I was sitting outside on the patio tonight and boy did I have a huge reflection hit me. I hear a lot of young folks complain about boomers. This is not a pie fight, just a little reminder of what we have been through. You young folks have some real uncertainties coming up in the future but let me tell you, we boomers have been to hell and back and still traveling.
I think back on my generation and this is just my opinion but I think we have had it harder and fought harder and lost so much in this generation. Maybe more than any other generation so far, as we wanted change. Be glad that some of you younger folks fought for the change that many of you experience today. We are also to blame for a lot of misery but we sure have fought all our lives.
We have been brought up in fear almost all of our lives. We have also seen some amazing things but we fought for every single thing that was achieved in the 20th century. This is my opinion of course but think about it.
We have not just gone through one or two things that shaped for good or bad our lives but started out ducking under desks afraid the nuclear bomb was going to radiate us at any minute to toast. We were lied to about soooooooooooooooo many things. I am under the opinion that we for the most part suffer from PTSD.
Most of the boomers got whippings as a part of life, much like the generation before us but we fought against it when we starting raising out own. Most of us did. We talked to our kids while when we were being brought up, we were to be seen and not heard.
We watched in confusion as we saw our president gunned down in Dallas. We watched segragation and we fought it. We remember lynching and so much inequality in massive amounts. We as young women were denied any reproductive rights. We did not even get the pill until many of us were straddled with kids. ( More than some of us could feed).
We had to fight for some type of equal rights for women, picking up the suffrage movement while many of us were being abused in the home. We wiped noses, cooked, cleaned and many of us were single mothers and were supposed to be married by the time we were in our late teens. Women wanted to make their own money but had to still make the bed, prepare the coffee, do the dishes as sweep the floors and wash the clothes. AND WORK...But little did we know many of would still be raising kids in our 70’s and 80’s.Or losing our savings if we had any in 2008 or face suffering or death with this virus. Men that had heart were shunned. Many against Vietnam to think of. They were belittled for standing against racism and equality.
It was the boomer generation coming of age that watched Martin Luther King with hope that the dogs would not snarl and bite the POC as they tried to vote. People marched and cried. and beaten. Our generation was beat, killed, poisioned with Agent Orange and gunned down at Kent State. It was the boomer generation who fought back and the greatest generation just took it for most of their lives frozen with fear. We fought against a useless war in South East Asia in Vietnam and those that came home so disturbed with a life change and no appreciation for being pulled into a war that couldn’t be won and shouldn’t have been part of in a civil way, being and still being misunderstood.
We lived through the 13 days off the coast of Cuba, thinking missiles would blow us to bits while our parents were just as frightned as we were when we were kids. We watched Robert Kennedy killed in the primaries. We had families divided over everything from Vietnam to equal rights. We had gas wars and little money for most of us. We were sexually abused as women in the workplace with absolutely no where close to equal pay or opportunity. Husbands could beat and rape their wives and did not have to face any consequences. We lived though the Iran Contras. We lived through predjudicies, There were no laws called hate laws. We fought for that. We had to fight for the Aids epidemic cure. We faced measles, chickenpox , mumps, and the smallpox vaccination with sore arms and fevers.
Some did drugs and others just dropped out and roamed. Veterans were not acknowledged but many wanted peace and never wanted another war. They were dying young. We have witnessed Selma, integration, hate up close and personal all across America. We saw the Chicago riots and the Democratic convention. We watched the birth of rock and roll yet many of us were judged for it because we liked it. No one knew who was gay because they were in closets afraid to be known. We fought. We lived though trickle down economics and Reagonomics. We watched in horror of 9-11 and lies and more lies. We saw the Challenger blow up. We still fought as many people of faith had to watch their religion and hijacked in America as a political platform with tele evangelism. We watched votes not being counted when we worked to help GOTV and register only to have the Supreme court beat us down and pick who they wanted. We marched.
We lived through the draft and watching our friends die off 10,000 miles away and then we had to fight for the government to award them benefits and then we have to keep fighting to accquire them.
We saw some great entertainers die from overdoses and suicides along with the mass shooting s that come along this millenium starting with Columbine. and stood with the younger folks.
More than 200,000 grandparents raised or still raising their grandchildren due to many of generation X partying instead of mothering or fathering. Not all but too many. We have had to watch the financial crisis of 2008 take away our homes, our 401K’s, or savings and equity. We have become older and frail and then we got Bush, Iraq, Trump and now a Pandemic.
Ottery Scribe has a Post up about getting old is not easy at all. May all of you non boomers remember we may have had Woodstock, an many disturbed come back from wars, and some just nuts but for the most part with still able to think with a working brain cell, what all we have been through….Most of it has been a struggle and most of us always had you young folk back. Yes we have some Donald Trump’s. We also have had John Lewis’s and the late Elijah Cummings. We have had Gloria Steinam and Jane Fonda, and Joan Baez and Tom Hanks.
Now we face COVID-19. Our lives have always been a struggle and fight for most of us, not all but most. We did not want to face our golden years struggling for breath. Please keep your freedoms young folks in mind, due to the Boomer generation’s fight for the freedom’s you have now and don’t stay away from the polls or go to the beaches putting us at risk. We just don’t know how many more fight is in us but I tell you one thing. We will go down fighting with our dying breaths. We have come to far.
Where we then and we moved the needle but… the glass ceiling is still looking down on we females… cracks but not broken. . Other generations have faced war, or depression or suffrage or slavery, Our generation has seen it all. We have watched some great things as well but we have fought for almost EVERYTHING we ever got.