RIP Mary Catherine Bateson, Who Saw Great Value in Women’s “Improvised Lives”

Life is a straight line for very few women. There is much stopping and starting, making lateral moves, taking detours and U-turns. Because the world created by men allows them to pursue goals and ideas with singular focus, we women can feel that our stutter-step lives are somehow lacking, somehow "less than."

However, Mary Catherine Bateson, who died recently at the age of 81, changed our thinking; she helped us understand the great value in the way women's lives evolve. She called it an improvisational art form in her groundbreaking book, Composing a Life, published in 1989. "This is a study of five artists engaged in that act of creation that engages us all–the composition of our lives," the book begins. "Each of us has worked by improvisation, discovering the shape of our creation along the way, rather than pursuing a vision already defined." One of the five women discussed in the book is Bateson herself.