Click on the image above to play my tribute to E. Jean Carroll.
I was 22 when I walked into my first Women’s Studies class at the University of California at Davis called, “The Popular Image of Women in America.” With me I brought all the baggage you might expect a young woman born in the 1950s to carry - the belief that my looks were the most important thing about me; a raging eating disorder; an addiction to alcohol, confusion about my sexuality; the belief I had to twist and contort my creativity and personality to please others; and a frightening commitment to perfectionism as defined by my grades and what men thought of me.
To say that class changed my life would be an understatement. From it I learned to identify the source of all the confusing and often contradictory messages I had internalized about what makes an attractive and successful woman. I also learned to stop seeing other women as competition - to embrace a sisterhood that has grown stronger, richer, and more solid as I age. The class was also the first step towards sobriety, getting help for my eating disorder, and prompted me to stop looking outside myself for approval and start asking the all important question, “Who are you and what did you come to do?”
Those of you who know my story will smile at the question. You know how many detours and sidetracks it has led me down, how often I have questioned my right to exist, and how committed I have become to unearthing the source of what I call my “Essence.” It is the inviolate, central flame burning at the core of my being that has never forgotten love - never abandoned hope.
You will also understand why meeting and having the chance to share my knowledge, thoughts, and stories with E. Jean Carroll and the fabulous cadre of women she calls “the conflab,” has meant so much to me. The poem I wrote for her as she embarked on her lawsuits says it all, but I HAD to make the video at the top of this page to celebrate her recent victory in court. It is proof that democracy works, that no one is above the law, and that the truth will ultimately prevail. It is proof that E. Jean Carroll can rise like the phoenix she is to inspire and unite us all.
Thank you again E. Jean. March on!
POEM for E. JEAN CARROLL
I.
I don’t know you - not really,
though the clever names of canines
you’ve loved and lost
caper around you like calling cards
and the authors who taught you
how to rip the human condition to shreds
with scathing humor and insight
have been my teachers too.
II.
I don’t know you,
but you wrote your way into my days
with audacious advice and words you’d reclaimed or remade
from the polite-society-police: dick pics, tricky dicks, dickweeds,
boffing, bouncing, banging,
up-righters, usable up-righters, and the right to do
just about anything related to sex
as long as it was FUN and no one was harmed in the process.
III.
Because of your words
I have giggled, snorted, hiccupped,
cackled, chortled, guffawed,
peed my pants
(on more than one occasion),
and scared my cats half to death.
It’s all your fault,
and I love you for it.
IV.
I don’t know you, not the day-to-day,
get up, wash your face, feed the dog, and wrestle with emails you,
but any woman who makes space in her heart and home
for black widows, mice, and poems,
who consumes mustard sandwiches,
dares to wear pink and peacock-blue wigs,
and takes road trips with Lewis Carroll in a Prius named Miss Bingley
is all right by me and receives automatic Soul Sister status.
V.
And so Sister mine, it’s time for me to feed you lines
about girding your loins,
poking testicles,
and blowing the orange toupee away,
but all I can think to say
are words from the song I wish I could play
as you march into that courtroom:
”I am brave, I am bruised
I am who I'm meant to be,
this is me.”
There’s an army of women walking with you Auntie E.
March on! - Jena Ball
Copyright 2023 by Jena Ball. All rights Reserved.
Jena!! Mighty woman!
Thank you!
Love this, Jena. Also your description of your pre-women’s studies self--she sounds “startlingly familiar.”