Shauna Niequist's mom had spent almost all of her adult life being a pastor's wife, mother, and homemaker. She excelled in all of these roles. But 17 years in, she walked into a counselor's office and said, "I don't know who I am anymore. Something has to change." Through counseling, friendships, and prayer, says Niequist, her mother unearthed the gifts and passions that had drawn her to a social work degree. "I found my voice in my 40s and my vocation in my 50s," Niequist's mom, now an advocate for peace-making in the Middle East, said. "So the good news is that it's not too late for any of you." Indeed, all of us at the conference where Niequist told her story were getting a head-start.
Betty Friedan would have been proud. Surprised, too, perhaps, to see her ideas—dissected and debated for a half-century now—fleshed out in a faith community not always friendly toward her. In The Feminine Mystique, 50 years old this year, Friedan dared to name "the problem that has no name" for a generation of American women after World War II. The problem, whispered in private interviews and evidenced by high rates of depression, alcoholism, and worse, was that middle-class women were very unhappy. Outwardly they were rich, but inwardly they were wasting away. Why? On the well-trod path to marriage, children, and homemaking, Friedan posited, these women had lost themselves.
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