Dignity
Rebecca Kimbel
Dignity is a quality of distinction, an excellent, worthy or honorable rank.
Arrogance is over bearing pride, assumption, distain, vanity and often religious
piety. I was raised in a religious cult where no one knew the difference.
Women had no rights Women and children were the property of men. I grew up
in a life of blind obedience, servitude and bondage, yet I was expected to
walk, talk and carry myself with dignity, a dignity assumed because we were
God’s chosen people, the only true religion, royal blood of the priesthood,
but truth of bondage doesn’t feel like excellence. Truth of having no
rights doesn’t feel like a state of quality. The reality of being property
of another, doesn’t feel like a worthy or honorable place to be. Most
of the cult’s women walked, talked and carried them selves in accordance
with the truth we lived.
The cult leader was a man of strong arrogance, pride and a belief that he
was second only to God. Like his high ranking political father before him,
he carried himself with pious stately pride and expected his relatives to
do the same.
Like most FLDS girls I was given in marriage young. I grew two inches after
I became a wife, which angered my husband. "It’s not bad enough
you are big enough to pull a plow; you’re not going to humiliate me by
standing like a farmer. You WILL carry yourself with dignity-NOW."
Punishment cured the exterior problem, but a slave who walks with dignity
carries their own paradox.
With the birth of each baby, I held myself in increasing contempt. I brought
another child into a life of bondage. I felt the emotional inconsistencies
that naturally pull between arrogance and dignity and I was aware that I had
neither. After six daughters and much emotional turmoil, I reached the point
of knowing no matter what the risk, no matter how hard our survival, no matter
if I lived or died, I would escape with my children. I discovered then the
things worth living for and the things worth dying for are the same things.
Something inside of me changed for ever. For the first time I understood and
felt dignity. Standing alone, firmly on the right to think for myself, to
accept the responsibility for my life and to be the best that I could be,
to live or die for the right that my daughters would be free, I found dignity.
No matter who you are or where you came from, you can find dignity by being
the best that you can be without permission. Do that and you will find the
excellence of your personal dignity.
Rebecca Kimbel
Area Gov. 06-08
Toastmasters International