Full Text of the Excerpt

JOSEPHINE CLEMENT:

I think in all cases like that, there's always something inside of us that is awaiting some spark, so to speak. And when things happen in the larger community, we respond to those things that we believe, even though unspoken, and we may not have actually dealt with it. So we come to that point that we select those things that really are in keeping with what we believe deep down.

KATHRYN NASSTROM:

More the idea, then, that it struck a chord of something you'd always known?

JOSEPHINE CLEMENT:

This is true. And it also came, societal changes--I think it was Erik Erikson who writes in Identity about your own personal crisis points, in the self-identity, and the societal crisis periods, and the way the two coincide that is often very interesting. As I came to mid-life--and I think the menopause is a very important crisis period for women, that's why the whole fight for reproductive control and freedom is so important, I think it's deep-seated--as I came to that societal period and these other things in my personal development, the two just coincided.