Invisible Woman facts & fiction

Written by Rachael Skyring

Rachael Skyring is a curious woman. Neurodivergent. Committed carer. Over thinker. Sensitive feeler. Stubborn AF. With postgraduate degrees in Astrophysics and Rocket Science, she's spent the last twenty years as mostly a Mum, the last ten honing her metaphysical quantum brain surgery skills through mindful movement and embodiment practices. Whoever you want to be, and wherever you want to go, Rachael can start you on your way. The sky's the limit. Let's begin!

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Embodiment | Feminism | Neurodivergent

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Books | Feminism | Invisible Woman | Rest | Time

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30 June 2024

Hey beautiful

Social media reminded me this week that

“No one will teach you how to overthrow them”

And I think also that “Your ancestors will take you all the way to the door.

They want you to open it because your ancestors want you to do better to be more than they are.

Some of this is the hardest work you’ll ever do because you have spent a lot of time complying.

So it’s not that no one will. It’s that no one can. It’s a choice only you can make for yourself.

You have so many things that you’ve learned from your mother and your father. You need to take with you that foundational learning. But some things don’t work for you.

Those you can let go. Gently, gently, one step at a time.

This week, the non-fiction book reading research I’ve done has become miserable.

Nonfiction books spend a lot of time gathering evidence, measuring it, and it’s really fucking depressing

I’m at the point where I don’t want to read facts anymore

because it is so depressing and repetitive. Women, globally, are overlooked, unseen, invisible, undervalued, underappreciated, abused, subordinated.

Intersectionality means that for women who are also disabled, queer, non-white, non-Christian, unhoused, in poverty, the invisibility is multiplied, intensified, amplified. (which is why they’re our best teachers, when we choose to listen to them)

I can see the reality, now it’s been pointed out to me. And that’s enough. When I need a reminder, I’ll come back.

It’s important that we learn things through facts and information.

I also read a couple of large print fiction books, which makes me giggle because they’re totally targeted at people like me. The print wasn’t that big, just comfortable really… LOL

These books were about older women and feeling invisible. Women of a certain age – which seems to be around and beyond 50, mid 50s – are commonly acknowledged as being and feeling invisible – and what might come of that.

From anecdotal research, the other place women are often perceived as invisible is in their role as mothers. That’s one level of social, cultural invisibility.

However, as one of my friends argued, a mother is very visible, possibly the centre of the universe, in the eyes and minds of her children. But then, inshallah, those children grow up and go away, and they look away from their mother.

So at that age, somewhere between maybe 45 and 60 the children are gone.

This is an age of double invisibility.

In Australia, from the age of 55, to get unemployment benefits, it is not necessary to be applying for jobs anymore. It is possible to claim unemployment benefits for volunteering 15 hours a week.

This evidence suggests that people, and especially women, who very likely have lost a great deal of career momentum through caring for children and others, are considered unemployable at 55. But still, of course, requiring income to live.

From a certain perspective that’s all pretty miserable, but this is where we can turn to fiction. And to memoir, autobiography and biography. To consider individual characters and lives. To consider what else is possible.

It seems to me that from this position of double invisibility, it finally becomes possible to see what has been impossible to see, what has been invisible to ourselves, for much of our lives for all kinds of reasons.

I observe that consistently in biography and autobiography and memoir, and in fiction too, that at that nadir moment, something unexpected becomes possible. Something can be seen that could not be seen from any other perspective.

And that oh my goodness, that’s the moment when things can turn around. And there’s absolutely an element of serendipity with this

I’m laughing

I’m laughing because I personally saw, at 55 years of age, for the first time in my life, a moon rainbow. I didn’t even know that was a thing. I had never heard of that. And yet I saw it and then I was like, Oh, okay. Yes, it works the same way as the sun but it only happens with the full moon (when the planets align, LOL)

And this has become my personal symbol of the invitation to turn around, to turn things around and follow a path of unexpected possibility.

So I’m inviting that fighting you – just like the characters who win through in other people’s stories – into committing to what feels right and true for you, and sticking to that path, including changing your mind as required, through thick and thin, sick and sin.

What I’ve eventually learned from reading and watching, looking at the past, through the statistics, and reading about the individual lives which both confirm and build on and expand the general evidence, is that

“it’s true. All of it” (to quote the unbeliever Han Solo)

The trick is to remember see yourself as well, to know where you fit in, and where you’re heading, or at least the next right thing for you. To maintain your agency.

Remember to take the statistics personally, and the personal stories as general guidance.

You get to choose your own path, the one that lights you up.