{"id":1294,"date":"2018-10-03T22:31:31","date_gmt":"2018-10-04T02:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=1294"},"modified":"2018-10-09T16:38:05","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T20:38:05","slug":"believe-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2018\/10\/03\/believe-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Believe us."},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe women feed him, bathe his feet \/ with tears, bring spices, find the empty tomb, \/ burst out to tell the men, are not believed. \u2026\u201c (Kenyon, 42)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These three lines belong to Jane Kenyon\u2019s poem \u201cDepression\u201d. The lines describe the biblical story of the discovery of Christ\u2019s resurrection. The first part \u201cThe women feed him, bathe his feet [\u2026]\u201d refers to two stories in which Christ was still alive.\u00a0 The women welcomed him into their home and cared for him and washed his feet with perfume. The second part \u201c[\u2026] with tears, bring spices [\u2026]\u201d refers to the biblical story in which the women come to visit Christ\u2019s tomb, to care for him, even in his death. However, they find the tomb empty and when they report to the men waiting outside, they are not believed until one of the men goes into the tomb to see for himself. The verbs \u2018feed\u2019, \u2018bathe\u2019, \u2018bring\u2019, \u2018find\u2019 and \u2018burst\u2019 are all active on the women\u2019s side, they do this on their own account. Still, the last verb \u2018believed\u2019 is put in a passive voice, indicating that the women\u2019s sincerity is only validated by someone else, or rather by a man. Their voice is only heard and acknowledged through someone else – they do not have this advocacy on their own.<\/p>\n

In these few lines, a lot of history can be found. Women have a long history of not being believed in all areas of life, but health is a very important one. Often, women talking about issues of health are not taken seriously because people believe them to be weak or whiny. Consequently, a huge number of women has been suffering from medical conditions, often mental health issues, which are not being treated or they have to diagnose themselves. Additionally, relating this to the title of the poem, \u201cDepressions\u201d, people with depression are often not believed concerning their condition and some doctors still refuse to treat it as a serious mental illness. Women and people with depression alike are an important part of society, but as soon as they don\u2019t align completely with the monolithic expectations of society anymore their opinions are dismissed. Furthermore, both are, to a certain extent, subject to the patriarchy, as women, like in the story, need a man\u2019s validation to be heard and similarly the health industry is, like so many others, still strongly influenced by the patriarchy.<\/p>\n

What I am trying to say is, that society still lacks a lot in terms of equality and understanding. The women in the biblical story should have been believed and their words should have been accepted to be the truth. Exactly like people who suffer from depression should be believed when they talk about their illness and their opinion should not be questioned by people who don\u2019t believe in it just because they have never experienced it themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe women feed him, bathe his feet \/ with tears, bring spices, find the empty tomb, \/ burst out to tell the men, are not believed. \u2026\u201c (Kenyon, 42) These three lines belong to Jane Kenyon\u2019s poem \u201cDepression\u201d. The lines describe the biblical story of the discovery of Christ\u2019s resurrection. The first part \u201cThe women … Continue reading Believe us.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3872,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125359],"tags":[113414,169382,1611,125033,1077,169381,71059,1732],"class_list":["post-1294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-blog-post","tag-belief","tag-believe","tag-bible","tag-depression","tag-feminism","tag-lisa-dordal","tag-mental-health","tag-patriarchy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3872"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}