(Book Excerpt 1) How to Live Well Despite Capitalist Patriarchy by Trista Hendren

Why I wrote this book… an Introduction

Capitalist Patriarchy sucks for women.

Two years ago, I almost died. Eight weeks before that, the father of my children died suddenly—or rather not-so-suddenly for those who knew his struggles with addiction well. It was, I suppose, a long-time-in-the-making filled with pain and consequences for those who knew (and loved) him best.

I decided promptly before my emergency surgery that I could not die. For the sake of my children, I had to get through it—and I had to get better. I called them—fighting back tears that I vowed not to let them hear—to tell them I had to go in immediately.

My son stuttered, “Wait, what? ”

“I will be OK,” I told him—perhaps a little too harshly. “You can come see me afterwards. I love you.”

It was too late in the evening for them to come by the time I was out of the recovery room. I was very happy to find myself awake however—and able to call them. I broke down and cried like a baby several times that day.

I made it through the next week in the hospital with endless YouTube healing meditations and comedies. I will never forget the kindness of the Norwegian doctors and nurses.

The doctor who broke the news to me about the tumor looked just like my beloved friend Elisabeth Slettnes, who illustrated the first three Girl God books. “Don’t worry,” she comforted me—as if she were my dear sister and not a total stranger. “We will take care of you just like you were one of our own.”

A nurse took my hand as they were putting me under and asked how old my children were. She gave me a knowing look while stroking my arm and telling me hers were the same age. I drifted off knowing she understood exactly what was at stake.

The thought has never left me that had I been ‘home’ in America then, I would have been left to die—or at least bankrupt by that week in the hospital, given that they did catch it just in time. In fact, I probably would not have gone to the doctor at all. I could barely stay above water as it was. There was no option for a hefty hospital bill.

I left the United States broke, after years as a single mother. I did not have health insurance for a long time. In America, I was not even worthy of receiving child support. I was a nothing. Just another mother forced to figure out how to take care of her children—with little help from anyone, except my own mother.

I had done nothing to earn the kindness of these Norwegian doctors and nurses. I had not paid into their system. I was simply a human being, deserving of care on that basis alone. This is the Socialist system so many Americans are taught to be afraid of.

Angela Davis once said, “I still believe that capitalism is the most dangerous kind of future we can imagine.” I finally heard her—loud and clear—laying in that hospital bed.

I had spent the prior years on auto-pilot after 6 months of family court with my ex, and then a move to Norway. Despite our ecstasy at finally being able to move abroad, it took some time for my nervous system to relax again. In my heart, I did not believe that my ex-husband would ever recover from his additions, which would enable him to have parenting time again. However, being that he came from a family with money, I also worried that we might be pulled back into some sort of family court drama again. The stress of having little say in protecting my children all those years had taken an enormous toll on me.

Before and during my 2^nd marriage, I had lived in relative comfort and wealth—wanting to believe that I had somehow made it out of the confines of patriarchy. I thought I was safe as someone with an MBA, good income, marriage to a wealthy partner—and all the perks that come with that. But as Nawal El Saadawi reminds us, there are much larger structures at play than our individual (and sometimes privileged) lives.

“The most dangerous shackles are the invisible ones, because they deceive people into believing they are free. This delusion is the new prison that people inhabit today, north and south, east and west… We inhabit the age of the technology of false consciousness, the technology of hiding truths behind amiable humanistic slogans that may change from one era to another… Democracy is not just freedom to criticize the government, or to hold parliamentary elections. True democracy obtains only when the people—women, men, young people, children—have the ability to change the system of industrial capitalism that has oppressed them since the earliest days of slavery: a system based on class division, patriarchy, and military might, a hierarchical system that subjugates people merely because they are born poor, or female, or dark-skinned.”¹

I used to blame myself incessantly for everything that was wrong in my life. As I grew older and began to speak more openly and honestly with other women, I began to connect the dots that make so many of us miserable. My hope is that as more women begin to wake up and share with each other, we will heal ourselves and weave our way out of this hellish maze together.

Capitalist Patriarchy thrives when women shut up and do as they are told. While it would appear (for some of us at least) that if we play by the rules, we will be safe—those of us who begin to rock the boat with our questioning and refusal to STFU know how easy it is to be thrown off the boat altogether—children and all.

Everything within Capitalist Patriarchy is designed to keep your inner-knowing and body wisdom suppressed. Therefore, in order to thrive despite this system, you must come back into contact with the deepest parts of yourself. As females, we have been taught to deeply hate those parts of ourselves, so they are often the most hidden—buried deep within. As Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor wrote:

“Once we thoroughly understand how and why patriarchy acquired its power over us—the power of an entrenched mistake over the minds and lives of all people—once we understand and feel clearly that the fight of witch women is also the fight of earth’s people everywhere against mechanical subjugation and exploitation—once we reestablish the magic link between the individual psyche and the earth’s vital energy flow, between all-evolving matter and all-evolving spirit, and learn to encourage and teach others to do the same, in a loving return to what we always were—perhaps then, in the final time of crisis, the Serpent Goddess will shake herself loose from her deep exiled sleep in the earth’s belly. Perhaps the serpent of life’s flowing energy will begin to rise again, all luminous and of the earth, and the children of the Great Mother will rise up with it, and the universe will be our home again, as before. This flight is not an escape, but a return. The only way for human beings to survive the end is to return to the beginning.”²

We must reconnect to that Serpent Goddess energy in order to regain our vitality.

A few months after my surgery, my doctor confirmed that the large tumor blocking my intestines was not cancerous. In the years since I have worked on this book on and off, at times not sure whether I should really publish it. During that period, numerous friends have discovered they had cancer or died from it. With each notification of illness or death, I was more certain that finding a way to live well under a system designed to kill us was my most important task.

I’m not a financial guru by any means—and I don’t believe women are financially disadvantaged by accident. I did, however, spend 13 years as a mortgage broker and earned my MBA in my younger years, so I do know a thing or two about money. I also spent many years as a broke single mother, so I know how to stretch a dollar better than most people. Being poor requires a sort of creativity that those who are middle class and above cannot begin to imagine.

But happiness isn’t all about money. You can be happy with or without it. I’ve lived with just about every variation there is except the very far extremes on either side. I have come to believe in the importance of naming and claiming our own reality—instead of passively accepting the labels and perceptions of those in power. As bell hooks wrote nearly two decades ago:

“Women need to know that they can reject the powerful’s definition of their reality—that they can do so even if they are poor, exploited, or trapped in oppressive circumstances. They need to know that the exercise of this basic personal power is an act of resistance and strength. Many poor and exploited women, especially non-white women, would have been unable to develop positive self-concepts if they had not exercised their power to reject the powerful’s definition of their reality.”³

That said, I tried to make the most of the suggestions in this book free or as close to it as possible. If you’re broke, start with free. It’s always better to start somewhere than not at all.

When we examine how we are contributing to Capitalist Patriarchy with our own time, money and energy—we can reallocate our funds for things that contribute to our liberation instead of our subordination. As Arundhati Roy wrote:

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness—and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.”⁴

One of the best things that traveling and living in a different country has taught me is to question my assumptions. Many of us repeat the patterns of our families without questioning whether they serve us well. As poet Mark Gonzales asked, “Who told you the stories that taught you what it meant to be human, and did they have your best interests at heart?”

There is always a reason to worry and there is always something that you can be unhappy about. The last years have taught me to forget all that—as much as you can—and focus on what is right in your life and brings you joy. When you find that place in your being, it is much easier to give to others. You help no one by being a miserable person. The world has enough miserable people. Capitalist Patriarchy was designed with that very thing in mind. So, dig through all that nonsense—turn it upside down and on its head and kick it as far down the street as you can. Then, find your bliss and share it.

While this book is dedicated to the memory of Cheryl Braganza—whose words and art inspired me immensely—it is also heavily influenced by the memory of my grandparents. My paternal grandparents, Nano and Pappa, taught me a lot about stretching the most out of life. They spent nearly 65 years together happily married. They both lived into their nineties.

My maternal grandmother, Nana, raised 5 children she had in a 6-year period—all by the age of 22. Looking at her obituary, where there is no hiding the fact that she was only 15-years-old when she married, always makes me cry. My perception is that she really did not have the life she wanted until after my grandfather died, when she confided in me that she could finally eat again. Sadly, she died at 73—which was much too young for the healthy and vivacious woman that she was. She taught me how to stretch a food budget out in creative ways, which enabled me to feed my kids during the very lean years. She also encouraged me in her own way to leave the abusive relationship I was in with the father of my children.

All 3 grandparents taught me that you can live well no matter how little money you have in the bank. Nano used to often say that it was certain rich people who were poor—poor in spirit. She taught me that no matter how much you have, if you are selfish and nasty about it, you are the opposite of rich. As my dear friend Andrew Gurevich wrote:

“A vitally-important and unspoken message of this failed American experiment is that even the so-called 1% do not seem to be comprised of balanced, fulfilled people most of the time. It seems that it’s not just the ‘losers’ of this current system of unbridled, savage capitalism and its attendant institutions of repression and control that suffer all of the psychological, physical and spiritual fallout these systems produce. The elite themselves seem increasingly insecure, addicted, paranoid and discontent. Indeed, it is just as George Orwell warned us so many years ago when writing about British Imperialism in the Far East, ‘When the White Man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom he destroys.’ The ennui hits them with an unrelenting force because it exposes the lie they have believed for generations: namely, that all they possess will make them whole. The Hindus have rightly diagnosed this psychosis by claiming a person can ‘never get enough of what they don’t really need.’”⁵

I started writing children’s books because my own childhood was sometimes less than ideal. I wanted to do everything possible so that my children would have better lives—and that fewer children would have miserable lives. Books were my happy place—my escape route. But I realized more recently that I don’t have to stay in the doom and gloom of my childhood. In fact, I owed it to myself and my children to try to have the best life I can.

This has required a lot of focus on my part. I have had to learn how to redirect my energy and beliefs. That said, I have seen how New Age thought can be toxic or dangerous to women. We simply can’t will ourselves out of this existence into a commune filled with rainbows and unicorns. Genevieve Vaughan did a brilliant job of explaining the subtle, but important difference in thought.

“It has become commonplace in the US New Age movement to talk about the co-creation of ‘reality.’ It is said that, by our thoughts, we cause certain things to occur and others not to occur. I hope to be able to show how we are collectively creating a patriarchal reality, which is actually bio-pathic (harmful to life), and I propose that we dismantle that reality. Our values, and the self-fulfilling interpretations of life that we make because of them, are creating a harmful illusion which leads us to act and to organize society in harmful ways. This is one sense in which our thoughts do make things happen. If we understand what we are doing, however, patriarchal reality can be changed. First, we must have the courage to change the basic assumptions which serve as fail-safes to keep deep systemic changes from occurring.”⁶

This book will serve as a starting point to challenge some of our societal assumptions, in hopes of helping women become stronger and breaking their chains. As we begin to heal collectively, we can overturn this system altogether.

Nothing bugs me more than someone telling me what to do—especially if they are offering unsolicited advice. Since you are reading this book, I am going to assume you want my advice—and I am going to be very candid as someone who spent the better part of four decades living in ways that did not work for me. That said, I don’t really like rules myself—so if one of these suggestions doesn’t sit well with you, just ignore it. It is not important to me that everyone agrees with me. My goal is that women begin to think in new and different ways from what we have been taught and socialized.

When we are separated from our sisters by secrecy, we lack the keys to unlock our cages. As Beatrix Campbell wrote:

“Capitalism does not do life. And that lie is never more exposed in the twenty-first century than when we bring to it the light of gender and the unsaid—the silences and secrets that are knotted in the articulation of capitalism and patriarchy.”⁷

It is time to break the silences that enslave us. Just as Goddess was dethroned thousands of years ago by outright lies and defragmentation, many of the same weapons are used to weaken females today.

It is Capitalist Patriarchy’s goal to keep women exhausted, ill, on-guard, ashamed, numb, distracted and defragmented so that we don’t have the time or energy to battle the giant Himself. We must return to ourselves— and to Goddess consciousness—to regain our strength and overturn this abomination.

There was once another way. Let us begin to remember.

Find more info on this book here.

(Meet Mago Contributor) Trista Hendren.