I was born female.

As a young girl approaching womanhood, I could never have imagined the changing roles of women, the drastic societal changes in marriage and family life, or the ongoing and shifting aspects of what has been called the gender war. The movies and magazines of my adolescence didn't prepare me for the future.

I was born the much youngest third daughter, into the home of a Baptist minister. Born at the end of World War II, I am neither a war baby nor a boomer. I was born in Sweetwater, Texas, and except for the five years I lived in New Mexico, I have lived my entire life in Texas.

Those ordinary facts reveal the most significant forces that shaped the formative years of my life. My family of origin, the location and time of my birth, my position in the family, the lifework of my father, and the fact that I was born female were the forces in forming many of my beliefs about myself, the world and my place in it, and God.

I absorbed the rules for being female from my family and the culture in which I grew to adulthood. I formed beliefs about a man's role and a woman's role based on what I observed and experienced; mostly, those beliefs had to do with what men and women did (their roles) rather than who they were (their personhood).

Those unconscious beliefs and rules about men and women had to do with spirituality and sexuality, work and play, health and happiness, and the use of time and money. I came of age and entered adulthood with beliefs I had been taught; more important and powerful were the mind-set, opinions, and feelings that I had caught from my environment.

At first, I didn't understand the gender war. As far as I was concerned, there wasn't one. Looking back, I realize that there was no war apparent to my young eyes because everyone behaved within their culturally defined, fixed roles, doing what they were supposed to do.

It worked . . . until it didn't, and it was the noisy revolutionaries who rattled the cages of the status quo, waking us all up to the factors that had numbed us into slumber in the first place, factors that needed to be named and confronted. Perhaps things hadn't worked as well as I'd thought.

There are those who have tried to ignore the gender war or control it through various means, some of them regressive and denigrating to both men and women, but the truth is that the culture of today is vastly different from our parents' and grandparents' culture. Yesterday's answers to issues of gender balance are no more adequate for the complexities of today's world than they are in the realms of science, medicine, and technology. The answers I carved out in my youth are not adequate for my daughters.

There is enough blame to go around when it comes to gender imbalance. Men and women have hurt each other in different ways through the generations. Part of the sense of being wounded in our culture originates in our belief systems about what it means to be male and what it means to be female.

While it is simple and popular to point to men and patriarchy as "the problem" in the gender war, there is another point of view that allows both women and men to be a part of the solution. At the root of our gender conflicts is an overvaluing of masculine strengths such as independence and competitiveness and the undervaluing of feminine strengths such as cooperation and adaptivity. In overemphasizing either feminine or masculine strengths, we draw on only half our strengths.

If we were to swing too far in the opposite direction and overvalue feminine strengths and undervalue masculine ones, and if we were to create a matriarchy, that too would be an imbalance, fueling another set of problems.

Within every human being, female or male, are both masculine and feminine characteristics. Obviously, we lead with our most natural strengths and characteristics, but we can learn to expand our options in relating to each other and in becoming more creative when we recognize, access, and express those strengths that are either unrecognized or undeveloped.

It is my belief that in accessing our feminine strengths, the joining, connecting, and relating strengths, we can move toward both an inner and outer balance, and by joining masculine and feminine forces, a person can relate in healthier ways to both men and women.

While I write from my own point of view, I have worked to understand the point of view of men. I've listened to men and women, and what concerns me is that all of us are wounded. I have listened to people from vastly different cultural groups, and I have listened to individuals from different generations. All that I have heard has increased my compassion for human beings as we are attempting to make a living, raise a family, pay the bills, balance the competing demands of daily life, and somehow stay healthy and safe. My compassion has increased for men and women, people attempting to live in a rapidly changing world in which what we learn in school is often outmoded by the time we enter the "real" world.

I write this book with the constant buzz of a rapidly changing, pluralistic culture in my head. I am frequently reminded that we all come from vastly different belief systems and cultural mores; I acknowledge that I speak from my personal worldview. Beneath all the things that make us different, I believe we will find basic human longings and similarities that will help us reach out in compassion and understanding, forming connections of acceptance and celebrating the fact that we are all members of the same family.

Both women and men, overusing our masculine strengths, are in danger of destroying ourselves with an incessant need for power and control. We are desperate as a culture for the forces that I call the joining forces. To correct our dangerous imbalances, we must grasp and then express the forces that connect, unite, and restore us, traits that men and women alike can and do express. We must become more open and generous with each other. Our "joining" strengths restore us to our own souls, our own creative energies, and our own true, essential natures.

All of us are struggling to do the best we can do, even as we do not seem to be able to do the best we know. I have come to believe that women do not win if men lose—and men do not win if women lose. No one of us really has authentic power if we are depriving another of power.

"Are you going to tell us what to do to end the gender war?" I've been asked this question repeatedly, and I always respond the same way.

In the first place, it isn't my style to tell others what to do, and besides, this isn't a "Ten Easy Steps to Ending the Gender War" manual. I can't offer a product at the end of each chapter, and I can't guarantee results. Human beings are not machines. We are complex creations made in the image of God. We cannot take our minds, our souls, or our relationships to a mechanic for repairs. There are solutions and methods that can help us win friends and influence people, facilitate communication, increase intimacy, and build community, but this book is an invitation to a process of soulwork. Soulwork takes time.

From the beginning chapter, then, this book is not a how-to manual, which is a masculine form, but an exploration, which is a feminine form. The "answers" and "what to do" are not in the chapters, but will be discovered as you join your life experience with the concepts and thoughts within the chapters. I have, however, included questions for reflection and suggestions for action at the end of each chapter.

I am fond of the image of life as a journey, and I have found that the inward journey is one of the most challenging and exhilarating journeys of all.

Joining forces, making connections, and loving each other along the way are all challenge and reward.

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