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I am finding myself hampered of late; hampered by \u201cno\u201d desire to be good, but hampered worse, by the desire \u201cto\u201d be good.<\/span> Recognizing that both desires exist within me is an ongoing discovery, an inner dialogue guided, in part, by my time with Mary of Nazareth, whom I have avoided calling the \u201cVirgin\u201d Mary.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n An article I read yesterday found me questioning my reticence.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cVirgin\u201d has had a meaning in my mind having to do with being a \u201cgood girl.\u201d At a certain age, many mothers would start to suggest this \u201cdifferent meaning\u201d of being a good daughter. The words, \u201cBe good,\u201d no longer referred only to our grades or keeping our rooms clean, but keeping ourselves pure, or in other words, remaining a virgin until after marriage. This is an expectation I, and many of my generation, did not meet. While it would have been nice, I did not expect this of my daughters who came of age in the 1990\u2019s, and imagine data would show that those of us born from the late 1940\u2019s on, became part of ending that \u201cnorm.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Yet I have poignant memories of a movie of my youth. \u201cA Summer Place,\u201d is a Sandra Dee, Troy Donahue film that portrayed this \u201cscandal.\u201d I watched it on television\u2019s, \u201cSaturday Night at the Movies,\u201d when I was a young teen. Sandra Dee\u2019s mother reminded me a little of mine, and of the moral imperative to \u201csave yourself\u201d for marriage.<\/span><\/p>\n Still, by the end of the 1960\u2019s, young people were making radical new choices. This decade brought a revolution to nearly every social norm. <\/span><\/p>\n It was with no surprise then, that when, in 1972 I got pregnant at seventeen, my mother said, \u201cYou\u2019re getting married.\u201d In no time, my dad was walking me down the stairs of our two-story home to be married in our living room by a Justice of the Peace. There used to be names like \u201cshot-gun wedding\u201d for this kind of thing, at the root of which was the scandal of breaking the rule of remaining a virgin until vows were said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But in a truly beautiful article called \u201cReturn to the Feminine\u201d by Patricia Pearce, she gave me a new view of the word \u201cvirgin\u201d as she features<\/span> Mirari: The Way of the Marys. <\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span>See: <\/span>https:\/\/www.patriciapearce.com\/return-feminine\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n \u201cMother Mary\u201d Pearce says, \u201cis often referred to as Virgin Mary, and the deeper meaning of virgin is a woman unto herself, a woman who is her own person, not owned or controlled by another.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n