someone’s head and understand why they’re not learning–what little thing it is that they can’t quite get.  And then she figures out how to communicate it.  This, she says, is “nothing significant.”  And when I questioned (okay, when I bullied) her about her word choice later, she said that little things like teaching kids and books for parents just don’t seem all that important.

Gah.  It made me think of how many times we women tend to downplay the feminine side of things we do.  I know I used to.

Friend: What are you reading?

Me, hiding cover of romance: Oh, nothing.

It wasn’t until I got rabid that I started telling people that I read romances.  That I started realizing how hiding this part of myself told people it was okay to belittle romances, and by extension, okay to tell women that their desires–stability, family, friends, love–were not as important as gunshot wounds and war zones.  That the best things in life were just not that significant.

So, tell me:  What have you learned to stand up for?  Is there anything you wish you had the guts to say?