About respecting your own needs

[cjsmith]

“The Crane Wife” is a story from Japanese folklore. I found a copy in the reserve’s gift shop among the baseball caps and bumper stickers that said GIVE A WHOOP. In the story, there is a crane who tricks a man into thinking she is a woman so she can marry him. She loves him, but knows that he will not love her if she is a crane so she spends every night plucking out all of her feathers with her beak. She hopes that he will not see what she really is: a bird who must be cared for, a bird capable of flight, a creature, with creature needs. Every morning, the crane-wife is exhausted, but she is a woman again. To keep becoming a woman is so much self-erasing work. She never sleeps. She plucks out all her feathers, one by one.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/07/16/the-crane-wife/

Comments

[minoanmiss]

*shudders*

I have a much cheerfuller Crane WIfe to tell you about in exchange:

https://naryrising.tumblr.com/post/664210796426969088

[cjsmith]

Isn't that wild? What a situation!

I did read this story as cheerful in the long run. She figured it out. ♥

[hitchhiker]

she did, and that makes a big difference! but still, it's sad the choices women get subjected to.

[cjsmith]

What we do when we raise children to think they are unworthy and unloveable is cruelly destructive.

[minoanmiss]

yay! :D