After 200 years, this change was worth the wait

By Diane Dennis

Lifestyles Northwest, Feb 1, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Diane Dennis is an author, certified trainer and life coach. Reach her through her Web site at www.lifetransitionguide.com. To register for her Life Transition Seminars or find out about life transition coaching, call 503-972-3441.

For 200 years, the position of U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives has been reserved for men only. Then along comes Nancy Pelosi. From Y to X, what a difference a chromosome makes. Some life transitions arrive with barely a peep. Then there are those that have long-range implications and ripple through the psyches of an entire culture.

As always, it is a choice to use circumstances for personal development. Upon election, the speaker herself was quoted as saying, “Change represents opportunity.”

In the old days, task assignments based on gender helped us meet immediate goals of survival. Men, thick of brawn, hunted the meat. Women, hormonally set up to nurture, tended the young. Fast-forward through the industrial age, information age and feminist revolution into 2007, and we have newfound gender-bending freedoms.

Unlike the ’60s thick-shoulder-padded feminists bent on denying femininity in favor of equality of the sexes, Pelosi embodies a woman who integrates personal power without denying her womanhood. The new speaker stood at the podium with a babe nestled in her arms as she said, “For our daughters and granddaughters, today we have broken the marble ceiling…now the sky’s the limit.”

1 | 2 Next Page >>