Women as role models

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

In Canada, International Women’s Day falls on March 8. The theme for this year’s weeklong celebration of the event is “Strong Women. Strong Canada. Strong World.” What better time to read community member David Kirkpatrick’s new book, In Praise of Strong Women.

Kirkpatrick, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist for more than 30 years, combines personal accounts of the powerful women who have influenced his life with analysis to produce a unique memoir.

“I’ve taught psychology, then practised psychotherapy, psychiatry and community mental health, bringing me into contact with a number of strong girls and women from a wide variety of backgrounds in Ohio, Georgia, California, Alaska, British Columbia and Oregon,” Kirkpatrick told the Independent. “Probably more than that has been my experience growing up with strong girls and women, beginning with my grandmother, my mother and two adopted sister-cousins, and having married two strong women: my late wife Betsy, whose death was followed by writing what would become this book, and my wife Clair.”

Kirkpatrick was born in Kansas City and raised in Yellow Springs, Ohio. He now lives in West Vancouver, where he balances his work between community mental health and outpatient psychotherapy in Vancouver and on the Sunshine Coast.

Despite the many depictions on television and in other media of female stereotypes – women should be thin, pretty, caring, sexy and not too smart – Kirkpatrick contends that, “On a continuum between being attracted to strong women on one extreme, and not being attracted to them at all on the other, my sense is that there are more men, women, girls and boys who fall in between neutral or ambivalent and the positive attraction, than there are those on the negative half of the spectrum. Maybe many more!

“I’m not up on pop-culture, but what I observe out here, and in my office, is that strength is a plus.”

Kirkpatrick said that he wasn’t planning on writing a memoir, but, as a writer, put his grief over losing his first wife into writing. “Then I realized that I had known other strong women, and girls as well. So the work grew over 18 years into a series of stories, anecdotes, memories and portraits. A gifted Sechelt editor [Betty Keller], herself a strong woman, helped me connect the dots, and bring the pieces into ... a memoir!”

He added, “I think many readers may find themselves identifying with one or more persons within a memoir. ‘Where do I fit in here?’ And also, ‘Where do I not fit in? And where am I in between?’ The read can be more involving, more fun. And, often, more meaningful.”

In one part of In Praise of Strong Women, Kirkpatrick, in describing his then-new relationship with his wife, writes: “An agnostic at the time, or so I thought, I surprised myself by getting down on my knees the next morning and saying a prayer of thanks for Clair.”

Religion now plays a larger role in his life.

“My appreciation for Judaism has seemed to overlap with my appreciation of strong women,” he explained. “I write about Devora early in the book’s history section. A Jew by choice for seven or eight years, I have enjoyed a stronger sense of social and faith community since conversion, including but not limited to the many strong women at Har El.”

About what main lessons he learned from his parents, Kirkpatrick said, “Be kind to people, especially to those who need you. My father modeled this. My mother both modeled and voiced this. In a family of late-starters, including myself, my mother set the curve, graduating from college when she was 62.”

As for his personal attraction to strong women, he explained, “Like many individuals, I am attracted to many aspects of strong women, including their courage, integrity, persistence and warmth. In the book, I distinguish between a strong women’s toughness versus the roughness (not the same) shown by others.

“Personally, I find it a privilege – and just plain fun – to spend time around strong girls and women. And I notice that I am often, though not always, better for the experience. My sense is that both women and men are drawn to and/or have greater respect for strong women.”

For Kirkpatrick, In Praise of Strong Women has been cathartic.

“Writing has been healing for me,” he explained. “Clarifying, and therapeutic in the sense that it not only helped me connect the dots of my history, but also helped me make sense of the different parts of my life, both the ups and the downs. And re-reading the book has often been comforting as well.”

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