Women's Issues | Bonnie B. Matheson

Friends Are The BEST

July 31, 2025 Bonnie B Matheson Comments 3 comments

Surround yourself with people whom you admire for their character.Don’t be fooled by glitter and superficial things. Please pay attention to their values, morals, and simple gestures when interacting with others.Watching how people interact with less powerful or less important people is often extremely informative.Treating other people with respect is a sign of good character. These are the people who you will most likely enjoy over a long period of time. There are so many instances where we are powerless….

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Reclaiming Birth: Voices Against Medicalization

July 9, 2025 Bonnie B Matheson Comments 0 Comment

The Myth that the hospital is necessary and helps a woman give birth is a fabrication. But, (almost) everyone believes it. It is profitable for the hospiital and reassures the woman that she is in good hands. Doctors, hospitals, and even nurses have used fear to perpetuate this and attain “compliance”. This idea has infiltrated our society from top to bottom. There is a deep fear among women about their ability to give birth to their babies. “Help! Someone help…

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The Importance of Embracing Traditional Family Roles

July 1, 2025 Bonnie B Matheson Comments 2 comments

The wonder of the “NOT Working Woman.” A new friend recently emailed me, saying, “I don’t work. We can meet whenever you like.” That is a rare statement these days. It is such a relief to meet someone who does NOT work… I know that sounds weird. Lately, however, I have been thinking about the harm done to women by the “work culture” and the idea that they MUST have a career. It has been hard on families, hardest of…

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The Decline of Manners: Are We Losing Politeness?

June 18, 2025 Bonnie B Matheson Comments 3 comments

Manners seem to be a thing of the past: Who remembers Emily Post? She was once the arbiter of all things “polite.” Now, most people would not recognize the name. Someone who was once so well-known and familiar has nearly disappeared from polite conversation. Of course, the other thing that has disappeared is polite conversation. People no longer know how to have a conversation. They text or perhaps FaceTime. Due to constant screen viewing, young people are growing up with…

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Help! I Am Drowning in Photos

June 11, 2025 Bonnie B Matheson Comments 3 comments

For two years, I have been trying to get organized. Help!!! Is the constant refrain in my brain. I know it is beyond my powers to do this alone. Prayer helps because: Actually, I got help. A miracle occurred, and someone told me about a family who might have a member who could help me as an assistant.So we got together; I interviewed this young person and almost immediately determined that she was one of the few people in the…

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Engagement Parties are Fun!

April 28, 2025 Bonnie B Matheson Comments 1 comment

The day before Easter, we had a beautiful engagement party at my house for my granddaughter, Isabelle, and her fiancé, Grayson. About 75 guests gathered for drinks and charcuterie, pizzas, and dancing from 5:00 p.m., on into the evening. A tent over the back terrace doubled the space for entertaining. A disc jockey situated at one end of the terrace provided cheerful, danceable music; no rap, thank goodness! Inside the house, the gleaming wood surface of the dining room table…

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Birthing Babies, Do You Know How?

April 23, 2025 Bonnie B Matheson Comments 0 Comment

Childbirth is magical. The power of it, the mystical quality, along with the raw animal instinct, is never forgotten. My births taught me more than anything else ever has about my body and my ability to do whatever I needed to. Try to keep birth out of the hospital, where they take control of you and your body. Women know how to give birth to a baby instinctively. But it has almost been “trained out of us” by a constant…

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Be a Trad Wife; it is a lot of fun.

April 17, 2025 Bonnie B Matheson Comments 0 Comment

All I ever wanted was to get married and have children. Somehow, this idea has become discredited. Why? Is this a conspiracy? How did the thing that has been the most important in the survival of the human race become “unfashionable”? Where would the world be without the family unit? No one ever told me when I was young that there was anything I could not do as a woman. When speaking with my father about my opportunities, I mentioned…

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A Relaxing Birthday Retreat at Jefferson Baths

February 28, 2025 Bonnie B Matheson Comments 2 comments

My daughter decided to celebrate her birthday on February 24th by taking a group of nine women to Bath County to enjoy the Jefferson Baths at Warm Springs and then to The Homestead for lunch. What fun we had! Six of us met at a parking lot for a local club here in Charlottesville and got into a large Jeep belonging to one of my granddaughters. She was our chauffeur down to Warm Springs and beyond. It was relaxing to…

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Friendships, Have You Kept Up?

January 28, 2025 Bonnie B Matheson Comments 4 comments

Friendships become so much more important as we age. Next to dogs, our friends and families provide the most fun and affection for us. If we have children, they are now older people themselves. Our children have families of their own. They have full lives. If we have siblings we should be thankful since no one else knows us as they do. It thrills me to realize my girls (daughters) are best friends with each other. I really envy them…

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Why Thanksgiving?

November 22, 2024 Bonnie B Matheson Comments 1 comment

Large gatherings for Thanksgiving have been a tradition in our family for decades. Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday ever since I stopped believing in Santa Claus. Thanksgiving week is coming. I am a bit worried about this Thanksgiving as I have a ton of peoplecoming, and I have to figure out where to put extra tables and chairs. The preparations always used to be somewhat stressful, but I never felt overwhelmed in quite the way that I do these days….

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A Wes Anderson Wedding is like a dream.

October 18, 2024 Bonnie B Matheson Comments 1 comment

We were invited to a family wedding last weekend. The “additional information” on the invitation said to dress to a Wes Anderson theme. “Who is that, I asked?” Once my family explained it to me, I forgot all about it. My week before the wedding was so full of social events, it was unusual. Monday, a birthday party for a grandson at his family home, a black tie dinner at Farmington Country Club on Tuesday. Wednesday, I rested. Thursday, there…

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The Last Party

September 4, 2024 Bonnie B Matheson Comments 4 comments

In 1981, my son, Charley Matheson, graduated from Episcopal High School. It was a momentous occasion for us. We were not sure until the day before graduation that Charley would receive his diploma. There was a problem with a Russian exam. He almost failed it. The Russian teacher, who really liked Charley and knew how hard he had worked, had a heartattack just before the exam. Charley’s was a “makeup” exam. A different person did thegrading. It was a cliffhanger….

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Mother of Boys 13 Months Apart!

August 27, 2024 Bonnie B Matheson Comments 3 comments

Years ago, I used to listen to my two younger boys, yelling and screaming outside near ourwonderful, magical house, called Heathfield. The sounds scraped on my nerves like chalk ona blackboard. There was no peace to be had with that cacophony of escalating soundsfiltered only slightly by the stucco walls of our house. My heart sank, knowing I must go outthere to check. I had to see whether they were just playing or actually drawing blood in theirrough games. Even…

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Does Pretending You Understand Modern Art Make You Feel Good?

August 22, 2024 Bonnie B Matheson Comments 2 comments

Modern Art is a psy opp. It was planned and engineered by the CIA. These records are available now. Of course, the theory is deeply controversial. The cult of modern art supporters is tenacious and terrified of being “outed.”Yet art is still in thrall to these weird beliefs about what it is. Do you know the definition of the word “thrall”? Here it is from dictionary.com: “a person who is morally or mentally enslaved by some power, influence, or the…

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