I Give You My Word: Women’s Letters as Life Support, 1973-1987
By Signe Eklund Schaefer
Green Fire Press, 340 pages, $15.95
Some books have a long gestation period. Some just appear serendipitously. This was the case for Great Barrington author Signe Schaefer when she stumbled upon a cache of old letters from women friends and realized that they were more than mere personal correspondence.
Schaefer, the author of “Why on Earth?— Biography and the Practice of Human Becoming,” has long been interested in life stories and the way they reflect “the evolution of human consciousness and the importance of pursuing an individual path of inner development.” The letters that surfaced in her attic testify to her close engagement with a group of women dating back to the ‘70s. Many of them met at Emerson College in England, a center for the study of Anthroposophy, the spiritual science developed by the Austrian esoteric teacher Rudolf Steiner. When several of the women, including Schaefer, returned home, they began to write letters to one another as a means of maintaining connection, but also as a way to give language to what it felt like to be a woman in those tumultuous early years of second wave feminism.
Reading and eventually transcribing excerpts from the letters, Schaefer began to see patterns emerging. The writers, some occupied with childrearing, some forming workshops to study gender, the family, motherhood, share a deep interiority. They are drawn to soul-searching, asking large questions, experimenting with new ideas while doing the wash, comforting the baby. They are exhausted by the efforts of the everyday, but not too tired to wonder out loud why am I a woman in this life? What does it mean to be a woman? This evocative question resonates beyond a belief in karma, beyond an inquiry into the evolutionary needs of the soul. It comes back again and again as each generation of women investigates its relationship with the world and with spirit. As one of Schaefer’s correspondents puts it in the final chapter, “I wrote out loud on paper in order to see myself, my children, my partner, my life. And to share it with you. Through the lens of you, I wrote to discover the meaning and purpose that I longed to feel beneath the ordinariness of the ordinariness.”
Throughout this heart-engaging collection, the letter writers hold up their love for each other. Whether they are exploring family life, career frustrations, or spiritual growth, every image is rooted in friendship. Schaefer and her correspondents are not acquaintances. They are people who are open to connection at the deepest level. They allow themselves to express doubt, bewilderment, vulnerability…and they are there for each other. “Here are women — trying to ‘talk,’ to nurture a living conversation, sharing from their hearts, holding the other with love and respect, working to actively support who the friend is becoming.”
“I Give You My Word: Women’s Letters as Life Support, 1973-1987” is available through local bookstores or on Amazon. There will be a reading of excerpts from the book at the Mason Library in Great Barrington on Saturday, July 13th at 1:15 p.m. The public is welcome.
