Do it for the women who came before you - vote!

When women's rights are taken away, so are our independence and personal freedoms.

My mom and I sat by the pool at her senior living community in June 2024. At age 96, she stopped coloring her hair!

My mother entered hospice last week. On Halloween, she’ll turn 97.

I’ve been in a state of anticipatory grief for a decade, knowing that one day, she will not walk this earth with me. Now that Mom is in hospice, her timeline has changed due to her congestive heart failure.

Her mother, Pearle, lived to be 101.

I’m cut from the same cloth as these two women - we three are/were rebels. Age matters nothing to us because it’s never too late - for anything. We feel younger than our biological age. Young at heart.

I feel sorrow as I write this.

“I’ve had a good life,” Mom tells me.

My father, the love of her life, passed away nineteen years ago.

Mom always wanted to be an interior designer, but it was 1950. She also wanted to get married and start a family. Determined to get a college degree, she worked to put herself through college. Back then, women were encouraged to stay home and care for their families.

“I supported myself through college, waiting tables and serving breakfasts at the University of Tennessee Student Center. If I’d pursued Interior Design, it would have been a five-year program,” Mom told me. “I wouldn’t have been able to get married, work in interior design, and have a family simultaneously.”

    “You mean you couldn’t be married and have a family if you worked in Interior Design?” I asked her. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Yes, because your father had a big job, and we wanted a family. It wasn’t what women did back in my generation. But I always dreamed of working with color and interiors,” she told me. 

Mom graduated from UT with a degree in home economics, but she always yearned to be more and use her creativity. She wanted to design beautiful interiors. Growing up, I witnessed my mother’s sadness because she couldn’t follow her passion.          

Advertising glorified the housewife and consumerism. Mom put her Home Economics degree to good use and was an excellent cook and seamstress. She had four children, and my father was the love of her life. Yet, she lost a part of herself when she let go of her dream. I know she yearned to have a bigger life.

She later studied pottery, reclaiming that creative spark, and began making Raku pots (a Japanese pottery technique) by doing ‘pit fires’ outside to obtain a beautiful glaze. Her pots were displayed in a gallery in Asheville, North Carolina.

I internalized the message: If you get married and have a family, you can’t have a career. The dominant theme implied in our culture when I graduated in 1970 was to go to college and find a husband.

I decided I would find a career I loved, married or not.

Sadly, growing up, I rejected my mother.

I believed she didn’t see me and favored my younger sister over me. As a middle child in a cluster of three, I felt invisible.

In the last two decades, I’ve engaged in intense counseling, writing, and personal growth to help myself become more aware of my shadow parts.

I’ve realized the deep conditioning and cultural beliefs I grew up with were untrue.

I followed my father’s patriarchal beliefs and was financially successful, but I was a dead woman walking - out of touch with my soul.

“Don’t depend on anyone. You have to take care of yourself.”

I learned this from my father. He meant well when he told my sister and me that belief, but it drove me to become a workaholic.

I was driven to become financially secure, so I’d feel safe. But I discovered that chasing anything outside of myself was an illusion. Security and safety are an inside job. All the money in the world wouldn’t help me feel safe and secure.

But it was my mother who encouraged me artistically.

She encouraged me to do what she couldn’t - get a degree in a subject I loved. I got a degree in Art Education because my father told me I wouldn’t make money as an artist.

In the U.S., we could have a woman become President for the first time!

Women have a history of taking care of women. When I started my online business in 1998, I hired women, giving them good pay and flexibility with their work and family time.

But my mother and too many other women didn’t have the opportunity to have careers or work while they raised families.

The United States is in a critical place. We need a woman to take over and help people economically and socially.

We will lose our democracy if the wrong candidate wins.

It’s time to speak our truth so we can build a better country where women have reproductive rights. We need women in powerful positions to help lift all women.

Please join my husband, John, and me in signing up inactive voters.

There’s still time here at VoteForward.org.

As a grandmother to my son’s 19-month-old, I hope to be a role model to younger generations and women.

My mother and I have done a lot of healing. Last year, at age 96, she moved into her one-bedroom apartment in the memory care unit of a senior community. I visit her quarterly for a week and spend time with her daily.

Vote Forward

Sign up using the link above at Vote Forward to help write letters to voters who haven’t voted in previous elections to encourage them to vote.

“Politics is personal. It’s all personal. Even breathing, because if the air isn’t clean, you can’t breathe… it’s about our shared humanity.” ~Martin Sheen

P.S. I’ve helped hundreds of women remove money blocks and start online businesses in the last decade. If you want to know about my coaching or money program, email me at sherold@sheroldbarr.com, and I’ll send you the information.

P.P.S. I’m a solopreneur again, and I’m slowly building a Squarespace website. I can’t offer my classes until I have a landing page! This takes time because I’m slow with IT, but I’ll keep you posted.

I’m planning some good things to offer, so stay tuned.

XO, Sherold