My Emancipation

My Sunday morning cooking ritual has a way of relaxing and bringing me to a state of contemplation which allows me to think about life - my life - above and beyond my day-to-day concerns at work and at home.  Today being International Women's Day, I thought about my own life situation and felt quite fortunate that life was kinder to me as a girl and as a woman.  

Although I didn't come from a wealthy family, it was never a question for my parents whether we, girls, because we are just girls, should finish schooling or not.  It's certainly not gender equality that motivated our parents to put all of us through school despite their limited financial resources as government employees, but the value for education.  "Iyan lang ang maipapamana namin sa inyo" (Education is the only wealth we can bequeath to you.)  Still it was a privilege I was grateful for since this was not an option available to girls in other cultures. 

I was never made to feel that I should put in more hours doing domestic chores than my male siblings.  If at all, I was made to feel I should help more, not because I was a girl, but because I was lazy.  Period.  Housework gave me headache, literally and figuratively speaking. I was not crafted for domestic chores, at least not in the way that women are traditionally expected. 

I also consider it a blessing that I opted to work in development and wellness organisations where equal opportunity was a mantra and gender issues were taken seriously.  And so I never found myself in a situation where I would get a salary that was commensurate to my gender rather than to my skills, or be considered second option to a male colleague.   

It almost felt like my experience of gender issues was more of a generic cultural experience - which is not necessarily insignificant - until thoughts of life after marital separation flooded my middle-age memory bank.  

Now that really hit me close to home base. . .  and I mean home literally.  My family, nuclear and extended, is what many would call "sarado Katoliko."  We are a family that is guided by high moral standards including staying in one's marriage at all costs (with the exception of being with a physically abusive husband).  While it was considered fine for the men to have illicit affairs and break their marriage, it was unacceptable for a woman to be in the same situation.  I was, in fact, the first to end my marriage by choice and for that I got all the flak.  "Nasa babae 'yan."   We, women, are supposed to hold our family together so that if the marriage falls apart it's likely because we've fallen short somewhere.  

Never mind that the other party had an extra-marital affair and never for once showed any remorse for it. Never mind that amidst all this I was the one who went through counselling (with hope that he would at some point realise he wanted to stay in the relationship enough to want to join me).  Never mind that I had to set an appointment with my own husband just so he would take the time to sit down for intimate conversations - and no, it was not work I was competing with during those times but the TV. I could go on and on. . .and no, it's not because I had not "moved on" but because I need to free myself from self-flagellation.  I needed to drink from my well of courage in order to wake up and live - if not for myself then at least for my son.  And, at that point, that courage had to come from being able to recognise that, while I had my own faults in that marriage, it wasn't all because of me and my feistiness, or my stubborn commitment to this holistic healing that he found hard on the budget and hard to accept.  

It was a painful time, but seeing the glass half-full, I am truly grateful to have been surrounded by women (and a few men) who understood enough and supported me through the most difficult times. Instead of putting in the little energies I had to making my family understand me, I allowed myself to be nurtured by others, and this allowed me to be more accepting of my family who loved me for sure but in a way I could not relate to at the time. I didn't have to cave in - in the name of family and what society would think - but I also didn't have to judge how they felt about the whole thing.  

The decision to end a marriage that was no longer growth-promoting and life giving was a difficult and painful one, but it was something that came from my core. Put in a situation where I knew my decision was going to break the hearts of my family, including my son, where I knew society would frown on me, and where I knew I would have to go through major crises trying to manage life as a re-singled woman, I held on to nothing but my faith in the love and fidelity of this God who journeyed with me through that difficult decision-making process.  And by standing firm and believing that I had the inner strength and all that it would take to raise my son separately from my husband, I found a deep sense of peace - not the joyful, triumphant peace but the peace that came from an assurance that, while the road ahead may be bumpy and deserted, I was not alone and I had (or would have) all the inner resources I needed.  There was liberation in that.  And that was my biggest emancipation. 

Although this struggle happened internally rather than socially, I feel that somehow, my hand was held by women ancestors who came before us and paved the way to equality and self-assertion, among them Nellie Bly and Rosa Parks. I know that my own struggles waged in the deepest and darkest realms of my consciousness had awakened a deep sense of awareness and compassion in me.  These and the belief that we women deserve love and a life of dignity and respect call me to be there for other women who need handholding as they work to re-discover their lost sense of Self, to walk with those who have lost touch with their inner giftedness and their capacity to live single and raise a child separately from their husband - or sometimes without one at all, to dream with other women and support them towards their own emancipation, believing that we have in each of us an "invincible summer."

Discvoering my "invincible summer" through a harsh winter  (Winter in Putney, London;  2013)