An Illumination

Today I visited my 92 year old aunt. A strong, brave woman with a penchant for writing. She has single handed collected, complied and wrote a book on the family lineage. She has also travelled world and married an eccentric farmer my great uncle Harry ( who lived to be 98 and even to that age managed to scare bulls with his voice, he also got his pilots licence in his 60's among other crazy adventures).

While the cousins and my parents were talking amongst themselves ,my great Aunt took my hand and with great sincereity and empathy she said " You are making the right decisions, you are living life right. You are doing good job, you really are and dont forget it." This struck a nerve with me because up till this point I had not realized how badly I had needed to hear this. A hole in me filled and this relief brought me to tears.

From someone who has seen much. From an elder , a person of real experience. Someone has seen the birth of many children and the death of many friends and family. A person who has witnessed the basics of nature from harvest to harvest in varying weather and conditions both physically, emotionally and spiritually. The words from my sage were genuine and she knew what I needed to hear, I felt a reverberation in my soul.

My grandmother when she was alive had told me when she was a young woman she had three choices:
1. Homemaker ( which was the one society approved of the most )
2. Nurse
3. Teacher. The option she chose. I recently found out that if you chose teacher you had to be single. You were not allowed as a woman to be both a teacher and married. Their reasoning was that they didn't want to "lose" a teacher to pregnancy but we know better now what the real reasons were.
She told me I had some many options and that I should really take advantage of that. She told to be do something that made me happy, that I had an obligation to seize this opportunity to the fullest for all the women how came before me who didn't have these choices.

This conversation has been ingrained in me. We only had two very meaningful conversations that I can remember this one and the other being when I told my grandma I was going to marry for money. She stopped the car in the middle of an intersection and looked me dead in the eye and in a very stern and authoritarian voice she said " You will marry for love and for no other reason."

I am not sure if my clever, beautiful female friends have felt a pull in their lives to settle for a certain kind of "traditional" relationship or life path. But I felt that pressure recently and have been scoured. Because I want to marry for love and nothing else but I don't want compromise my opportunities in the process. I want to use my gifts and skills to the fullest, I want to pursue them to there very edge, there very threshold. Even in our age this is not going to be the same for me as it will a man. There are still preconceptions about what I have to give up, about some crazy rightful sacrifice I have to make. But I am going to battle to this to the bitter end.

Please do not think that I think all men are trying to put the shackles of patriarchy on my ankles and wrists. Because this is not true. I know some great men such as my father, my friend J and my best friends significant others who are in full support of equality, who I believe would do battle side by side with us.

At the end of the visit my great aunt hugged me and said " Have a great life."

Mission Accepted.