Opinion - Columns - Julie Lynem

Published: Sunday, Sep. 13, 2009

Julie Lynem: Bringing light to the women in the shadows

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Roxanne Carr could have become another statistic.

Like so many women caught in the cycle of domestic violence, she could have simply endured the physical and mental abuse from her ex-husbands. She could have, out of fear or shame, chosen to stay and not pursue her dreams of a career.

But Carr, now happily married, found the courage to fight back.

And now she has taken another step: talking openly and passionately about a part of her life that for years had been locked away.

Carr, the founder of the Mortgage House — a local mortgage banking company she opened in 1995 — was the keynote speaker at the San Luis Obispo County Community Foundation Women’s Legacy Fund luncheon Thursday.

For the past seven years, the fund — launched in 2003 with the goal of moving women and girls out of poverty, establishing safe relationships and strengthening their physical, mental and financial well-being — has provided thousands in grants (more than $8,000 last week) to local nonprofit organizations.

Despite her painful past (and some nervousness about sharing it with others), Carr agreed to address the Women’s Legacy Fund crowd. In her remarks, she recalled how her mother gave her to a loving aunt as a toddler, and how her world crashed when her mother came back for her when she was a teen. She told about the hardship of living with alcoholic parents and a stepfather who beat her mother. And she spoke of her days as a woman with two children struggling to find her way out of nightmarish marriages.

Through it all, though, Carr survived.

Before the age of 18, Carr, who had been an A student in school, had landed a job as a secretary at an aerospace company. She had moved out from her parents’, but still supported her family. It was not long before mentors — male bosses — took her under their wing to teach her the mortgage business.

At one point, in the 1970s, she was buying mortgages to the tune of a couple billion dollars a year. And this was in an era when it was still uncommon for many women to work outside the home.

Carr contends that her work skills and determination to succeed enabled her to break free of the abuse and become self-sufficient.

“Women weren’t encouraged to find their abilities and make the most out of them, and to stand up for themselves,’’ she told me. “You were really expected to have the husband be the boss and do what was necessary to keep the home fires burning. I’m grateful for the 1960s. All women should be for the rights they have now.”

Carr’s story is not unique, and she acknowledged that she is but one of many who have traveled down rocky paths they would just as soon forget. Many women, she said humbly, “have endured so much more than I.”

Yet, her journey is a reminder of why it’s important that as a community — particularly in a time of economic crisis when women are often carrying the burden of work and home — we lift up the women and girls who remain in the shadows without a voice and without hope.

It’s up to us as neighbors, colleagues and friends to show them that they have what it takes to reach higher than they ever thought possible, and while they are shaped by their past, it doesn’t have to define them. Like Carr, they, too, can take charge of their own destiny.

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In keeping with this year’s theme of women’s economic independence, recipients of the Women’s Legacy Fund grants included the Women’s Shelter Program of San Luis Obispo, to help women with financial planning; the Community Action Partnership of San Luis Obispo County, to support its North County Self- Sufficiency Project for Women; and the Transitional Food & Shelter Program, to help with its emergency shelter for medically disabled homeless women.